Overcoming Team Resistance to Change

Change & AdaptationManagement & LeadershipManagers≈ 20 min

Key skill: Change management

Summary

Understand why teams resist change — individual, collective, and project- or leadership-related blocks — and learn to lift them by listening, reassuring, negotiating and communicating, so transformation truly takes hold.

Target audience

Any manager or project lead who needs to promote and support change within their organisation.

Learning objectives

Identify and overcome resistance to change
Understand the different causes of resistance to change: individual causes, collective causes, and causes tied to the change itself and how it is led
Receive people's instinctive resistance reactions without judgement
Listen, engage in dialogue, stay authentic and reassure teams to reduce resistance

Module outline

StorytellingHow he transformed the company culture by instilling empathy and curiosity to overcome resistance to change
ArticlesInvolve resistors instead of subduing them · The components of resistance to change (examples and best practices)
Expert videoAn overview of the different causes of resistance to change and how to overcome them: individual causes, collective/organisational causes, and causes tied to the change itself and how it is led
AnchoringA quiz and True/False questions to dig deeper into the topic and anchor what you've learned
Memo cardA downloadable coaching memo card: the key points from the expert video
CommitmentConcrete examples to help you define your own commitment

Models & methods

Homeostasis; reptilian, limbic and neocortex brain responses; blocks: cornered, losing, incapable; levers: listening, negotiating, communicating.

Research-based

The case of Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO since 2014: the well-known cultural shift from a "know-it-all" to a "learn-it-all" culture.