leadership: Why we instinctively resist ‘the new’
Resistance to ‘the new’ is not a bad thing. it’s a very human thing. Resistance can serve several useful purposes:
- It ‘tests’ validity—is this likely to work?’
- It slows the pace of change, allowing people and their systems – to adjust.
- It usually contains important grains of truth that deserve to be taken into account.
- It helps weed out ideas that are not thoroughly thought-out.
- Resistance provides an outlet for people’s energy and emotion during a time of intensity and transition.
When to say yes.
When you say ‘Yes’ to the new, you will never know for sure what will happen next. But life ‘turns on a dime’, it’s more like a movie than a snapshot.. This moment is just a ‘frame’ in your life’s moving picture.
When should we allow change in?
1. Start with checking your Greater Purpose, your Strategic Intention. Does the new thing ‘fit’ with some larger direction for your life or organization?
2. ‘Trust your gut’. Research suggests that most people gather facts until they have enough data to go with what their gut (intuition) told them to do in the first place.
3. Practice ‘passionate non-attachment’ This means give your all to something, moment-by-moment, while letting go of the outcome—planning is priceless, the plan itself is useless.
4. Celebrate and honor what you are letting go of. Appreciate its contribution. Honoring the positives of what you are letting go makes it a little easier to allow in ‘the new’.
Like Janus/January, look both ways, then decide to let something that’s no longer working for you go. Allow your fear and uncertainty to have its time. Wait for the “letting go” process to work don’t try and push a river. Wait for a new vision of the preferred future to appear. When it does, celebrate what has gone before, then welcome the future with courage and strength—having tamed resistance, you are now conditioned to give it your all.
In support of Dr. Scherer’s message (from Art McNeil’s The “I” of the Hurricane: Creating Corporate Energy
L=(CV+V) X ALR
C
“This is the most workable model of organizational transformation and the achievement of excellence that I have seen.” Dr. Ronald Lippitt, professor emeritus University of Michigan
Inspirational Leadership (L) generates energy because of being aware of underlying (CV) cultural values that the leader and a critical mass of potential followers believe in, plus having a mental picture or (V) vision of a place to go or a new way of being. CV and V are multiplied by the use of (SS) signaling skills to send consistent signals through day-to-day behavior in a manner that models the leader’s personal commitment to the organization’s vision and cultural values. Effective leaders accept that (C) challenge is a corporate asset and the legitimate responsibility of followers. When challenge is met with (ALR) appropriate leader response —appropriate meaning getting the job done, but in a way that further reinforces vision and cultural values. What would have been resistance energy, is transferred to task. The process of signaling (SS) and altering the balance between challenge (C) and appropriate response (ALR) in support of cultural values (CV) and vision (V), is the essence of leadership.