We have all encountered a change in our lives at one time or another. It can take many forms, from something as small as waking up at a different time to uprooting your family to search for a job opportunity across the country. For change to be successful, you must accept it and be comfortable with it, regardless of its intensity. One environment where many of us will encounter change is at work. Business leaders are tasked with ensuring that the operations of the company under their purview are run efficiently and effectively. This will sometimes require a change in the way a group, or the entire organization, currently operates after a problem is identified. Whether you are a leader or a follower, the ability to manage change and implement it is critical to the overall success of an organization.

Resistance to change

If change is so necessary, why do people resist it? Much of today’s business research literature is devoted to determining how companies mitigate risk and why these techniques work. The same is true for individuals; They resist change because it represents uncertainty and risk. In a 2011 article, Myungweon Choi found that readiness for change, commitment to change, openness to change, and cynicism about change are factors that affect an individual’s ability to manage change.

How do we identify whether individuals in an organization are likely to resist change? Leaders can survey their employees, several inventories exist to give organizations an idea of ​​whether a person is prone to resist change, including an instrument created by Shaul Oreg in 2003, as well as validated instruments built for the Adoption Model of Technology (TAM), and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Leaders must also be able to identify people who may be resistant to change from personal knowledge of the employees they work with. Leaders should also keep in mind that the concept of resistance itself should not be construed as branding an individual, after all, it is a perfectly natural response. What leaders need to be wary of, however, is allowing such resistance to take root in a group.

The importance of followers

Burak Oc and Michael Bashur found that followers with greater personal power exert greater social influence on leaders, followers who are psychologically closer to their leaders exert greater social influence on them, and large groups will have more influence on leaders. depending on its interior. -group agreement. This is to say that followers have just as important a role in successfully enacting change, if not a bigger role than leaders attempting to do so. David Courpasson and his colleagues studied this extensively in an article titled Resilient at Work: Building Productive Resilience in the Workplace. In this paper, it was found that resisters can influence top management and win concessions through active efforts. These efforts culminated in the main leaders having no choice but to give in to the resistance, as the resisters managed to form new groups that possessed enough power to coerce the leaders.

Uhl-Bien and colleagues have investigated the concept of leadership co-production, in which followers still differ from the leader’s goal with advising, challenging, or persuasive behaviors that ultimately lead to more effective results. A key aspect of leadership co-production is communication. Research shows that leaders who communicate to their followers that they have faith in their employees’ abilities lead to an increase in the follower’s ability to meet these expectations through an increase in their sense of competence and self-efficacy. Taking advantage of this can help leaders create successful change.

Creating Change

Kotter, in his 1996 book lead the changeestablishes an eight-stage sequential process to ensure successful change in an organization:

(1) Establish a sense of urgency;

(2) create a governing coalition;

(3) develop a vision and strategy;

(4) communicate the vision of change;

(5) empower employees for broad-based action;

(6) Generate short-term profits;

(7) consolidate gains and produce more changes; and

(8) anchor new approaches in culture.

Jeffrey Ford and colleagues also noted in their 2008 research paper on resistance to change that several management practices that have been documented to reduce resistance, including extensive communication, inviting people to participate, providing people with the necessary resources and developing strong working relationships. An individual’s resistance can be exacerbated by managers breaking agreements, monitoring a communication breakdown, and ignoring the resistance itself.

Communicating the purpose of the change is essential, but it is also important to describe how the change will affect the employee. Remember, change scares people because it involves risk and uncertainty. By demonstrating to employees that the change efforts you are proposing will have a positive effect on them, they will be less likely to resist change. By including these employees early in the process, by listening and responding to their concerns, and by incorporating suggestions they can give you, engage these people and make them part of this change process. By being part of the solution, they are much less likely to resist your proposed change.

Conclusion

Change is necessary for companies to survive. Leaders create the vision for this change and ensure that it is executed throughout the organization. Communication is key to successfully creating and sustaining this change. Vision is critical. Find out what you are changing and why. Make sure this change has a positive effect on employees, and communicate it early and often. One must ensure that these perks are actually perks for the employees, otherwise managers may face resistance due to a breach of trust. Communicating widely, inviting people to participate, and developing strong working relationships are crucial to your change management program. By incorporating these concepts when leading change in your organization, you will have maximized your chances of success.