Assignment: Implementing Change Despite Resistance

Assignment: Implementing Change Despite Resistance

Change can be difficult to implement. Now that you are almost finished with your change project, if you were to implement your project in your clinical practice, what type of resistance do you expect from staff? List at least three ways that you can lessen the resistance you may encounter to help ensure the success of your project.

American Nurses Association. (2015). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (3rd ed.). Silver Spring, MD: Author.

• Read Professional Nursing’s Scope and Standards of Practice-The Function off Competencies in Standards, Healthy Work Environments for Nursing Practice-Key Influences on the Quality and Environment of Nursing Practice, pp. 1–6, 21–31

Optional Websites

• Review the American Nurses Association (ANA) website on workplace safety (http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/WorkplaceSafety/Healthy-Work-Environment (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.) (www.nursingworld.org (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.).
• Examine the principal standard related to communication that is equitable, understandable, and respectful quality care for services to diverse populations at http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/Reports/2016/integrating-health-literacy-cultural-competence-language-access-services.aspx. (Links to an external site.)

6 Strategies for overcoming resistance to change
When considering the strategies and techniques for reducing resistance to change, there are six broad areas in which organizations must operate.

1. Communication and education
Common issues that cause resistance to change include fear of the unknown and a misunderstanding of why change is needed.

People will only accept change if they believe the risk of doing nothing is higher than the risk of changing direction. Similarly, if people don’t understand why change is needed, they will question why you are changing something that they believe works well.

Communication and education about the change should begin before it is initiated. This will help your people to rationalize the change, and ensure that individuals and teams receive adequate information to make positive judgements.

2. Participation
A lack of belief that the organization can make effective change leads to resistance to change. Likewise, when people aren’t consulted and change is forced upon them, there is likely to be more resistance. This is especially the case if people believe their jobs will be at risk.

It is critical that the stakeholders and those implementing change are involved in its design. A collaborative effort will engage people in the change, and in the identification of potential issues and solutions. People are far less likely to resist change that they have helped to create.

Many studies have shown that participation has wide-ranging positive effects during periods of organizational change. For example, a 2011 study (Change Recipients’ Reactions to Organizational Change: a 60-Year Review of Quantitative Studies) found that participation reduces resistance to change and leads to positive effects such as change readiness and acceptance, a sense of competence, a sense of control and better trust. Participation will reduce the stress that snaps your people’s desire to change.

Another participative strategy is to employ socialization, putting people before practice and ensuring that shared values crush resistance to change.

3. Support
Organizational transformation is usually accompanied by a change to routines, taking people out of (long-established) comfort zones.

This may also lead to exhaustion, especially if the organization is subject to frequent change or business evolution.

Even if people appear to be accepting of change, it may be that they are simply resigned to it. They must be given the support needed to enable new skills to be developed and ensure that change burnout does not become a reality.

Support requires managers to develop their emotional intelligence and connect with their people. Offering adequate support is also time-consuming, requiring trained managers and leaders to employ coaching tactics to be most effective when managing change in an organization.

4. Agreement
Resistance to change is also precipitated when people feel they will be negatively affected by its consequences. This may be because of a perception that their earnings or career potential will be harmed or that the rewards of the change are not worth the effort required.

To combat this type of resistance to change, an organization may consider offering incentives. Such incentives may include extra pay, improved benefits, or offering structured career plans. This strategy requires negotiation to reach agreement. The drawback is that such agreements can be expensive and do not guarantee engagement with change.

5. Co-opting
People become connected to the way that things have always been done. There are often strong emotional connections to processes and procedures that employees may have been at least partly responsible for developing. To bond with the old may require a Herculean effort.

One strategy is to co-opt those who may be most resistant to change into central roles in the implementation of change initiatives. This can gain the support of would-be resistors relatively cheaply, though it does come with a caveat – placing people who are deemed to be resistant to change in such positions could give them a position from which to influence greater resistance across a wider audience.

6. Coercion
Sometimes it is necessary to coerce people into accepting change. This is often the case where people feel they cannot learn the new skills needed or if they feel that change is a temporary fad that will be reversed.

Techniques for implementing change include wielding the threat of disciplinary action while insisting that people fall into line with required behaviors and actions. If speed of change is critical, coercion may be the only viable option.

A major drawback of this strategy is that it does not remove resistance to change, which may continue to bubble under the surface and result in a destructive atmosphere at a later date (particularly if the proposed transformation does not produce at least the outcomes promoted by the initiator of change).

7 Tactics to overcome resistance to change
Having identified the causes (or potential causes) of resistance to change in your workplace and the strategic approaches that your organization should take to overcome this resistance, the next step is to consider specific tactics and techniques for reducing resistance to change that your organization and its managers can utilize to eventually eliminate that resistance.

Leadership is an organizational imperative when managing change, and leaders who inspire a cultural shift in their staff have the greatest success in managing resistance to change in an organization.

In a 2013 PwC survey, nearly two-thirds of staff surveyed felt that a top leader is in charge of change management, and almost half felt that top leaders should be in charge of cultural change.

The good news here is that the same number of people felt that cultural change is also their responsibility.

The bad news is that only 14% saw any responsibility for change management falling on their shoulders. The harsh reality is that effective change is determined by having in place a corporate culture conducive to continual transformation. It is here that inspirational leadership in flat hierarchical structures is, perhaps, at its most potent.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

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Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

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Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• The is a great resource