Resistance?

The time loomed close. At first light just before dawn, the group was to set off into unknown territory. Yesterday was a long day. Walking across a harsh and rugged landscape with minimal supplies and uncertain access to water. Their bed had been scraped out among rocks and sticks. Sleep had been elusive, caught in short bursts of an hour or two and punctuated by the need to stoke the fire for warmth or ease the pressure of sleeping on the ground.

In the pre dawn stillness, I heard someone throw up. Not a good start to the day! As the team medic, it was my job to investigate and assess. I was surprised by what I found. The young man who was ill was by far the fittest member of the group. Well trained, confident and competent. He'd been talking about taking this trip for over 2 years, and was planning to take on an even greater challenge immediately afterwards. As we talked about what was going on for him, it turned out that he wasn't ill as such. But he was stressed. 

His stress had him literally tied in knots, bunched and spasming muscle, a headache and waves of nausea. Debilitated by fear and anxiety. Despite our collective efforts, he was unable to stake it off, and ended up pulling out of the exercise.

His reaction was at the extreme end of a continuum of stress - the other end being so unstressed that we are bored. Somewhere in the middle is peak performance where we are stressed enough to be motivated, but not so much that we are overwhelmed (If you want to know more about that, check out the Yerkes Dobson Curve). You may well have experienced some form of being overwhelmed during your life. In that state, it's very difficult to access your ability and rationale. Even simple decisions can seem impossible. Operating at that level takes an enormous amount of energy and is not sustainable.

When I'm speaking to people who are managing change programs, they often talk about resistance. Resistance sometimes shows up in spite of what people are saying. A person might have agreed to the change, and have even been enthusiastic about it, only to appear resistant later on. The typical response to resistance is to shove harder. More force rarely works and is usually matched with even greater resistance. 

Our pre dawn bloke was stressed and torn between a part of himself that really wanted to take on the challenge, and another that was unable to face it in that moment. He was concerned about appearing out of control, and incompetent in front of peers and mentors. This is often at the heart of resistance, and often is more to do with hard wired survival instinct than ego. For the vast majority of human history, we have lived in small tribes, or communities, reliant on each other's skill and competence for our very existence. in this context, incompetence was literally life threatening. When people are called upon to adopt something new, there's an inevitable period of uncertainly often accompanied by the need to learn new ways of doing. People will retreat to the familiar, especially if they are nearing their personal capacity of stress. It's not a conscious choice - they may not even be aware that they are doing it.

Rather than shoving harder, work on creating environments where the "new" can be engaged safely and playfully. Have explicit conversations about the unspoken expectations that create the resistance. - More on that next week. 

Who's involved?

The group sat in the shade and discussed their options. The campsite wasn't great. There was very little in the way of soft sand. In survival mode - literally sleeping on the ground -no soft sand means a hard nights sleep. The problem was it was also getting dark, and the group was walking in a gorge. Walking after dark was not a safe option. The group had almost decided to sleep here for the night. The trouble was not everyone had agreed. 

The group dispersed. Some people got busy collecting wood and water. Others began setting up a place to sleep. Two people were convinced that a better option existed just down the river. They decided to go check it out, recruiting another person on the way. They found a spot they preferred. Two people stayed there, replicating the effort of others upstream. The last came back to get the rest of the group. The trouble was no one else wanted to move. Not only had they not been involved in the revised decision, but they had also invested significant time and effort preparing this spot.

Eventually, the whole group got back together at the original spot. There were lots of disgruntled people, who remained dissatisfied for several days.

Over the past few weeks we have been looking at ineffective loops of behaviour. There are two here.

1. The majority of the group flew into action too quickly. They thought the decision had been made, but others were not convinced. Spending a few more minutes coming to a firm decision would have stopped the problem before it began.
2. The others made the subsequent decision without everyone present, and failed to communicate what they were doing and why. If they had gathered the group together for the discussion, or been more assertive in the original decision making process, they too could have headed it off at the pass.

Get clear before taking action. Involve all the key players.

What can survival situations and scenarios teach us?

Many people are fascinated by survival and the two most common questions I get asked are:

"How did you get into teaching survival?" closely followed by, "Well that’s interesting Mike, but what’s it got to do with the real challenges and issues I face in my everyday life?"

Lets face it, it’s unlikely that most of us will face a genuine survival situation, where actual life of limb are at threat anytime soon. 

Over the years I’ve observed myself and many others in survival scenarios, and actual, life threatening situations. They are a great observation platform for human behaviour.

A survival situation is cleaner, clearer and less complex than the lives we typically live. There are straight, uncluttered lines between what people do, and the results of their actions. And, the feedback loops are rapid and aggressive. It’s possible to observe the outcome of a particular way of thinking or acting a short time after it has been used. Sometimes you get to see whether what you did was effective or ineffective in a matter of minutes or hours. At most it will be a few days. 

This combination of simplicity and rapid feedback make it possible to directly observe your habitual patterns of behaviour. How the survivalist makes decisions, leads, resolves conflict, deals with uncertainty, handles changes to plan, works under pressure, builds rapport, deals with disappointment, manages expectations, and their other patterns of behaviour are thrown into sharp relief against the backdrop of rapid feedback. Some patterns are more effective than others. Some people have a great toolbox of effective patterns. They handle uncertainty and difficulty with seeming ease. Others have patterns that make it more likely that things won’t go well for them, or the people around them.

Over the years I have seen the same patterns of behaviour I observe in the field show up in workplaces. They are present all the time, and get magnified when people are under pressure. In contrast to survival, work situations are much more complex. The feedback loops can be slow and indirect. At work, and in our relationships, it may be weeks, years, or even decades before we recognise the results of particular patterns. Even then, they may be so clouded in the complexity of projects, the patterns of other people, and the passage of time, that we may never gaze directly and clearly at the link between our patterns and our results.

Survival situations have much to teach us about the hard wired, ancient survival mechanisms we all have. They give great insights into the advantages and disadvantages of this incredible entity called a human being.

Having straddled the worlds of survival and organisational change for 20 years, I'm interested in giving people a bit of a user manual, helping them get the best out of themselves and the people around them when the pressure is on and the chips are down.