Leading and Managing Change: Strategies for Overcoming Resistance

This essay explores effective leadership and change management strategies within organizations. It discusses various leadership styles, including emergent and authentic leadership, and examines the reasons behind failed leadership episodes. The essay also addresses resistance to change, its benefits, and strategies to reduce it, emphasizing the importance of communication, trust, and employee involvement. It highlights Ricardo Semler's democratic approach to leadership and concludes that a good leader should guide, motivate, and inspire employees to make better business decisions, improve workplace productivity, and foster cultural diversity.

Running head: LEADING AND MANAGING CHANGE
Leading and Managing Change
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion on effective leadership.............................................................................................2
Major reasons behind failed leadership episodes.......................................................................3
Resistance to change..................................................................................................................4
Authentic leadership...................................................................................................................4
Semler’s approach to leading organisations...............................................................................5
Negative reaction to business change........................................................................................5
Resistance to change benefits.....................................................................................................6
Reduce extent of resistance to change.......................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Grint et al. (2016) stated that the purpose of a leader is to align with the personal
values, business success and achieve it with attaining the organizational goals. The sole aim
of leadership is promotion of new directions in business. Lewin (2016) argued that a good
leader can balance among business foresight as well as business performance. They have
vision, focus along with integrity to organize besides catalyse collaboration among group of
people.
Discussion on effective leadership
Among all the types of leadership, emergent leadership is effective as this type of
leadership can gather respect among the employees those know that the leader can show
capability to work. The group member is not being appointed as well as elected to role of
leadership. There is development of leadership over time as result of interaction with group
members (Hoch and Dulebohn 2017). Examples of emergent leader are Mark Zuckerberg and
Bill gates.
Figure 1: Mark Zuckerberg- Emergent leader

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Figure 2: Bill Gates- Emergent leader
Some of the qualities of emergent leader are that they have ability to collaborate with
others, self-assured confidence, consistent, ability for proper communication and self-
improvement.
Major reasons behind failed leadership episodes
The main causes of leadership failure are not able to organize the project work,
unwillingness to do what is required for the project and fear of competition. Due to lack of
imagination, the leader cannot meet with business requirements and not create plans for
guiding the followers (Handelman and Chowdhury 2017). The leaders those are not loyal to
trust of employees cannot maintain long relationship with their employers. Disloyalty brings
failed leadership episodes.
A new leadership should get success in the business if they should be confident on
what they are doing. They are required to build their own strengths and inspire others.
Communication is the only medium helps new appointed leader to interact with outside
person and gain confidence.

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Resistance to change
The staffs in the public services supported new thinking as well as resistance to
change as it causes to deploy business strategy to get new ideas implemented. When the
employees are pushing back against project changes, then it justifies required changes,
prioritizes and strategizes supporting plans (Grint et al. 2016). The resistance to change also
involves employees to gather their feedback on business changes.
It is difficult to introduce culture that was supportive of innovation as it requires better
team work as well as team bonding (Shimoni 2017). There is also required to have better
workplace engagement as well as interaction with the employees so that it increased
employee retention.
Authentic leadership
Sendjaya et al. (2016) stated that an authentic leadership is such a style in which the
leaders are self-aware, transparent as well as genuine. They can inspire loyalty in addition to
trust in the employees. The authentic leaders are self-aware, develop their own support team,
understand the personal values and maintain balance among the employees. This type of
leadership is different from other leadership style as it is focused on objectives as well as
inner behavior of person (Lewin 2016). The leader can maintain trust as well as unity among
persons. The focus of this leader is empowering and guiding the employees in honest way.
The organization can develop authentic leader by focusing on following areas:
 Becoming self-aware
 Understanding personal values and passions
 Motivating the employees
 Finding and developing support team
 Inspiring and empowering other

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Semler’s approach to leading organisations
Ricardo Semler followed democratic style of leadership in the business organization. I
agreed with Semler’s approach to lead the organization. It helps to welcome the team’s input,
decision making as well as enables discussion in group. It helps others and gets innovative
ideas towards the business. His approach helps other and encourages the team members to
work easily and carry out task to finish it on time. The workers can decide about their own
working time and environment (Lewin 2016). The managers can run their own units with
freedom from top management.
The senior managers are preferred to lead and run the organization using command
and control leadership style as it uses standards as well as output statistics for regulating the
business organization (Hoch and Dulebohn 2017). It is authoritative in nature and promotes
resistance to change. It lessens chances to create change process which will lead to business
success.
Negative reaction to business change
The business changes are provided negative reaction on the employees due to loss of
benefits, job loss, relocate to other city, salary cut and downgrading in the position of job.
The employees are concerned about their job security (Barak 2018). Frustration is one of the
negative reaction output that the employees question the leader of the company about the
changes.
The project leader should require to build a proper structure of the project team
members to handle and manage business changes. The team should know about their roles
and responsibilities with proper decision making skills. The project leader should
communicate the business changes with the team members to take proper change

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management initiatives (Grama and Todericiu 2016). Change management plan is a strategy
used to minimize the extent of sceptism, lack of enthusiasm and resistance.
Resistance to change benefits
The resistance to change is helpful for the business when it will help the project leader
to prevent from bad ideas from implemented in the business organization.
The managers should take proper steps to bring about changes while limit damaging
resistance are:
i. Identifying root causes of the resistance to change
ii. Involvement of the executive leadership (Lewin 2016).
iii. Communicate with the team members and employees
iv. Leveraging usage of right technology
v. Cultivating string culture and fostering deep connections between the employees
Reduce extent of resistance to change
The employees are resist to changes when old system becomes expensive than new
process. They are expected that new policy should produce more profits and benefits to them.
The other causes of resist to change are bad execution as well as management change.
Communication is only way to reduce resist to change in the workplace. It solves
business and employee’s problems (Grint et al. 2016). Trust and loyalty should remain in the
employees on the project leader so that it becomes easier to make changes in workplace.
Conclusion
It is concluded that a good leader should guide, motivate as well as inspire the
employees to take better business related decisions. The project leader should get success in

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the business by improving the workplace productivity, increasing emotional intelligence,
growth in the team and increasing cultural diversity in workplace.

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References
Barak, M., 2018. Are digital natives open to change? Examining flexible thinking and
resistance to change. Computers & Education, 121, pp.115-123.
Grama, B. and Todericiu, R., 2016. Change, resistance to change and organizational
cynicism. Studies in Business and Economics, 11(3), pp.47-54.
Grint, K., Jones, O.S., Holt, C. and Storey, J., 2016. What is leadership. The Routledge
Companion to Leadership, p.3.
Handelman, S. and Chowdhury, J., 2017. The limits of political-elite diplomacy: leaders,
people and social conflicts. Israel Affairs, 23(3), pp.468-495.
Hoch, J.E. and Dulebohn, J.H., 2017. Team personality composition, emergent leadership and
shared leadership in virtual teams: A theoretical framework. Human Resource Management
Review, 27(4), pp.678-693.
Lewin, K., 2016. Most Effective Leadership & Management Styles Approaches.
Sendjaya, S., Pekerti, A., Härtel, C., Hirst, G. and Butarbutar, I., 2016. Are authentic leaders
always moral? The role of Machiavellianism in the relationship between authentic leadership
and morality. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(1), pp.125-139.
Shimoni, B., 2017. What is resistance to change? A habitus-oriented approach. Academy of
Management Perspectives, 31(4), pp.257-270.