Evan Renaerts

Make Me

November 18, 2007

A beautiful quiet autumn morning, soft cloud giving way to a washed blue sky, no breeze; everything is still, as if taking an in-breath.

“You can’t make anyone do anything they don’t already want to do,” a friend and colleague says of his experience in working with people, groups and organizations. The topic comes up because clients often tell us they want to get their people talking to each other, they want them to be more accountable or to communicate better or to collaborate or to do something that they aren’t already doing. And they want “you” the consultant to make it happen.

So, given that we can’t make people do anything in any kind of free or even quasi-democratic circumstances, what “can” we do? We can invite people: we can invite them to look at their reality as it currently exists and to ask questions about how well it works; how happy they are, and how satisfied they are. We can invite people to consider other perspectives and other visions and with enough time we can even invite them to try on different behaviours.

The thing about this approach (like all good work) is that it must be sincere and free of hidden agendas. We cannot issue an invitation if what is hiding behind it is threats and ultimatums – “make these changes or find another place to work.” People always know when the invitation is genuine.

A key challenge in bringing people to a place where they are even willing to consider new ways of operating is to take them outside their “normal” ways of seeing and thinking and behaving – out beyond the default settings. Most of us are not even conscious of our daily behaviours as choices; we just see them as “the way things are.”

It isn’t until we are in a strange country or city or a strange job or some other unusual circumstance that we even realize we have normal way of behaving. Not easily being able to behave in our usual way is what finally makes us aware of it.

Many leaders in organizational change will tell you that organizational change doesn’t actually work. People have an experience and may even shift perspectives, but without ongoing support to continue their inquiry they tend to revert to the old and comfortable ways of thinking and behaving.

That old school yard dare, “try and make me,” still holds good today. Even if you have the ability to force someone to behave as you wish it doesn’t mean you have won them over and even when it appears that they are doing what you want, chances are they are doing it in a way that delivers as little as possible.
The most compelling source for real change is the desire that arises from within the individual. The best that organizations can do is to invite individuals to look at how things are and to consider how they might be. The consultant’s role is to make that inquiry as intriguing and as irresistible as possible.

When change makes sense to people, and they can see that there is a support system in place to see them through their transitions, they will generally move to embrace the new ideas and new behaviours. This process happens quickest when the people themselves identify why the change makes sense and how they are going to implement it.

One other factor that is too often overlooked – in order to guide anyone anywhere you must first have walked that ground yourself.

Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com

posted by Evan Renaerts at 13:10