Learning and Resistance

May 22, 2007 - Luc Galoppin

How Driving Lessons and Organizational Change are Related

Our biggest task in an organizational change will be to take people by the hand and eventually to make sure they can help themselves. This is the domain of learning. A useful way to understanding what happens when we go through a change is to look at what happens when we learn something new. Learning always takes place in 4 stages, as shown on the first drawing: Unconscious Incompetence, Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, Unconscious Competence.

Take for example the first time that you drove a car.

  • Your whole life until then you have been a passenger without any driving competence. But you are unaware of it because you never tried it. This is unconscious Incompetence: I can’t, but why should I care?; as they say: Ignorance is bliss.
  • After getting into the driver seat for the first time and trying to start the car and drive, you know enough to realize that you are incompetent at driving a car. You are unable, and your first confrontation with the dashboard, the gearbox, the steering wheel and the pedals made you painfully aware of your incompetence. You are now the second phase of learning: Conscious Incompetence. Your innocent and peaceful worldview falls apart, much like the disappointment that hit you when you found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. This is where most people get in the rollercoaster of change (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).
  • One day, you are ready to do the tests in order to obtain a drivers license. At that point you are most probably in the third learning stage: Conscious Competence. You are skilled at driving the car but it still demands a lot of your attention.
  • Finally, it is only after a long while that you will be able to drive the car as an automatic response, as doing normal checks, turning the keys and driving off. You accomplished the 4th learning phase: Unconscious Competence. The skill has become a habit by now, which requires no extra attention.

Plotting Resistance Against Learning

When we translate this learning cycle to the context of an organization and start to wonder what this means in terms of resistance, we will find that these 4 steps are a reliable indicator to predict when resistance will occur on a larger scale. As shown in the second drawing, people will only start to react to the change from the moment that they become aware of their own incompetence in the face of change.

competence versus consciousness
What’s even more important is that this resistance is actually the learning tension that is necessary to absorb knowledge. The frustration of one’s own incompetence is the best motivation acquire new skills and knowledge.

Therefore, when you are introducing a new initiative and you are at the level of instructing people on new things face to face or in a classroom, look at their resistance from a learning perspective. They are incompetent at that moment, painfully aware of it, mostly in the presence of their colleagues and peers. How would you react? I know I would be grumpy! And what would be the best way to overcome that grumpy-ness? A blaming instructor or a caring one?

If you crush resistance at that vulnerable moment, I guarantee it will come back later in a dirty and unexpected way. On the other hand, if you consider this moment of resistance as a moment of truth, you just found an opportunity to build a network of change agents.

  • Right away I’d like to say thanks, Luc. As a new reader of the blog I really appreciate your effort to elevate the discussion, and not be reluctant to display evidence of reading and some serious thinking about what goes on at work.

    I wanted to make a small comment about your long posts on resistance.

    I doubt I’ve had the “big” project experience that you’ve had, but I’ve been part of several small and medium change efforts. Although I didn’t make use of elaborate diagrams, I’ve used a lot of the same language to talk about resistance, especially the idea that resistance – at least at first – should be seen as information about reality to be interpreted with intelligence and skill, possibly even wisdom.

    For sure, not over-reacting to resistance is crucial to moving forward at all. That’s obviously true. So my modest quibble harkens to Freud saying “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Sometimes resistance is resistance, not done in good faith, not reflecting something worthwhile or interesting. Sometimes it’s simply hostility, negativity, muscle flexing, or garden-variety cynicism. Yes sometimes, maybe, they’re honestly not aware of what they’re doing, but mostly they are – and don’t particularly care.

    I say this from sad experience, and no doubt the specific circumstances matter a ton. These were not high-flying, creative types of workplaces. A lot of it was blue and pink collar, public sector. And, yes indeed, much of it went very well – civilized, cooperative, good-hearted. Some didn’t though, and in no way was it due to not interpreting the resistance creatively. The resistance boiled down to resisting engagement at any level, and having the power and the will to persevere

  • Right away I’d like to say thanks, Luc. As a new reader of the blog I really appreciate your effort to elevate the discussion, and not be reluctant to display evidence of reading and some serious thinking about what goes on at work.

    I wanted to make a small comment about your long posts on resistance.

    I doubt I’ve had the “big” project experience that you’ve had, but I’ve been part of several small and medium change efforts. Although I didn’t make use of elaborate diagrams, I’ve used a lot of the same language to talk about resistance, especially the idea that resistance – at least at first – should be seen as information about reality to be interpreted with intelligence and skill, possibly even wisdom.

    For sure, not over-reacting to resistance is crucial to moving forward at all. That’s obviously true. So my modest quibble harkens to Freud saying “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Sometimes resistance is resistance, not done in good faith, not reflecting something worthwhile or interesting. Sometimes it’s simply hostility, negativity, muscle flexing, or garden-variety cynicism. Yes sometimes, maybe, they’re honestly not aware of what they’re doing, but mostly they are – and don’t particularly care.

    I say this from sad experience, and no doubt the specific circumstances matter a ton. These were not high-flying, creative types of workplaces. A lot of it was blue and pink collar, public sector. And, yes indeed, much of it went very well – civilized, cooperative, good-hearted. Some didn’t though, and in no way was it due to not interpreting the resistance creatively. The resistance boiled down to resisting engagement at any level, and having the power and the will to persevere

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