Dissatisfaction Times Vision Times First Steps Must Be Greater Than the Resistance

The equation that drives change is simple:

Dissatisfaction times Vision times First Steps must be greater than the Resistance to the impact of all three combined or else change efforts falter.

There are plenty of dissatisfied people in your workplace, your work group, or even just your organization.

There are people who insist that providing negative feedback is the only way to encourage organizational growth and they provide it liberally.

There are people who have been dissatisfied for years in your organization; who have made brief, or even faltering, attempts at change, but have been stymied and have now surrendered.

There are people inside your organization who claim they are dissatisfied, but who are mimicking the sounds of dissatisfaction as a political power move to angle for a better position at the organizational table.

There are people with vision in your workplace, your work group, and your organization. But this vision is hazy, or they are easily distracted by the next “hot” leadership initiatives, or their vision can be compromised with just a little more money or promotion.

There are people who take first steps and attend training, workshops, and seminars.

They read books and articles, combing the internet for advice and guidance about how to overcome the organizational ennui that holds back change.

There are people who take the same first steps, but their enthusiasm doesn’t go anywhere.

They stop at memorizing the “how-to” listicle and when trying to apply the emotional jujitsu against the resistance in their organizations, they experience limited success.

But these elements, dissatisfaction, vision, and first steps, must be greater than the sum of the organizational resistance to them. Or else, the changes that you are seeking inside of your organization, your work group, or even the team that is inside your sphere of influence, won’t happen.

The resistance to change is pernicious, persistent, and it never gives up. The resistance to change is sneaky and sly and sometimes comes in the form of well-meaning people and situations that appear as though they are helping your cause of change when in reality they are hurting it.

No great change happens without conflict. And no great conflict can happen without the resistance being overcome.

And if you think that it can, then you are bound to wind up stuck in the same place of dissatisfaction where you initially began your change journey.

There Are Easy Solutions to Complicated Problems

The two most difficult roadblocks to success in resolving hard problems are the presence of real trade-offs and considerations of power.

Most complicated problems and difficult conflicts have simple solutions. We often confuse what we believe is a hard solution with a complicated one. What makes solutions to hard problems not easy are the presence of trade-offs (scare resources in scare environments) and power.

In a world of scarce resources (the two scarcest being time and attention these days…even more than money) the trade-offs that must be made to create the space for solutions to your most pressing conflicts can seem insurmountable.

Here are a few (of many) trade-offs. Each one can either represent a zero-sum trade-off or an even exchange trade-off:

Conflict or Apathy

Attention or Ignorance

Awareness or Ennui

Momentum or Slowness

Going Along or Resisting

Reassurances or Courage

Change or Status Quo

Focused or Distracted

Power is the consideration behind most forms of fear. Either a lack of power or power focused in an area that doesn’t benefit getting to a solution. That power is often cloaked in reassurances and comes with a healthy dose of resistance.

We often confuse easy with simple in our own minds. Easy solutions to conflicts usually involve the kinds of solutions that favor whatever trade-off benefits us and validates our perspective.

Easy solutions also preserve our power (maintaining the status quo), or grow our power in each conflict situation. Hard solutions take away or diminish our power, as well as go against whatever trade-off we’d like to have honored.

What makes solutions hard to simple problems is that we are often blind to what is hard, and are aware of what is easy.

Be sure that you are making trade-offs you can live with, in a search for complicated solutions to hard problems.

Boundaries of “No”

In a conflict, boundaries are overrun with impunity.

Emotional boundaries.

Ethical boundaries.

Psychological boundaries.

When boundaries are overrun, feelings of betrayal and hurt automatically follow because when we have our boundaries overrun, we recognize that the other party has misused and damaged our trust.

The number one word to maintain boundaries is the word “no.”

The problem, of course, is not the obvious overrunning of boundaries. We can say “no” directly and without guilt in these situations.

We are comfortable with that process.

The problem arises when there is seepage through a series of moral and ethical decisions that initially appear to be right, but ultimately turn out to be wrong.

Saying “no” in these situations doesn’t often happen because preservation of personal pride, selfish ego, and other concerns becomes more paramount than the re-establishing of sinking boundaries.

No matter.

“No” is “no.”

But learn when—and where—to use it.

Self-Select Out of the Pool

Here’s an idea:

When you hear an idea that doesn’t appeal to you, doesn’t interest you, or that doesn’t resonate with you, merely say (either internally to yourself or externally to the presenting party) “That’s not for me.”

Then add this other part on.

“And that’s ok.”

Then, either move on physically from the room or emotionally from the interaction.

This works better as a coping mechanism for handling ideas, concepts, and thoughts that we find to be personally repulsive, than engaging in feedback processes where you seek to destroy the other person’s sense of self-worth and seek to shame them into silence.

If it’s not for you, then stop wasting your time (and the other party’s) and self-select out of the pool of interaction.

Do this so that other people, for who the idea is appealing, can self-select into the pool.

This approach works better than staying in the pool of interaction, exercising the vain hope that the messaging underneath the interaction will resonate for you—or be relevant for you—at some point in time in the future, and at the end of the interaction, engaging in the politics of personal destruction via the use of weaponized negative feedback.

Getting Wisdom From There to Here

The thing about getting to the resolution of a conflict situation is that it is a long road, from the initiation of a conflict to a resolution of a conflict.

And since it’s a long road, the bumps, the twists and the turns are what interests us as spectators. Those of us in the audience are here to witness the journey, not the outcome.

Except: When all the audience is interested in hearing about—or giving their limited attention to—is a boiled down summation of the process, with a list of steps for how to get to end and be done, then there is little about experiencing (or explaining) the moments along the road that can hold the audience’s interest.

The path of conflict requires those of us who have been along the path to provide wisdom—and not shortcuts—to encourage and inspire people to walk the same path. And to stick with walking it when the outcome seems in doubt.

The bumps along the road include opportunities to attain the following traits and skills (in alphabetical order):

Candor

Clarity

Courage

Deep competence

Emotional Intelligence

Forgiveness

Grace

Humility

Indomitable Spirit

Perseverance

Resiliency

Satisfaction (from a job well done)

Self-awareness

Self-control

Wisdom

There will always be adversity. You will always have conflicts, trials, and tribulations. Be of good cheer, and show others the path.

Because there ain’t no app, shortcut, or listicle, for getting the wisdom from walking the path.

Caring Costs

Caring costs.

It costs to be empathetic to your employees’ emotional needs.

It costs to be mindful of the non-verbal messages you’re role modeling.

It costs to be engaged all the time in the active act of actively listening.

It costs to develop connections that gain you nothing in the short-term.

It costs to care when that caring may not be “enough” for the other party when what was really desired by the other party was a transactional act, not a relational one.

Caring costs.

But what else are you going to invest your emotional energy in?

Small Moments

It appears that the large conflict situations in life are the ones that matter the most.

Death

Divorce

Job loss

Personal and professional disappointments

But the reality is, the small moments that appear to matter the least, are the ones that create the grit and resilience to survive the crucible of the larger moments, when the pressure is enormous.

The pressure to behave unethically.

The pressure to surrender a critical position.

The pressure to sacrifice long-held principles for short-term gains.

The pressure to avoid losses that appear insurmountable—in the emotional present.

Recognizing that managing the small moment of conflict matters more than anticipating how you’re going to manage the larger moments (should they come) is a huge advantage in a work world of shifting priorities.

Four traits to focus on growing, in the small moments:

Gaining self-awareness.

Refining your story.

Connecting with other people by growing empathy.

Giving yourself a break.

Focus on learning and absorbing the lessons from dealing with the small stuff, not to obsess over those lessons, but to allow those small interactions to prepare you for the next large conflict.

Feedback You Let In

There are two kinds of feedback: constructive and negative.

Constructive feedback serves to grow another human being. Constructive feedback serves to provide examples and metaphors that tell a story that can resonate with another party.

Negative feedback serves to limit growth, hem in development, and ensure that the status quo doesn’t change too much. Negative feedback employs snark and cynicism to score rhetorical points but not to tell a story that resonates with the person hearing the feedback.

Negative feedback takes the posture and attitude that a relationship is merely transactional and that neither party owes each other much more than maybe a good time.

Constructive feedback is always oriented toward tomorrow; oriented toward realigning minds and growth toward relationship and development.

Be careful which form of feedback you’re encouraging on your team.

And which form of feedback you’re allowing in your mind and heart.