It’s important to have a healthy understanding of resistance.
You should never take it personally if some people respond to your vision, or change, with rejection, defensiveness or resistance.
In fact, you should welcome it, because your sharpest feedback comes from those who are unhappy or not in agreement with you.
When someone gives you resistance in anger, it may not necessarily be accurate, but it is usually honest and it best depicts where the resistance truly comes from.
When change disrupts a deep belief or value, it often upsets the recipient of that change because he/she has to decide whether to accept it or not.
This mental discomfort we experience when we hold two contradictory beliefs is called cognitive dissonance.
It occurs when a person’s beliefs are confronted with contrary evidence or information that forces them into a mental conflict.
This is extremely uncomfortable for most people.
Cognitive dissonance also occurs when this new information makes a person realise their own actions are inconsistent with a belief they profess to hold dearly.
This is especially evident in strategic and performance reviews. Some people think they are high performers, but when confronted with basic evidence to the contrary, the dissonance causes them to respond in anger or offence. Therefore, do not take resistance personally.
In fact, it is often an indicator that you have hit an organisational core belief. If the change is well meant, maintain patience and consistency to allow time for that dissonance to dissipate.
Experiencing cognitive dissonance is a very unpleasant but necessary stage in the process of deep-seated change.
Therefore, defensiveness, anger and even rejection are welcomed stages in this process.
Do not take it personally, just remain fixed on the change at hand.
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