Gerry Starnes wrote about how resistance to change may be appropriate in
some situations:
"In some situations, this may be appropriate: the change is required or
inevitable, and I agree that change is the natural state. However, it may
also be true that the nature of the change may be wrong or at least not in
the best long-term interest of the org."
At a meeting of MIT's Organizational Learning Center members, a group from
EDS talked about their experience building community in their organization
and having to deal with resistance. If I recall correctly, they came to
see it as a dilemma they must hold: If they want to enact their stated
values to be an open community and treat each individual with respect,
then this must apply to the resistor as well. Furthermore, much as they
might like for the problem-maker to just go away, the resistor actually
must be embraced as someone who is pointing out a problem that must be
resolved or turned into an opportunity.
It sounded like the EDS group had done a lot of thinking and dialogue
about dealing with resistors and with people who wanted to drop
out--leaving them wondering what that said about their capacity to build
community?
In the Learning Community I lead, we have encountered problems with people
"losing their dialogical perspective" so to speak--that is, being
argumentative and resistant. The process Fleetman described
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Host's Note: Diane's msg stopped there in mid sentence. I'll let her
continue in a followup message if she has more to add, but I thought the
part we had was very much worth posting.
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From: Diane Weston <Dmweston@aol.com>