Overcoming Resistance with Influence

I realize I’ve shared it several times already, but I don’t believe it’s possible to overstate John Maxwell’s comment that “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.” As I detailed how having the humility to ask our son to change his behavior (while still explaining the potential results if he chose not to) rather than throwing around our parental authority helped us avoid at least a little bit of turmoil over the years. Even by just remembering to choose humility over authority on occasion, I was able to earn more of his trust. That has compounded over the years since to produce a tremendous ripple effect; in our relationship and the impact I see him making as a husband and father today. The same applies in our professional relationships, and every bit of that influence we earn plays a critical role when (not if) we need to overcome resistance.

Early on, I listed exactly how many people I’ve seen openly welcome change during my career: aside from the person driving any specific change initiative, no one openly welcomes it. Most of the folks I’ve seen initiating change have more than a fair amount of resistance when they’re not driving the ship. A good mentor navigates resistance to change by practicing patience, but the influence they’ve earned - rather than the authority of their position - will be the determining factor in overcoming that resistance.

From May 2000 through February 2001, my primary responsibility was to implement the “5S” process - one piece of our overall corporate lean manufacturing initiative - across various departments within our facility. As I previously, I had zero positional authority and very little support from the folks who did. My job was to work with team members to rearrange their work areas, organize how they stored all the different types of tooling required for fabricating and assembling exhaust systems, and getting rid of (or at least relocating) anything they didn’t use frequently. Just in case you’re not tracking, this involved massive change to how many of them had done their jobs for longer than I had been alive.

When I left that role and accepted the position facilitating our location’s behavior-based safety process, I was no longer asking folks to get rid of their special wrench they used once every seventeen years but I had frequent conversations about how changing their behavior could reduce or eliminate what I saw as potential for them to be injured. While asking someone to make a slight change in how they moved didn’t require them to give up a tool they had developed an emotional attachment to, the resistance was still there - albeit more passive since it involved consciously changing a habit. And even if that behavioral change was something as simple and straightforward as wearing their safety glasses, I still had no positional authority to require it (although safety glasses were indeed required).

In either case, I saw plenty of examples where supervisors or managers demanded similar changes to what I was working to achieve, in various lean manufacturing initiatives and with safety compliance. The most common approach used by folks with those titles relied largely on their authority: do it, or else! That usually led to the desired results, at least until the supervisor or manager returned to their office. Once they were out of sight, team members typically returned to business as usual; gloves came off and safety glasses disappeared. I remember a time where an entire Kan-Ban system ended up in a scrap hopper while the manager overseeing the implementation had a few days off.

I won’t begin to suggest that I achieved flawless results in the 5S implementation or the behavior-based safety process, but the changes I was able to help initiate generally stuck because they were based on the influence I had earned rather than positional authority (because I had none). In the areas where I had earned the most influence, I was able to overcome at least some resistance. There were, however, folks I never earned influence with. The only way they complied with any initiative I was a part of was if their manager forced the issue. Even then, their compliance was halfhearted (at best) and only lasted as long as the manager was nearby. But even with the folks I had earned a reasonable level of influence with, buy-in to change was slow unless I could balance that influence with just the right amount of confidence that the change I was asking them to make would actually benefit them - so we’ll look at that more next time.