Snakes, Haters, and Derailers: How to Spot Resistance in Your Senior Leadership Team

Can you spot resistance in your senior leadership team?

A lot of transformation projects anticipate resistance at the frontline employee level, where change is felt the most. Strategies are devised to identify and mitigate that form of opposition to ensure transformations flow smoothly and bring as much value as possible to an organization.

However, what if resistance started much sooner and much higher in your organization?

The C-Suite often assumes the next layer down in senior leadership is fully invested in transformation. In fact, it has been my experience that this is where the most devastating type of resistance manifests.

A lack of alignment between the C-Suite (the architects of transformation) and senior leadership teams (the agents of transformation) can have devastating effects on a change initiative. Left unchecked, this often-ignored source of dissidence can cause an entire organization to lose faith in a transformation, leading to an enormous waste of time, money, and opportunity.

Who are these senior leader dissidents, and what drives them to try to derail transformations?

The dissidents in your neighborhood (leadership team)

Resistance inside senior leadership teams is arguably the number one reason that transformation initiatives fail. You need to know how to recognize the different kinds of resistance and devise strategies to either get the dissidents on board or move them out:

• The Snakes: These leaders may seem supportive at first, but away from meetings, they work diligently to undermine a project. The snakes try to find every possible downside to a transformation and then amplify those problems to people throughout the organization. The snakes thrive on the thrill of seeing something fail.
• The Change Haters: Some senior leaders view every transformation as a threat to their existence. They ignore the bigger picture, focusing solely on how the transformation will impact them personally. These leaders are successful under existing conditions and don’t see the need for change.
• The Hyperactive Brainstormers: These are the leaders who have lots of ideas for change but become disenchanted, even hostile, when their ideas aren’t included in the final initiative. Feeling scorned, the brainstormers spend all their time complaining about how nobody listens to them and disparaging the ideas of others.
• The Random Derailers: In every leadership team, you have individuals who can only see the downside of every transformation. In meetings, they establish themselves as endless sources of problems while rarely, if ever, proposing solutions. Their general negativity can be contagious and shake the confidence of early adopters.
• The Silent Dissidents: These are the leaders who never offer insights or ideas of any kind. They stay quiet during meetings even when they have concerns. Although they may not actively try to undermine a transformation, they certainly do as little as possible to support change. They serve as indifferent passengers on the path to transformation, unconcerned about whether an initiative succeeds or fails.

Hacks for mitigating resistance

Once you accept that dissidents are part of every team, recognizing them isn’t a huge challenge. Defining a strategy to limit or eliminate their impact on the organization’s efforts at transformation is a different story.

You can’t start removing the dissidents from your senior leadership ranks. These are the people who get face time with frontline workers. Culling a group of leaders can, in and of itself, shake support for a transformation. This is a challenge that requires a more nuanced approach:

• Identify the source of the resistance. Change is hard, and it’s unreasonable to assume that every leader is going to accept the need or method of change. Leaders need to be curious about the dynamics of their team. Watch senior leaders closely to identify individuals who are resisting. Then, reach out to them and see if there are ways to assuage their concerns. Sometimes, the simple act of letting a leader know that you know they’re resisting can produce positive results.
• Prepare to have hard conversations and make hard decisions. In the end, a sympathetic ear may not be enough to dial down resistance. In instances where senior leaders simply can’t wrap their heads around the need for change, be prepared to make your expectations crystal clear. In rare instances, chronic resistance may require a decision to relocate a leader away from the transformation.

• Troubleshoot the messaging and methodology of the transformation. Sometimes, resistance is a symptom of the fear of change or of a loss of status or autonomy. In other instances, it can be a warning that the C-Suite has ignored obvious blind spots in the transformation or that you’ve done a bad job at explaining the need for change. Resistance creates an opportunity to self-diagnose the transformation to ensure that it’s properly designed and effectively communicated.
• Look for clues. Leaders are the shadow of the organization. Watch what leaders say or do to find the clue to what’s going on in your team.

Conclusion

Better change outcomes are the result of limiting dangerous assumptions.

First, don’t assume that your senior-most leaders are champions of change. It’s not unusual for the seeds of change resistance to be sown at the top of the house, allowing them to germinate and spread throughout an organization. When it’s all said and done, your senior leaders represent just one of the levels of your organization, meaning they need just as much support in accepting change as anyone else.

How can you do that? Start by being clear about the behaviors you want to see from your senior leaders. Make sure they understand why change is on the table and the stakes for not doing their part to support the program.

However, that doesn’t mean you should tune out objections or concerns. There are times when senior leaders—the people you rely on most for expertise and technical knowledge—may be able to spot flaws in your change strategy. Consider their input carefully before dismissing it as an unwillingness to change.

Change isn’t about dictating a new reality. Ultimately, it’s a creative and collaborative process. Put it into that context, and you’ll see considerably less resistance.