For the past several months, I have been conducting research into the leadership of change.  My interest is in finding out what differentiates effective leading of change from ineffective.  Although my research is far from complete, I have found something you might find interesting – the leadership of change has a much different focus than leadership in general.

One of the hallmarks of general leadership is “leadership style”.  At the heart of leadership style is the idea that leaders have a particular way or pattern of leading and that not all patterns are appropriate or effective in all situations.  Leaders who are very production or task oriented, for example, will tend to be more effective in situations where getting things done is paramount than will leaders who are more affinity or relationship oriented.  Based on this literature, one would expect that the effective leadership of change would also involve leadership style, but it doesn’t.

In the literature on change leadership, such as John Kotter’s book Leading Change, the focus is on steps, not style.  More specifically, the focus is on identifying the “right steps” or the “right process(es)”, which if fully and appropriately followed, will result in the successful implementation of change.  Apparently, when it comes to change, it is not the leader’s personal style that matters, but the steps they use in conducting change.

What I find interesting about the steps approach to change leadership is that it ignores the very extensive literature on general leadership which indicates that how leaders treat and interact with followers matters.  The steps approach implies that no matter what a leader’s style might be, or how ineffective it is on a daily basis, it won’t matter when it comes to change as long as they fully and appropriately implement the right steps.

Come on, are they serious?  Are they really saying that steps trump style?  Does anyone really believe that a jerk of a leader can successfully engage people in a change if she simply follows the right steps?  It would seem a marriage of the two approaches would give a more complete picture of what is required for the effective leadership of change, but so far I have not found such a marriage.

Most organization changes fail to deliver their intended results.  When asked why, managers and executives overwhelming blame resistance for the failures.  In one study, 62% of the managers asked replied that resistance was the reason for the failure of change.

There is no question that people can and do resist changes, particularly when they see the change as a threat.  But what is missing in the accounts of managers who blame resistance is (1) any acknowledgment that they had anything to do with the resistance, and (2) the failure to recognize that resistance is a form of feedback that can be used to improve the likelihood of success.

Like most people, managers react to what they perceive as resistance (any failure to go along with what is wanted?) by fighting it.  They see resistance as dysfunctional, a threat to the viability of the change and their leadership, so they try to counter or overcome it.  It rarely, if ever, occurs to them that resistance is a form of feedback and a resources that can be beneficial, even invaluable to the success of a change.

Here are three ways (there are others) in which resistance can be useful for change:

1.         Keeps people talking about the change.  One of the greatest risks to a change, particularly in its early stages, is that it will go out of existence and people will forget about it. People who resist a change have to talk about it to do so, thereby, helping to keep the change in front of people.

2.         Resistance can reveal where communication is missing.  One of the reasons people appear to resist change is because it was never really been explained to them completely.  We all make the mistake of assuming that if we explain something to someone, that’s it, they got it (or should have) and we can go on.  When people don’t understand something, they are naturally hesitant to move forward.

3.         Resistance can reveal weaknesses in the change or its implementation.  The fact is, most people go along with change.  It’s the few that don’t that seem to be the problem.  One reason people raise issues about a change is not because they are against it, but because they are for it and have concerns about its likely success.  When such people are dismissed as “resistors”, the insights they have are lost and the likelihood of success diminished.

In order for managers to be able to use resistance, they have to be willing to consider that not all resistance is dysfunctional for change and that people who managers believe are resisting may be trying to tell them something of value.  Rather than resisting, managers could listen and use what they learn.