8 Strategies to Move Through Group Resistance

My team of 15 and I were planning a public community forum event with 500 invitees. Everything was going well—folks were enthusiastic, committed, and collaborating.

And then it all went sour.

While everyone had been deeply engaged just a week prior, now they were resisting next steps. No one was stepping in to tackle the next action items that would bring the community forum to completion. We had just two weeks until the event day. Our work slowed down dramatically as the grumbling and in-fighting increased. I started getting calls about how other team members weren’t doing their part.

What had gone wrong?

My team was bumping up against some serious resistance. Like individuals, teams can experience group resistance for various reasons. When this happens, team dynamics break down fast.

Why team resistance happens

Teams may encounter resistance when asked to navigate a change or when executing a project together. In my coaching work and leadership experience, there are three main themes that arise when it comes to team resistance:

Group overload
Lack of investment
Personality conflicts

Sometimes more than one factor is at play, and these factors can exacerbate each other. If personality clashes have been brewing, group overwhelm might cause them to surface, for one example. Lack of investment can make overload feel more overwhelming. Let’s explore how each of these issues triggers group resistance.

People are overloaded.

Time pressures, heavy workloads, and unrealistic expectations inevitably lead to burnout. Yet many organizations, including nonprofits, have a culture of overloading employees. 30% of nonprofit employees are burned out, and 20% are at high risk of burnout. They’re often asked to work long hours without adequate pay for their underfunded organizations.

Further, many nonprofit staff, particularly people of color, face the unsustainable call to “convert their pain into progressive work,” writes Tiloma Jayasinghe in Nonprofit Quarterly. Nonprofit employees can get emotionally overloaded, feeling that everything falls on their shoulders as they navigate the personal impacts of racism, sexism and social injustice.

For the same reason, nonprofits are prone to mission creep. In the quest to make broad, sweeping change, the mission often expands incrementally until teams are in over their heads. And people may feel that if they speak up, others will question their dedication. It’s a recipe for both disaster AND resistance to change. This kind of large-scale pressure on your team’s shoulders compared with an already too-full plate can make any new project (even a great one) feel like just another load to carry.

2. The team doesn’t believe in the change—or their ability to achieve it.

Employees could be resisting a plan or transition because they’re going through the first stage of adapting to change. As William Bridges explains, this stage involves letting go of old processes, roles, or strategies. Alternatively, they could view the project as unfeasible or the desired outcomes as overly optimistic.

It may come as a surprise, but people often unintentionally sabotage their own attempts at change. While teams may consciously believe they want a change or new project to happen, they may have “hidden competing commitments” and assumptions, as Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey explain in their immunity to change theory. They may have a commitment to a particular narrative about their own capabilities that limits what they can achieve. And they may worry about what either success or failure will bring.

Similarly, employees may not identify with an initiative because it falls outside of their comfort zone and what they’ve done in the past. Group identity needs to shift to see the project through.

3. Personality conflicts are at play.

People may need to resolve an interpersonal issue that’s preventing collaboration and communication. These kinds of issues-behind-the-issue will always slow down group changes because they cause blocks, resentment, and excess stress in communication.It may also be that two teammates’ approaches may continuously clash, causing them to misread each other’s intentions. One person may have a confrontational style while the other avoids confrontation. Or one person may lean “big picture” while the other stays “in the weeds.” While this kind of diversity is important for a well-rounded team, it can also lead to stalls in progress if the two team members are unable to collaborate without competing.

I’ve seen all of these issues crop up on teams led by my coaching clients. These all-too-common challenges can prevent even the most capable individuals from fully uniting as a team.

What, then, can leaders do about them?

Take action to overcome team resistance

Many of the strategies I’m going to share for overcoming group resistance will help overcome more than one of the challenges we’ve explored above. They’ll help build a resilient, motivated, and collaborative group that effectively launches into action together.

Hold a “listening circle.”

Get to the root of team resistance through an open dialogue. In a listening circle, people share their honest feelings about the issue under discussion. Establish clear ground rules, such as maintaining confidentiality and compassion, to create a sense of psychological safety.

If you are confronting resistance to change, explore this in the listening circle. Ask questions like these:

What is our goal for the project or change we want to implement?
What barriers are preventing us from accomplishing it—including behaviors within our group?
If we stopped doing those behaviors—and did the opposite—what would happen? (What are we afraid will happen?)
What internalized truths have led us to those fears?

The fears you’ve identified point to your competing commitments: the things you fear compromising by making changes. These competing commitments can instill immunity to change, holding groups back from implementing a change or an ambitious project. Addressing these fears head-on will help you move beyond them.

2. Establish strong group norms.

On the most effective teams, all members participate relatively equally, an article in The New York Times asserts. Regardless of personality types or individual competencies, these teams are collectively smarter and more powerful because they share group norms that encourage everyone to have an equal voice. Instilling empathy by helping people to genuinely get to know each other will help overcome personal conflicts and cultivate strong norms.

3. Refocus (and minimize) your strategic priorities.

If your organization or team has experienced mission creep, take a higher-level look at your priorities. Sit down with other leaders and narrow them down. If you have half a dozen or more core priorities, bringing them down to three or four may greatly improve your team’s focus.

4. Evaluate why individuals may feel disengaged or frustrated.

Are some people expected to have infinite energy for solving others’ problems? Do others only get asked to do the work no one else wants? Look at roles people assume that lead to overload and dissatisfaction. Many of us have “human giver syndrome,” as Amelia and Emily Nagoski explain in Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle—particularly in the nonprofit world! Often top performers experience “responsibility creep,” meaning they spend up to 60% of their time doing work that doesn’t leverage their skills or feel rewarding. Identify and confront these patterns to unlock a more motivated, agile team.

5. Rethink expectations to combat overwhelm.

Look at whether employees’ actual job duties match their job descriptions. During one-on-ones, discuss their specific tasks and compare them against agreed-upon duties. Also consider whether they support your refocused strategic priorities.

As part of this effort, ask them to do an exercise called “What my best day at work looks like,” as TLNT suggests. On a worksheet, they’ll define their ideal responsibilities, skills, reflection time, tools, and colleagues they’d collaborate with. They can describe the type of schedule this would all fit into as well. Additionally, they should specify what they’d avoid. Afterward, discuss how they can do more of this meaningful work.

6. Build resilience into your culture.

We accomplish more together when we take time to recharge. The concept of radical rest holds that to combat the systemic injustices we fight in our daily work, we need to claim the time for rest, reflection, and enjoyment of life that we need to thrive. While our economic system trains people to view rest as undermining productivity, claiming space for our own needs actually furthers the causes we fight for. By the same token, ignoring our needs for rest undermines them.

Take a radical approach to rest as an organization by considering making systemic changes. Could you make a guided yoga class or meditation a normal part of your workweek? Moreover, would shifting to a four-day workweek improve quality of life? Would five-hour workdays actually prove more productive than 8+ hour days? One German company found they accomplish just as much in a 25-hour workweek as in a 40-hour week by minimizing distractions.

Just as importantly, reimagine how tools, place, process, and pace can allow you to minimize working hours without undermining your mission. For orgs that have successfully reduced their workweek, these factors all played a key role in the transition, as Cali Williams Yost says. For instance, technologies can speed up certain tasks, and new processes can streamline meetings.

7. Mediate conflict.

If possible, encourage employees to work out conflicts or personality clashes on their own. But if they aren’t acknowledging the issue or taking the initiative to solve it, coach them through the process. Ask them to each envision what the other person wants and what’s motivating their behavior. Then lead them in brainstorming solutions.

8. Expand group identity.

Dig into how the group identifies (perhaps through another listening circle). Ask questions like these to determine the team’s current beliefs and assumptions about itself:

What are you proud of as a team?
What distinguishes you from other teams?
How would you describe yourself to other stakeholders?

Then, tease out how those qualities can play into their work in the current project (or change). Also explore whether any of these beliefs need to be updated, discussing how their capabilities have been expanding. From your vantage point, have you spotted emerging qualities that they don’t yet perceive? Work to clue them in to these evolving strengths, giving them appropriate challenges that stretch their understanding of who they are as a team.

I realized that my team had been dealing with a mix of overload and personality conflicts. However, people truly believed in the project. Therefore, I worked to shuffle some responsibilities by bringing in a volunteer coordinator and several dedicated volunteers. We held a listening circle and realized our personality differences had created some misunderstandings about project duties. We then did a go-around, each saying what we hoped to accomplish with the forum. By the end of the session, we all felt re-energized and ready to dive back in. Everyone rallied together and made the event a great success. And best of all, we wanted to celebrate as a team afterward!

Working through a group or organizational change? Book a call with me for facilitated trainings, coaching, and leadership development.