Publications

Rasa Baltė Balčiūnienė

15min.lt

Today, change and innovation in organisations is no longer an option but a necessity. However, the mood of the environment - Russia's war in Ukraine, inflation, skyrocketing electricity prices, etc. - is more likely to encourage us to cling to the status quo rather than embarking on yet another innovation. How can we properly identify what in the organisation is most resistant to change and where the reasons for this lie?

Group dynamics - the interpersonal relationships that develop in a work environment, in a team - is perhaps one of the most overlooked areas in an organisation. Often, leaders leave it to its own devices, intervening only in emergency situations. However, group dynamics and their relationships, both formal and informal, are constantly at work and have a major impact on the management of the company and the well-being of the people who work there. Group dynamics is a broad topic that could be analysed from different angles. It is particularly eloquent when groups unconsciously resist the manager's decisions to implement change. The key in these cases is to identify the one or more employees who are resisting and influencing the whole group. And remember that it is not necessarily the person who is most active in expressing doubts and questioning the manager's proposals who resists. The person who quietly waits for things to go wrong and "infects" others with distrust can also have the greatest impact on the group dynamic. It is also important to distinguish that employees do not have to follow all the changes proposed by the manager indiscriminately, but they allow them to happen, do not unconsciously block them, contribute constructively with their insights to the process, and feel responsible.

Delving deeper into unconscious forms of resistance, I have identified five types:

1. Rational resistance. Certain decisions of the manager are rejected after a rational evaluation and the realisation that there is no precedent in the employee's experience or perception, which makes it very difficult to believe in the success of the decision. In such cases, it is necessary to allow the staff member to broaden his/her worldview so that he/she hears examples of different practices. Conferences, training and broadcasts should be considered to broaden this map. In such cases, I keep reminding myself and other managers that it is better to have open, uncomfortable resistance than to have an employee who is always in favour of change but does not believe in it at all. One of the more common variations of this type of resistance, already a kind of meme in organisations, is that of an inspired manager returning from conferences eager to implement new ideas, while a group of employees stretch the time in unison and wait for the manager's enthusiasm to "cool down".

2. Resistance driven by personal fears or interests. Employees resist change because it may affect their personal goals, interests or highlight their inferiority, lack of skills or competitiveness. For example, a worker resists an international project because he or she feels insufficiently fluent in English, but does not explicitly state this. Or, when a younger and more driven colleague arrives, a long-standing employee starts to sabotage his ideas, especially if they are supported by the manager, because he feels competitive. In this case, a good development manager can help by identifying the real reasons for resistance.

3. Resistance to authority. There are employees who fundamentally reject hierarchy and authority and find it very difficult to trust them. This is a rather adolescent state. It is possible that the supervisor has similar psychological traits to the employee's parents or other life teachers. Sometimes the supervisor becomes a living reproach that the worker himself is not realising something, not implementing something, perhaps not creating his own business.

4. Environmental resistance. This is a resistance that goes beyond the team, beyond the organisation, and is created by the context itself - the environment of the market, the region, the country. Many of us are currently experiencing a mood of fear, lack of confidence in the future, insecurity, and in such cases the desire to protect the status quo and deny change.

5. It also happens that the leader unconsciously resists change and the group simply reflects this. In this case, it is up to the leader to work on himself. It is interesting to see how group dynamics begin to change when the leader starts to recognise when he/she is sabotaging decisions that need to be implemented.

In conclusion, I would like to recall the father of psychoanalysis, Z. Freud, and the insight that gave psychoanalysis its greatest impetus: that more than 90% of human decisions are unconscious. The significant prevalence of unconscious decisions is nowadays confirmed by the discoveries of neuroscience. This information is still difficult to accept in business environments. However, I would very much like to encourage you to push the boundaries of awareness in today's organisations - the very forms of resistance to change mentioned above require so much of an organisation's time and energy.