Convincing More Convincingly

A food-processing company was preparing a communication plan to help with the rollout of some new processing equipment. As part of this effort, management considered all of the methods for getting the word out to the employees; the comprehensive plan included monthly newsletters, informative emails, personal conversations and staff meetings, and management felt confident that the plan would effectively tell employees what was happening. The wording chosen for all of these messages was positive and upbeat, emphasizing the benefits of the new system, with carefully selected quotes to show how good everything would be.

This is typical of many communication plans:

1. Figure out the message you want to convey, to executives, to middle managers, to staff, to customers.
2. Spin the message so it's unfailingly positive and enthusiatic
3. Choose media for delivering that message.

This is also typical of why many communication plans, and many change efforts, don't work all that well.

Whenever things are changed in your organization, it affects people. So, in good faith, we try to prevent resistance by improving communication, by keeping people informed. We increase the quantity of information that we send out. We focus on the positive aspects of the change. We try to convince people that the change will be good. We do more and more talking, in whatever form, to try to be more and more convincing.

To uncover and address resistance to change, we need to acknowledge that change truly does impact people. Very few changes are all butterflies and rainbows. The people doing the jobs are the experts at their jobs, and will have valid suggestions, valid fears, and valid concerns. Communication plans should focus as much on making sure people are heard as on keeping people informed.

As managers, we need to learn to listen to our people, to uncover and validate their concerns. Consider H.B. Karp's Positive Approach to Resistance, which is founded on two well-supported assumptions:

1. Resistance is real. People will always resist, knowingly or not, those things that they perceive as not in their best self-interest.
2. Resistance needs to be honored. It must be dealt with in a respectful manner or it will resurface.

As part of your communication plans, consider learning and implementing Karp's positive approach to resistance. This includes four separate steps, each of which should be completed before moving on to the next:

1. Surface the issues. Make it safe to voice concerns, and use active listening and interviewing techniques to draw out all the concerns.
2. Honor the resistance. Make it clear that it is OK to resist, it is natural to resist, and that surfaced concerns are legitimate.
3. Explore the issues. Strive to fully understand what the concerns are, rather than discounting them or explaining them away. Try to truly see what it looks like from the others' point of view. Then ask for help to figure out how to move forward in a way that would be least distressing, and most positive.
4. Recheck. Close the loop and re-examine the feelings and concerns about the issues, and about the path forward. Often, the resistance issues are no longer important, because they have been heard and understood. If not, rechecking sets a new starting point for followup sessions, in which you can continue to explore and resolve the resistance positively.

If all this mumbo-jumbo is Greek to you, consider the words of Epictetus (Stoic Greek Philosopher) - “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” Your communication plans should include more listening than talking, surfacing the issues rather than pretending that they don't exist.