Change is Good.

How do you view change? Is it positive or negative?

Unfortunately many businesses view change as negative. Which means as a leader you have to find ways to address change in a positive way and keep your team moving forward. Change can be a great competitive advantage. But to exploit change to our advantage, it is important to understand why change is often resisted. So here are 4 major reason change is resisted.

1. The first is FEAR. Fear is internal; it’s in our head. There’s a saying that I am fond of, “Fear is the great crippler of human potential.” There’s also an acronym that uses the letters F, E, A, and R that defines what fear is. The acronym stands for “False Evidence Appearing Real.”

2. The second reason people resist change is because of EGO. The need to be right is a powerful human need. It’s a common problem with leaders, managers, and business owners.

3. The third reason why people resist change is to avoid CONFLICT. Because when you try to leave all the people back in the “Land of Status Quo,” you’ll create and get some conflict. It’s not fun, so many people just avoid it all together.

4. The fourth reason that people resist change is LACK OF PURPOSE. Without a sense of purpose, people become stagnant and complacent. People get burnt out.

As a LEADER of yourself and others:
1. You have to overcome your own fear and help others overcome theirs by helping them change their mental attitudes that hold them back.

2. You also have to make sure that your EGO doesn’t get in the way. By being open to new and different ways to view things, as well as being open to the feedback and insights of others, you create an atmosphere where change is not an “I’m right and your wrong” mentality.

3. Of course, conflict is best handled through proper communication. It sounds simple on the surface, but we all know that it’s not.

4. Finally, you have to develop a sense of purpose, for yourself, and your team. What’s your vision for the change? Is it something that everyone understands and has a stake in?

Today… you have to be open to change to lead, and your organization needs to constantly change and evolve to survive. Think about all the changes that we must deal with. Technology continually changes. Customers continually change. Markets continually change. Competitors continually change. Why should our organizations be any different. CHANGE OR DIE: it’s been said so often that it sounds like a cliché, but it’s true.

In today’s world, we face more change in a year then our grandparents faced in a lifetime. It can be overwhelming; it can be scary; it can be frustrating, or it can be EXHILIRATING. Regardless of how you view change, the fact remains that it is very real and it will not go away.

With such rapid changes going on around us, we must find some way to comfortably accept change and actually benefit from it.

In his book, The Renewal Factor, Robert Waterman says, our “willingness to understand and exploit change is a powerful competitive weapon.”

When you can view change as good, then you will already have a competitive edge on the market, and when you can roll change out in your organization by addressing the above major reasons of resisting change then you will reduce turnover of both your teams and your customers.

May we view change as a great strategic partner.