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Please read through the article below and answer the question at the end of the article.
High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It
The Real Reason People Won’t Change
Every manager is familiar with the employee who just won’t change. Sometimes it’s easy to see why—the employee fears a shift in power, the need to learn new skills, the stress of hav- ing to join a new team. In other cases, such resistance is far more puzzling. An employee has the skills and smarts to make a change with ease, has shown a deep commitment to the company, genuinely supports the change— and yet, inexplicably, does nothing.
What’s going on? As organizational psy- chologists, we have seen this dynamic liter- ally hundreds of times, and our research and analysis have recently led us to a surprising yet deceptively simple conclusion. Resis- tance to change does not reflect opposition, nor is it merely a result of inertia. Instead, even as they hold a sincere commitment to change, many people are unwittingly apply- ing productive energy toward a hidden com- peting commitment. The resulting dynamic equilibrium stalls the effort in what looks like resistance but is in fact a kind of per- sonal immunity to change.
When you, as a manager, uncover an em- ployee’s competing commitment, behavior that has seemed irrational and ineffective suddenly becomes stunningly sensible and masterful—but unfortunately, on behalf of a goal that conflicts with what you and even the employee are trying to achieve. You find out that the project leader who’s dragging his feet has an unrecognized competing commitment to avoid the even tougher assignment—one he fears he can’t handle—that might come his way next if he delivers too successfully on the task at hand. Or you find that the person who won’t collaborate despite a passionate and sincere commitment to teamwork is equally dedicated to avoiding the conflict that natu- rally attends any ambitious team activity.
In these pages, we’ll look at competing commitments in detail and take you through a process to help your employees overcome their immunity to change. The process may sound straightforward, but it is by no means quick or easy. On the contrary, it challenges the very psychological foundations upon which people function. It asks people to call into question beliefs they’ve long held close, perhaps since childhood. And it requires people to admit to painful, even embarrassing, feelings that they would not ordinarily disclose to others or even to themselves. Indeed, some people will opt not to disrupt their immunity to change, choosing instead to continue their fruitless struggle against their competing commitments.
As a manager, you must guide people through this exercise with understanding and sensitivity. If your employees are to engage in honest introspection and candid disclosure, they must understand that their revelations won’t be used against them. The goal of this exploration is solely to help them become more effective, not to find flaws in their work or character. As you support your employees in unearthing and challenging their inner- most assumptions, you may at times feel you’re playing the role of a psychologist. But in a sense, managers are psychologists. After all, helping people overcome their limita- tions to become more successful at work is at the very heart of effective management.
We’ll describe this delicate process in detail, but first let’s look at some examples of competing commitments in action.
Shoveling Sand Against the Tide
Competing commitments cause valued em- ployees to behave in ways that seem inexplica- ble and irremediable, and this is enormously frustrating to managers. Take the case of John, a talented manager at a software company. (Like all examples in this article, John’s experi- ences are real, although we have altered iden- tifying features. In some cases, we’ve con- structed composite examples.) John was a big believer in open communication and valued close working relationships, yet his caustic sense of humor consistently kept colleagues at a distance. And though he wanted to move up in the organization, his personal style was holding him back. Repeatedly, John was coun- seled on his behavior, and he readily agreed that he needed to change the way he inter- acted with others in the organization. But time after time, he reverted to his old patterns. Why, his boss wondered, did John continue to undermine his own advancement?
As it happened, John was a person of color working as part of an otherwise all-white executive team. When he went through an exercise designed to help him unearth his competing commitments, he made a surprising discovery about himself. Underneath it all, John believed that if he became too well integrated with the team, it would threaten his sense of loyalty to his own racial group. Moving too close to the mainstream made him feel very uncomfortable, as if he were becoming “one of them” and betraying his family and friends. So when peo- ple gathered around his ideas and suggestions, he’d tear down their support with sarcasm, inevitably (and effectively) returning himself to the margins, where he was more at ease. In short, while John was genuinely committed to working well with his colleagues, he had an equally powerful competing commitment to keeping his distance.
Consider, too, a manager we’ll call Helen, a rising star at a large manufacturing company. Helen had been assigned responsibility for speeding up production of the company’s most popular product, yet she was spinning her wheels. When her boss, Andrew, realized that an important deadline was only two months away and she hadn’t filed a single progress report, he called her into a meeting to discuss the project. Helen agreed that she was far behind schedule, acknowledging that she had been stalling in pulling together the team. But at the same time she showed a gen- uine commitment to making the project a success. The two developed a detailed plan for changing direction, and Andrew assumed the problem was resolved. But three weeks after the meeting, Helen still hadn’t launched the team.
Why was Helen unable to change her be- havior? After intense self-examination in a workshop with several of her colleagues, she came to an unexpected conclusion: Although she truly wanted the project to succeed, she had an accompanying, unacknowledged commitment to maintaining a subordinate position in relation to Andrew. At a deep level, Helen was concerned that if she suc- ceeded in her new role—one she was excited about and eager to undertake—she would become more a peer than a subordinate. She was uncertain whether Andrew was prepared for the turn their relationship would take. Worse, a promotion would mean that she, not Andrew, would be ultimately ac- countable for the results of her work—and Helen feared she wouldn’t be up to the task.
These stories shed some light on the nature of immunity to change. The inconsistencies between John’s and Helen’s stated goals and their actions reflect neither hypocrisy nor un- spoken reluctance to change but the paralyzing effect of competing commitments. Any manager who seeks to help John communicate more ef- fectively or Helen move her project forward, without understanding that each is also strug- gling unconsciously toward an opposing agenda, is shoveling sand against the tide.
Diagnosing Immunity to Change
Competing commitments aren’t distressing only to the boss; they’re frustrating to employ- ees as well. People with the most sincere inten- tions often unwittingly create for themselves Sisyphean tasks. And they are almost always tremendously relieved when they discover justwhy they feel as if they are rolling a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again. Even though uncovering a competing commitment can open up a host of new concerns, the discovery offers hope for finally accomplishing the primary, stated commitment.
Based on the past 15 years of working with hundreds of managers in a variety of compa- nies, we’ve developed a three-stage process to help organizations figure out what’s getting in the way of change. First, managers guide em- ployees through a set of questions designed to uncover competing commitments. Next, em- ployees examine these commitments to deter- mine the underlying assumptions at their core. And finally, employees start the process of changing their behavior.
We’ll walk through the process fairly quickly below, but it’s important to note that each step will take time. Just uncovering the competing commitment will require at least two or three hours, because people need to reflect on each question and the implications of their answers. The process of challenging competing commit- ments and making real progress toward over- coming immunity to change unfolds over a longer period—weeks or even months. But just
Although competing commitments and big assumptions tend to be deeply personal, groups are just as susceptible as individuals to the dynamics of immunity to change. Face- to-face teams, departments, and even com- panies as a whole can fall prey to inner contradictions that “protect” them from significant changes they may genuinely strive for. The leadership team of a video production company, for instance, enjoyed a highly collaborative, largely flat organiza- tional structure. A year before we met the group, team members had undertaken a planning process that led them to a commit- ment of which they were unanimously in favor: In order to ensure that the company would grow in the way the team wished, each of the principals would take responsibil- ity for aggressively overseeing a distinct market segment.
The members of the leadership team told us they came out of this process with a great deal of momentum. They knew which mar- kets to target, they had formed some con- crete plans for moving forward, and they had clearly assigned accountability for each market. Yet a year later, the group had to admit it had accomplished very little, de- spite the enthusiasm. There were lots of rational explanations: “We were unrealistic; we thought we could do new things and still have time to keep meeting our present obligations.” “We didn’t pursue new clients aggressively enough.” “We tried new things but gave up too quickly if they didn’t immediately pay off.”
Efforts to overcome these barriers—to pur- sue clients more aggressively, for instance— didn’t work because they didn’t get to the cause of the unproductive behavior. But by seeing the team’s explanations as a potential window into the bigger competing commit- ment, we were able to help the group better understand its predicament. We asked, “Can you identify even the vaguest fear or worry about what might happen if you did more ag- gressively pursue the new markets? Or if you reduced some of your present activity on be- half of building the new business?” Before long, a different discourse began to emerge, and the other half of a striking groupwide contradiction came into view: The principals were worried that pursuing the plan would drive them apart functionally and emotionally.
“We now realize we are also committed to preserving the noncompetitive, intellec- tually rewarding, and cocreative spirit of our corporate enterprise,” they concluded. On behalf of this commitment, the team members had to commend themselves on how “noncompetitively” and “cocreatively” they were finding ways to undermine the strategic plans they still believed were the best route to the company’s future success. The team’s big assumptions? “We assumed that pursuing the target-market strategy, with each of us taking aggressive responsi- bility for a given segment, would create the ‘silos’ we have long happily avoided and would leave us more isolated from one another. We also assumed the strategy would make us more competitively disposed toward one another.” Whether or not the assumptions were true, they would have continued to block the group’s efforts until they were brought to light. In fact, as the group came to discover, there were a variety of moves that would allow the lead- ership team to preserve a genuinely collab- orative collegiality while pursuing the new corporate strategy.
Uncovering Your Own Immunity
As you go through this process with your em- ployees, remember that managers are every bit as susceptible to change immunity as employ- ees are, and your competing commitments and big assumptions can have a significant impact on the people around you. Returning once more to Helen’s story: When we went through this exercise with her boss, Andrew, it turned out that he was harboring some contradictions of his own. While he was committed to the suc- cess of his subordinates, Andrew at some level assumed that he alone could meet his high standards, and as a result he was laboring under a competing commitment to maintain absolute control over his projects. He was unintention- ally communicating this lack of confidence to his subordinates—including Helen—in subtle ways. In the end, Andrew’s and Helen’s compet- ing commitments were, without their knowl- edge, mutually reinforcing, keeping Helen dependent on Andrew and allowing Andrew to control her projects.
Helen and Andrew are still working through this process, but they’ve already gained invaluable insight into their behavior and the ways they are impeding their own progress. This may seem like a small step, but bringing these issues to the surface and confronting them head-on is challenging and painful—yet tremendously effective. It al- lows managers to see, at last, what’s really going on when people who are genuinely committed to change nonetheless dig in their heels. It’s not about identifying unpro- ductive behavior and systematically making plans to correct it, as if treating symptoms would cure a disease. It’s not about coaxing or cajoling or even giving poor performance reviews. It’s about understanding the com- plexities of people’s behavior, guiding them through a productive process to bring their competing commitments to the surface, and helping them cope with the inner conflict that is preventing them from achieving their goals.
QUESTION:
What types of "Change Issues" have you noticed in your career ... at your current job or past jobs? Do you see any of these issues arising? Did your leadership go about change the wrong way? Did you see this done the right way? What types of things have you seen done to make change possible or palatable? Do you see any issues in how you adapt to change that either hinders others or enables bad change? Any other thoughts on change? Answer in 2 - 3 paragraphs.