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Welcome to Episode 345 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. I am back after three weeks out West, helping our daughter and son-in-law with our two and a half year old grandson and our newborn granddaughter. So I have an all new episode today. If you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes. And you can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com and find out about my coaching, speaking engagements, courses, and books that I've written. You can also sign up for my two for Tuesday email newsletter at the website or at the link in the show notes. Finally, if you find my work helpful and you want to support it, you can do that for as little as $5 a month. It helps me to make all of these resources available at no cost.

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Finally, without Without further ado, here is episode 345, How to Reduce Resistance to Change. I often say nobody likes to be told what to do. This is human nature. It's well documented that when you tell someone they have to do something or they must agree with you, they'll just push back harder. This is the essence of a conflict of wills. I was reminded of this when I encountered Kurt Lewin's concept of force field analysis. Lewin was a German-American psychologist who was a pioneer of modern social psychology. He was born in what is now Poland and earned his doctorate in Germany. After emigrating to the United States in 1933, In '80, Lewin became a leading figure in applied psychology, pioneering influential theories such as field theory, group dynamics, and force field analysis. In 1945, he founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT, where he explored how leadership styles and group processes shape individual behavior. His work laid a foundation for organizational development, change management, and behavioral science. Force field analysis is a model for understanding change, especially in organizational and social contexts. Developed in the 1940s, it understands any situation as a dynamic balance between two sets of forces, driving forces that push towards change, and restraining forces that resist it.

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Change occurs when the equilibrium between these forces is disrupted, either by strengthening the drivers or weakening the resistors. Lewin's insight was that these forces are not physical, but psychological, social, or structural influences that shape behavior and decision making. The model is widely used in change management, strategic planning, and problem solving. It offers a framework for identifying what supports or hinders progress, allowing leaders to make informed decisions about how to intervene. For example, in a ministry trying to adopt a new approach to reaching people, driving forces might include passionate and visionary leadership, technologies such as live streaming and social media, and the fear of decline. Restraining forces might be, we've always done it this way attitudes, distrust of new technology, and resource limitations such as the lack of time, volunteers or funding. From my perspective, Lewin's key insight is that removing restraining forces is more effective than emphasizing driving forces and leading effective change. Nobody likes to be told what to do. This doesn't mean that you discourage driving forces. As a leader, your primary role is to say what you believe and where you believe God is leading. But it's important to do this while giving people the choice to follow or not.

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Likewise, utilizing new approaches and technology might be important tools to get where you need to go. However, if you focus on trying to convince others that these things are true and that they must agree, you will get stuck in a conflict of wills. Instead, focusing on the restraining forces is more effective. I'll note that one restraining force is the resistance that comes from discomfort with change. I'll get to how to deal with that in a minute. What I found in working with congregations is that the main way to remove restraining forces is by taking small incremental steps using an approach called design thinking. Let's get to that next. In design thinking, ideas for moving forward are generated by understanding the needs and experiences of those you are trying to reach. This is done through macro tools such as demographic research and direct contact, such as having multiple one-on-one conversations with those you are trying to serve. In this respect, design thinking is akin to community organizing. Both emphasize empathy, collaboration, and iterative problem solving to foster trust, adaptability, and sustainable change. A key concept in design thinking is a minimum viable product or MVP. This is the most basic version of an initiative that provides enough value to test out an approach.

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In working with churches, I found that instead of using the term MVP, calling it an experiment is easier to understand and it still reduces resistance. When church folks don't see something as a big, long-term, resource-sucking initiative, they're less likely to resist. This is especially true when the experiment is not taking anything away, such as the liturgy and music that they love in the Sunday worship service. This approach helps to minimize the restraining forces like lack of resources such as time, money, and mental bandwidth. People aren't asked to commit to a long-term effort, but instead are asked to be open to something small to test out the idea and learn from it. For example, one church I worked with recently felt called to become a bridge between the various cultures in their urban community. There is a mix of African-American, Hispanic, Jamaican, and Jewish residents in the area surrounding the church building. Their MVP or experiment was to use their large church lawn as a gathering place to connect people. Instead of developing an ongoing program, they started with a one-off experiment to test if they were on the right track in terms of bridging between cultures.

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They decided to do a community gathering on a Sunday afternoon that started on the church lawn, continued as a walk through the neighborhood, and culminated back at the church lawn. They used old-fashioned signs and flyers, as well as social media, to publicize the event. The turnout included 23 neighbors and 25 church families. They had guest speakers from the firehouse, police, the local city council office, as well as the district superintendent. More importantly, they asked the neighbors to fill out forms to evaluate the event and suggest new ideas. They've tentatively decided to do something once a quarter. The important thing is they will be able to learn, iterate, and pivot, if necessary, after each time they test out their idea. There are two important elements here. First, because this was an experiment, a one-off event, there was no resistance in the congregation. In fact, the opposite was true. People were excited to try something new. Second, the purpose of the experiment, the MVP, was to find out what building bridges would look like and to try to discern where to go from there. Getting feedback from the neighbors will help them to design their next step this fall.

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Finally, a word about what to do when there is resistance. In A Failure of Nerve, Edwin Friedmann said that you are not leading unless you experience sabotage. Change is fundamentally a part of leadership because leadership involves moving things toward a preferred future, whether that's improving how to do things, who you serve, or where you are going. Change brings discomfort, and the least mature in a relationship system will be less likely to handle that discomfort in healthy ways. That's when sabotage occurs. Friedman's concept of leadership through self-differentiation addresses this. This means being able to articulate your goals and values in a healthy way while staying emotionally connected, especially to the most resistant. You've heard me say it before, but I'll say it again. Non-anxious leaders say what they believe while giving others the freedom to disagree. When you can say, This is where I believe God is leading, you don't have to agree. You provide healthy emotional space for people to decide on their own. The more mature will either agree or not, but they won't be a problem. The less differentiated will be the source of sabotage, and the key is to connect with them while avoiding a conflict of wills.

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Don't try to convince them to go along, but show them you care about them as a person. In many, if not most cases, the discomfort and sabotage have less to do with the change and more to do with something else that's going on in the person's life. This could be something like a death in the family, terminal illness, a change in family status such as a marriage, birth, or divorce, or even retirement. Remember that even so-called positive change is a change, and all change is loss, which involves grief. The key here is to avoid a conflict of wills and stay connected with the person in a way that shows that your relationship with them is more important than the change that is occurring. When you avoid trying to convince them to go along, it creates space to connect in other ways. When somebody is venting about the so-called change, I let them go. I try to listen, maybe even ask a few questions until the anxiety goes down. Then one of my go-to phrases is, enough about this. What else is going on in your life? This gives the other a chance to share what actually is going on with them.

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When you've shown that you care by listening and not arguing or withdrawing, you open up the possibility that they will trust you to share what is actually going on. When they do, you have the opportunity to walk alongside them through a difficult time. I've seen this over and over again. If you, as a leader, can get from being face to face in a conflict of wills to walking side by side, helping somebody get through their challenges, then the person who is initially a resister actually becomes one of the biggest supporters. It's process, not content. Understanding the driving and restraining forces around change will help you focus on reducing the restraining forces and avoid conflict of wills. Using the design thinking approach of a minimum viable product or experiment to see what you can learn and how you can iterate or pivot is less threatening and will help to move you forward in incremental steps. You don't know where it will take you, but you're likely to learn a lot and move towards a better future. That's it for episode 345. Remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com and get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. If you have found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thank you for your help. Until next time. Go be yourself.