Fears and Aspirations

It never fails to amaze me to hear how even the most seemingly beneficial and well intended plans in an organisation can be read with mistrust, trepidations and even anger. Take for example, Coaching.

We, in the world of talent development will swear by how impactful a well designed and thought-out organisation-wide coaching initiative can be. We know that it is a win-win proposition for managers, their team members and ultimately the organisation. But hey, wait a minute! Not everyone may see it that way. Rightly or wrongly, some may actually feel that "...this new thing called coaching in my organisation is nothing but a new way to make me work more for less pay"! They may sit around over cups of coffee and justify their 'argument'. In the end, the well intentioned OD team or the HR team will be flabbergasted and just scrap the whole idea in disgust.

Sounds familiar? I bet it does. But, here is the thing : It doesn't have to be that way.

A colleague of mine told me recently that when someone resists change, you can take it that this resistance is not merely in some nebulous mental capacity or at some subjective attitudinal level. Such resistance may actually be physical in the sense that there are physical parts of their brain that just cant assimilate this new information. It is almost like there is a physical clash of some parts of the brain which refuses to work or think in new, un-familiar ways.

So, don't take things for granted. Accept the fact that good intentions are not self explanatory. They still need to be :

A. Communicated,
B. Debated,
C. Deliberated, before being
D. Executed.

The time taken to transit from one stage to the next as I had proposed above, will be determined by how important the new initiative is and how much 'the way we do things here' need to change. The more change is needed, the longer the first 3 stages will take before you can finally execute your plans. Similarly, the more importance is given to the plan by the stake-holders, the longer it will take.

In this respect, it is absolutely exciting days for me now because a distinguished client organisation is taking a very deliberately planned approach to begin stage one of my 4-stage process above. I have faith that with this approach, the plans in place will be well received by all the stake holders.