The Three Levels of Resistance (And What They're Really Telling You)

In our training, we actually train out the Rick Mora framework.

And it's a framework that breaks resistance down into three levels to help us understand how we might best manage it.

The first level is the I don't understand it level.

It's about the level of information they've actually been given.

And it's the easiest level of resistance to manage because there are so many strategies you can apply to help increase somebody's understanding, whether that's more information, more data, more training and support.

There are so many different strategies that we cover in our training.

The second level of resistance is the I don't like it.

And this has an emotional response.

They personally don't like the change.

In this level, you need to identify change strategies to help them feel more secure and comfortable about the change because they don't like it for a particular reason and you need to get under the skin of why they don't like it and help them get into that comfort zone.

And the third level of resistance is the most difficult one of all and it's the I don't trust you.

It's about their trust level and that has been caused most likely by people past experiences by their perception of what's happening now perhaps how the change has been managed internally and in this environment they need to see it to believe it so again there are a number of different strategies you can apply to help build that trust but the reality is when they're in level three it's going to take much longer and it's going to be much more difficult to move them from level 3 into perhaps level 2 or level 1.

In the training we go through a number of strategies that can be applied for each level of resistance but also each phase of change because you've got a startup phase where people are in the dark And you need to set the challenge.

You've got the implementation phase where you're getting started and rolling things out.

And then you've got the anchoring stage.

And this is where you start to see the results.

This is where you need to anchor the change and make sure it's actually been adopted and utilized.

And the strategies cover all sorts of things from what you communicate and how you message things to actual tangible activities that you can do with your employees to to take them through that journey.

Change is not easy because it involves people and it involves behavioral change.

And so there's a whole science behind it from understanding personality traits to understanding some of their behavioral traits to understanding the environmental context and understanding people's intrinsic experiences and perceptions of the change.