Behaviors and Feelings: The key to accompany Change to Agile Ways of Working

Photo by Javier Allegue.

Cultural change requires awareness of the problem. If a behavior (something you do as a person, team, or organization) demonstrates change resistance, figure out its real feelings.

As Agile Coaches, we need to help people become aware of the emotions behind the resistance. Is that simple in practice?

Awareness:

So you've got a team of people who are resisting change. If you're like many Agile Coaches, you've tried everything to get them to adopt new behaviors. But nothing seems to work. Trying to make people behave differently is easy on paper, but my experience says that it's the most challenging part of our Agile Coaching journey.

Awareness in Agile Change is the ability for an organization to recognize that a need for change to Agile Ways of Worrking exists and to address it. This requires enlightened Servant Leadership. And, as a Servant Leader, you help people to understand if they are walking on Active or Passive Change:

• Active Change Resistance: This is when someone resists a plan or idea because of how they feel about it, so you need to help them become aware of their feelings. Act like a Coach, being empathetic and looking to grow the Agile Coachee at his agenda, but also acting as a Mentor if that plan is not clear or needs some help.
• Passive Change Resistance: This is when people don't understand why they are doing something and go along because it's a corporate mandate. In this case, it doesn't matter how they feel about the plan or idea; they will go along with it anyway. But with terrible long results. Act here as a facilitator of complex conversations, helping people converge on action plans with neutrality. Or as a Trainer, allowing them to have tools, frameworks, ways of working on surfing the Agile Change Wave better.

Behaviors & Change Resistance

As Agile Coaches, we help people become aware of the emotions behind the resistance. We need to help them explore their feelings and deal with the underlying issues. Otherwise, they will keep doing it their way, creating the same situation over and over again.

Fear is an emotion we all experience. The fear of the unknown is so powerful that it can paralyze us into inaction and make change seem impossible. As Agile Coaches, our job is to help people work through the fears they may have and help them embrace the uncertainty that comes with change.

There are two typical behaviors in change resistance by individuals, teams, and organizations.

• First level — People that act uncomfortable when talking about change: Feeling awkward or uncomfortable means your brain has noticed something different and doesn't quite know how to deal with it yet because it's not used to such a stimulus, and it's completely normal. Here we don't need judgments or assumptions. Active listening is your best friend.
• Second level — People that act angry when talking about change: When someone gets upset when talking about what they don't like, the underlying emotion is usually fear. Before working on a solution, ask yourself why this person might be afraid of change in this situation. Also, don't assume or make judgments: If you know what's behind the fear, you might be able to calm someone down enough to let them talk rationally about the problem.

We will need to use your competencies as an agile coach in both levels, working as a Coach, Mentor, Facilitator, or Trainer. To effectively accompany change, we need to understand the feelings behind the resistance.

We can do this by using a simple emotional awareness exercise called the FEEL method. When your Agile Coachees are feeling anxious about your change project, take a moment to use this four-step process with they:

F: Identify the feeling(s) they're experiencing.

E: Examine the event that triggered those feelings.

E: Evaluate whether or not their reaction is appropriate given the circumstances.

L: Label and communicate their feelings constructively.

Now what?

If you are an Agile Coach, don't forget to remember the four steps to accompany Agile Change: Understand, Appreciate, Accept and Take action.

The first step is to understand with our Agile Coachees what we're trying to change and why we need it in the first place. This is important because you need to be sure your initiative will bring value to your organization or team. Appreciate the journey with a positive outlook. If there's nothing new, there's still something valuable to learn from the people or even the mistakes. Accepting our current situation can lead to better results in the future, but also is a powerful catalyst to bring the following steps to the table:

Accompany Agile Change means Improve Everything with empathy.