5. Negotiated Behaviour Change: Guidance on Overcoming Resistance to Change

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Planning Phase, Implementation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Motivation

Stages of Behaviour Change:
Pre-contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage

Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training

Specific Topics: Outreach and Communications; Community Change Agents

How community facilitators respond to community members’ resistance to change is a big determining factor in the outcome of their interactions with them, and the ability to help community members move toward behaviour change^[113]. This resource outlines guidance for overcoming resistance to change you may encounter amongst community members.

What is Resistance?

Resistance is what happens when we expect or push for change when community members are not ready for that change. It often reflects conscious or unconscious defences against change. While the reasons community members are not ready to change in the way we desire may not be clear to us or to community members, they exist and ignoring them gets us nowhere.

Signs of resistance may include:

• Community members may interrupt you.
• Community members may seem distracted (looking at watch, phone, etc.).
• Community members may get defensive.

Types of Resistance

The manifestations of resistance to change typically fall into two categories: sustain talk (a manifestation of ambivalence) and discord, and different strategies may need to be adopted depending on which of these manifestations you encounter.  These two types of resistance and tips for dealing with are discussed below:

1. DISCORD: Discord refers to statements from community members about the intervention process or relationship to the community facilitator, particularly the direction in which community members perceive things are going ^[57]. This often feels like resistance but actually discord which is related to a lack of trust/respect/empathy/power sharing in the relationship, which can result in the break down in the relationship and sense of partnership. When people don’t believe we really value their opinions or experiences, and/or if they feel you are trying to tell them or force them to change or acting like an expert without understanding their life, they will either resist you, resent you, or both. As a result, they will become more motivated to defend their position. Examples of comments indicating there is discord: “You don’t understand.”, “You can’t help me.”
   
2. SUSTAIN TALK: Sustain talk represents the other side of a person's ambivalence about changing. It can be an expression of a community member’s desire for the way things are, feeling unable to change, having reasons for keeping things the same or needing to keep things the way they are.
   

TIPS FOR DEALING WITH DISCORD

• Seek to first understand rather than seek to be understood. To effectively influence others you interact with, they first need to feel that you understand them. Use active listening skills involving open questions, reflections, affirmations, and summaries to demonstrate your inquisitiveness, empathy, and help others feel understood and build rapport. Refer to the facilitator resource on Essential Communication Skills for Facilitating Behaviour Change for additional guidance on empathy and active listening.
• Remember that every behaviour has a positive intention, it may not just be positive from your perspective.  Thus, it is important to believe the best in others and ensure that you have a positive intention.
• Avoid Arguments and Pushing Back
  • Respect the resistance and roll with it, don’t confront it directly and avoid arguing for change as this usually causes community members to keep voicing sustain talk (the reasons not to change). ^[113], and can undermine interpersonal communication and relationships (e.g. refer to facilitator resource Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change for information on ego states and transactional analysis).
• Avoid the righting reflex:
  • Resist the urge to provide unsolicited advice or guidance and telling people what to do to improve their situation as this often times result in discord. Acknowledge that the righting reflex is present and ask yourself to override it.
  • Talk less and listen more using active listening skills (refer to facilitator resource: Essential Communication Skills for Facilitating Behaviour Change for additional guidance).
  • If someone hasn’t volunteered to be part of a conversation about change or doesn’t want to change or aren’t open to making suggestions, or if you see an immediate welfare issue you feel you need to mention you can still share your concerns in a spirit of partnership using the Ask-Offer-Ask model of providing feedback (refer to Guidance on Providing Advice and Feedback:  Ask-Offer-Ask within the facilitator resource 4. Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change). For example: Don’t say you shouldn’t do this, you need to change etc., and instead use the ask-offer-ask model:  
    • Ask - May I share my concerns about this issue/behaviour?
    • Offer - My concern is that this puts you/your animal at risk of…because
    • Ask – What do you think about my concerns?
      
  • Sometimes you may have to apologize or shift the conversation. for example, if you find people responding in a way indicating they may be feeling invalidated, resistant, or withdrawing as a result of your attempts to provide unsolicited advice, and you have the opportunity to catch it quickly in the moment, you can backtrack and say, “I’m sorry, I realize you didn’t ask for my opinion, what do you think about …” ^[113].

TIPS FOR DEALING WITH SUSTAIN TALK

• Roll with Resistance: When you encounter community members who are resistant to change and expressing a lot of sustain talk, it is helpful to roll with this resistance rather than try to fight or debate it, as this can further cement their unwillingness to change ^{[113, 57]}.
• Evoke Change Talk: Focus on eliciting community members’ consideration of, motivation for, or commitment to change, also referred to as change talk (refer to facilitator resource Guidance on Listening for Change Talk for further guidance). You can do this by:
  • Reflect on the problem using summaries as a means to show empathy and make the person feel they are heard which will build rapport.
  • Actively listen for a person’s positive strengths, skills, values, efforts, accomplishments, aspirations and traits, and to reflect those back to them using affirmations to shift focus away from the negative and focus on positive characteristics or the person as a means to build rapport, motivate and inspire their own belief in self and the possibility for change.
    
    • If they say, “maybe I could do something” you can respond by asking whether it would be possible to discuss this next time you meet to give them more time to process.
      
    • Use a change scale/ruler (e.g. readiness for, confidence to, importance of change) and discuss what would move them up the scale.
      
    • Reflect back “a part of you is interested….what is it that makes you curious about or what would be helpful towards taking a step in the future?”
      
    • Ask what would be helpful for them
      

• Emphasize Choice and Control ^{[114, 57]}: Embody the spirit of working in partnership with communities, by emphasizing the client's choice and control (autonomy) can help minimize resistance and move the conversation away from sustain talk. This means explicitly stating something along the lines of "It really is your choice what you will do about _______" or “Ultimately it is your choice, and I’m happy to work with you on this, perhaps we can talk about this next time we see each other?”
• Shift Focus ^{[114, 57]}: when talking about an issue becomes counterproductive you can respond by shifting the conversation away from what seems to be a stumbling block to progress (shifting focus). This means changing the subject. An example of shifting focus might sound like "That doesn't seem like a problem to you right now. What are some of the things you're dealing with that you feel are a challenge?" The facilitator resource Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours provides guidance on how you can use the five domains of animal welfare framework linked with human behaviours to shift focus to identifying behaviours people can enact to improve their animal’s welfare when they are resistant or unable to adopt desired behaviours.
• Develop Discrepancy ^[113]: change won’t occur without discrepancy. It allows the client to realize their current behaviour isn’t leading to their desired goal and to be more open to change.
  • Help community members define their most important goals for their animals’ welfare
  • Help community members see that their current behaviours don’t align with their ultimate goals that are important/valuable.
  • Help community members see the difference between their core values and their behaviour(s).
  • Create gap between where community members are and where they want to be.
• Support Self-Efficacy ^[113]:
  • Promote community members' belief in their ability to do what is needed to change.
  • Focus on past successes and skills and strengths community members have or can easily learn.
  • Promote self-esteem and build confidence.

TECHNIQUES FOR EVOKING CHANGE TALK ^{[57, 112]}:

1. Ask Evocative Questions: Ask an open question which you believe the person will respond to with change talk. The simplest and most direct way to elicit change talk is by asking a series of targeted questions from the following four categories:
   
   • Disadvantages of the status quo e.g. “What difficulties have resulted from not providing your animal with timely medical care? What worries you about your animals’ welfare?”
   • Advantages of change e.g. “What do you think life would be like, or what do you think would be different, for you and your animals if you did make a change and resolve this animal welfare issue?”, “What are the advantages of feeding your animal appropriate quality and quantities of feed?”
   • Optimism for change e.g. “When have you made a significant change in your animal’s welfare before? How did you do it?”, “What strengths do you have that would help you to improve your animal’s welfare?”
   • Intention to change e.g. “In what ways do you want your animals’ welfare to be different five years from now?”, “Forget about how you would achieve it for a moment, if you could do anything, what would you change about your animal’s welfare?”
     
     Alternatively, if you are short on time, a quick method of drawing out ‘change talk’ is to use an ‘importance ruler’ (refer to change ruler below).
     
2. Use Change Rulers: Ask: “On a scale from 1 to 10, how important is it to you to change [the specific target behaviour] where 1 is not at all important, and a 10 is extremely important?” Follow up: “And why are you at [xxx] and not [a lower number than stated]?”. “What might happen that could move you from [xxx] to [a higher number]?” or “What would move you up the scale?” Alternatively, instead of importance, you could ask in terms of their confidence to make the change if they decided to do so, or their readiness to change e.g. on a scale of 0-10, with zero being I’m not ready to change, and 10 being ready to change.
   
   • If respondent gives you a zero, use reflections to reflect their sentiment back e.g. “at this time, you don’t feel like the right time to make this change YET.”
   • If respondent gives you a low number, use open ended question to ask them why they scored it 1 or 2 and not a zero as this can evoke more change talk about the part of them that is wanting to change.
   • If respondent provides a low number, an open ended question asking “what would it take to move that from a 5-7” can also get them thinking about strategies for how they could make this change, which can help boost their confidence in their ability to attempt change.
     
3. Explore Decisional Balance: Ask for the pros and cons of both changing and staying the same.
   
4. Good Things/Not-­‐So-­‐Good Things: Ask about the positives and negatives of the behaviour targeted for change.
   
5. Ask for Elaboration/Examples: When a change talk theme emerges, ask for more details. “In what ways?” “Tell me more?” “What does that look like?” “When was the last time that happened?”
   
6. Look Back: Ask about a time before the target behaviour emerged. How were things better, different?
   
7. Look Forward: Ask what may happen if things continue as they are (status quo). Try the miracle question: If you were 100% successful in making the changes you want, what would be different? How would you like your life to be five years from now?
   
8. Query Extremes: What are the worst things that might happen if you don’t make this change? What are the best things that might happen if you do make this change?
   
9. Explore Goals and Values: Ask about what their guiding values are, or refer back to previous conversations with the person where they provided an indication of their guiding values. What do they want in life? Using a values card sort activity can be helpful here. Ask how the continuation of target behaviour fits in with the person’s goals or values. Does it help realize an important goal or value, interfere with it, or is it irrelevant?
   
10. Come Alongside: Explicitly side with the negative (status quo) side of ambivalence. “Perhaps [xxx] is so important to you, that you won’t change no matter what the cost.”

This resource was developed with support of Human Behaviour Change for Animal (HBCA) 

Link to References Cited