PFI #02: You Can't Make Me!’ - Recognizing, Understanding, and Responding to Resistance

Resistance to change comes up in our work often. Resistance makes us feel anxious, or maybe even incompetent, as professionals, impacts client participation, and is predictive of poor outcomes in the collaborative process. Often, resistance is viewed as a client behaving defiantly. A more constructive viewpoint is that resistance is an indication that the client may not be ready to change. Resistance is a signal to the professional team that you may need to change direction or listen more carefully. This requires you to understand your client's perspective and proceed from there. Recognizing resistant behavior and underlying motivations helps to identify best approaches to responding to unwilling clients. Resistance actually offers an opportunity to respond in a new, perhaps surprising, way and to take advantage of the situation without being confrontational. Thus, effectively creating cooperation between professionals and clients and eliciting change by strengthening desires, abilities, and reasons for change.