Ever find yourself squared off at work with someone over what you would be considered to be trivial? They do not want to change change “how we have always done things” even if that means not letting go of a coffee maker. The root of this is their emotional attachment to an idea or process. Here is a new approach for how to change an employee’s mind instead of trying to present facts and logic.
It’s likely that you have discovered by now that humans are emotional creatures. We make decisions based on emotions: what we purchase, how we vote, who we have in our social group.
Our beliefs and opinions typically have some fact and logic rooted in there, but there is always an element of emotion too. We form emotional attachments to the way we are already doing things in the office. Another fun human thing? We don’t like to be wrong either!
Combine the desire to be correct, with attaching emotions to the ways things currently are at work, it leads to us wanting to apply logic to explain the way things are. My least favorite phrase in change management is, “this is how we have always done things”. If you dig deeper, there is no solid logic as to why things are done that way, there is an emotional one.
Enter – confirmation bias. We want to support our existing beliefs with more information that supports what we already believe. One of our favorite tricks is to give more weight to evidence that confirms their beliefs and undervalues evidence that could disprove it.
Read more about different decision making mistakes we can make as leaders here – confirmation bias is only one trap you can fall in to!
We have all tried the approach of trying to change an employee’s mind by just providing them with additional information or facts. That will certainly help, but it may not get everyone on board. Remember, we are emotionally attached, so if pushed too far – we will push back.
Here’s a different approach for how to change employee’s mind
Instead, Jonah Berger, a professor from Wharton University suggests to approach the emotional barrier with respect. Seek to understand what the emotional barrier is, rather than push information at it.
Some of the barriers that you may encounter are:
- Reactance: the tendency for people to get defensive and push back with new ideas.
- Endowment: people become attached to what they are already doing due to the amount of time or money they have already ‘sunk’ in to the practice or belief
- Distance: if people have narrow belief frameworks, they have difficulty relating other perspectives or ideas because they’re too much of a “leap”
- Uncertainty: new things or ideas often feel too risky or novel
- Corroborating evidence: when people simply demand more and more information or proof to change.
If you can mitigate these barriers, you can find success in changing an employee’s mind. To do this, you need to figure out which one of these barriers is causing the push back or resistance to change.
Here are five new approaches to work with the barriers, instead of trying to break them down:
Find the gaps
Instead of pushing or trying to persuade someone, point out any gaps between their attitudes and their actions. By pointing out the contradiction, you can get them to do the heavy lifting and persuade themselves.
For instance: if someone is resistant to ensuring they arrive at the office on time, ask them what time they expect others to show up for their meetings. Ask them why that same concern for their own time isn’t present with their colleagues when they arrive late?
Provide more than one choice… but they all lead to what you want
Rather than unilaterally deciding on a single solution, give people the freedom and autonomy to choose from a few options. Ensure that you allow for solutions that are approved by you, but encourage suggestions on how to add or expand on the ideas. Employees feel like they have some control, which reduces their gut resistance which in turn helps them persuade themselves.
Find the people’s leader
Yes, you are the leader in the office – but you may not be the only person people take direction from. If you can find the person, or people, who are the most influential, you can save yourself the effort of convincing each individual person, and putting your effort in to reducing their barriers instead. If they are onboard, others will follow.
Time is money
We have all been lead to believe that if we try hard enough at something, it will be a success. We can make it work. Or, we have spent a lot of money on this piece of equipment, we will have to make it work.
The problem with this is that we waste a lot of time “making something work” where there are more efficient ways of doing things. Just because you spent a lot of money or time going in the wrong direction, doesn’t mean you need to keep heading there. Instead, it was a learning experience.
reduce perceived risks
If employees feel like a new idea is too risky, use your personal experience for an idea to be more relatable or another best practice to show that an idea is less extreme than they think.
A common request that I hear from my team is, “what other companies are trying this”? Well, that’s not always an easy answer because often businesses keep their cards close to their chest. I always try to leverage my peer group from across many businesses for a bit of insight.
When it comes to how to change an employee’s mind, you need to first work on revealing what the barrier to change may be. If you don’t know what you are up against, you cannot find your tailored approach to eliminating the barrier, rather than spending all of your effort trying to break it down with limited success. With a bit of investigating, you can persuade an employee to change their mindset.