Friday

The Process of Change - The Second Stage: RESISTANCE.

In the process of change, when you work through your initial reaction of denial, you hit the stage of RESISTANCE.

RESISTANCE is where you experience emotion – sometimes fiery, sometimes feelings of heaviness and great sadness – this is the stage where you experience intense emotion about your situation. The phrase: “Better out than in” is appropriate in this stage, because until you experience your emotions fully, you stay stuck in resistance.

I was hired by a large utility company to help manage their change process.  My first workshop was to talk to a bunch of managers mixed in with some front line workers.  The subject was stress management.

When I entered the room, it looked like any training room with about thirty men sitting in their chairs.  I started the conversation by asking the room what they thought stress was.

A large man stood up, identified himself as a front line worker, started to share that he had just had a heart by-pass operation and then he got really focused and pointed to one of the managers and said "And it was all because of you you B#$%@!!!!"

He then threw himself at the guy and started throwing punches.  The room exploded into action.  Punches flying, guys trying to pull other guys off each other, shouting, swearing and furniture flying around the floor.

Somehow and eventually with the help of the peacemakers in the workshop, I got the room to settle down.

Then we got to have an extraordinary conversation, full of honesty about the brutal facts, full of guys talking about how they felt about the change to their workplace.

The elephants in the room were all acknowledged, it was a tough conversation, an uncomfortable conversation, but nothing compared to the explosion that the workshop started off with.  Somehow the fiery outburst had earn t the participants the right to talk about the emotions bottled up behind it all.

After all was aired, people started throwing options about how to handle the situation.  People at that stage were willing to listen and engage.  They had gotten through their resistance to the situation. They left the room ready to engage in the process of planning.

It was the best workshop I'd ever faciliated.

 But that's what the stage of resistance is all about - exploring and expressing the sometimes fiery emotions that stop us from thinking clearly and moving on.

When you do that thoroughly, you are ready to move to the next stage: EXPLORING OPTIONS AND MAKING A PLAN.

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