What My Son’s “Swearing” Taught Me About Resistance to Change

Dr. Simone Ahuja shares insights into how to uncover the functional, emotional, and social needs of your organization so you can disrupt resistance, increase engagement, and keep innovating.

Pushing and pushing creates resistance. We know it doesn’t work. (Nothing good happens when employers force people to do things they don’t want to do!)

But resistance does give you important information. It’s a clear indicator that there’s an underlying need you must meet if you want your innovation to move forward.

I learned this “the hard way” while homeschooling my son during lockdown. He consistently refused to practice writing - no matter what I said or did. And when I pushed him harder, he’d get really angry and have some pretty big feelings. I had no idea why or what to do. Unsurprisingly, pushing didn’t help - and he still wouldn't write.

Then one day he asked me how to spell some, shall we say, unsavory words.

So I answered him. (I was tired.)

Within minutes, the house was covered in handwritten signs with “ass” and “butt” scrawled all over them (he’s five 😂).

It made me think about innovation and how we solve the right problems by uncovering user needs: I needed my kid to write so I felt like a good parent. He needed to have fun, be entertained, and get a rise out of his parents.

Totally different – but not mutually exclusive! – needs.

And once he achieved his need (fun), the desired outcome (writing) was met.

Instead of figuring out my son’s underlying need, I was subconsciously judging his resistance (and myself for my apparent inability to be an amazing homeschooler) and pushing him.

I shouldn’t have assumed he was “just being difficult.”

Resistance comes up for a reason. It’s our job as leaders (and parents) to uncover the reason—and decide if we want to work with it.

That’s where innovation comes in.

When you’re thinking about solving problems for your customer, you have to first uncover their needs; functional needs (what they want to “do”), emotional needs (how they want to feel), and social needs (how they want to be perceived) so that you can create brilliant solutions.

Here’s an example: ask most people why they need a car and they’ll say, “to get from A to B” (functional need). Underneath that you might learn that they buy a specific brand of car because they need to feel safe driving their kids in it (emotional need), and because they need to signal their social status to others (social need).

Similarly, when you’re meeting resistance on your team, you have to uncover their functional, emotional need, social needs to disrupt resistance and keep innovating.

So ask yourself: What does your team care about? What makes their eyes light up? What makes them talk quickly and gesticulate – what ignites their passion?

When you tap into that and connect their work to things that matter to them, you’re meeting their underlying needs. They’ll feel more included and be more engaged, and *poof* goes resistance.

So, how will you disrupt resistance in your organization?