Why leaders (too) resist change
We often talk about change management in terms of helping employees embrace new ways of working. Yet, even at the top of the house, leaders wrestle with promoting and accepting change. For example, a top leader enlists stakeholders to help evolve the team and the business following an acquisition. Just as the real work begins, progress stalls. Why might this be?
- Change triggers our brain’s threat response (e.g., fight, flight, or freeze). Honed over thousands of years, this response helps keep us, our next of kin, and our species alive. To our primitive brain, change equals threat, full stop, no matter how much fancy logic we throw at it.
- The more sophisticated neural networks, those responsible for logic and reasoning, have evolved primarily to recognize patterns and make predictions. But the uncertainty that comes with change disrupts our brain’s ability to do just that.
- Change challenges old assumptions and introduces new information—about the business, and about ourselves (referred to as cognitive dissonance), which creates mental discomfort (fMRI data supports this too).
- Though we like to think otherwise, our egos are fragile. Throughout history, psychologists, philosophers, and the like have noted that while the human spirit is incredibly resilient, the individual ego gets bruised pretty easily.
Our brains work diligently to quell all of this discomfort, perhaps through distraction, avoidance, protective instincts, or finger-pointing. It’s mostly biology, and there are no magic bullets to solve these vexing tendencies.
Our best strategies to embrace or facilitate change:
- Accept that emotions play a huge role, whether we like it or not.
- Get better at spotting resistance and the emotion(s) driving it.
- Acknowledge both rewards (this will achieve exceptional results) and drawbacks (this challenges our thinking in uncomfortable ways).
- Socialize new ideas...and then do it again—take what seems reasonable and add 30%.
- Plants seeds and then give them a little space; water and sunlight don't work overnight.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. ~Socrates
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