Assignment

Which of the following best describes you at your place of work: director, navigator, caretaker, coach, interpreter or nurturer? Share your selection in your initial post in addition to another of these qualities that you aspire to add to your current "image." Detail the reasons behind your selections. What strengths do you have that can help you to develop these qualities? How do you know? Be specific and provide detailed examples to support your major points.

Director: Resistance is a sign that not everybody is on board in terms of making the change. Resistance can and must be overcome in order to move change forward. Change managers need specific skills to ensure that they can deal with resistance to change.

Navigator: Resistance is expected. It is not necessarily a sign of people being outside of their comfort zone so much as the fact that there are different interests within the organization and some of these may be undermined by the change. Resistance, therefore, will not always be able to be overcome, although this should be achieved as much as possible.

Caretaker: Resistance is possible but likely to be short-lived and ultimately futile. This is because, ultimately, changes will occur regardless of the attempts of individual actors within the organization to halt them. At best resistance might temporarily delay change but not be able to halt its inexorable impact.

Coach: Resistance is something that needs to be recognized and expected as change takes people out of their comfort zone. Change managers need to work with resistance in a way that reveals to the resistor that such actions are not in accord with good teamwork within the organization.

Interpreter: Resistance is likely where people lack understanding of "what is going on," where the change is taking the organization, and what impact it will have on specific individuals. Making sense of the change, helping to clarify what it means, and reestablishing individual identity with the process and the expected outcome of the change will assist in addressing the underlying problems that led to the emergence of resistance.

Nurturer: Resistance is largely irrelevant to whether or not change will occur. Changes will occur but not always in predictable ways. Therefore, resisting change will be largely a matter of guesswork by the resistor since change often emerges from the clash of chaotic forces and it is usually not possible to identify, predict, or control the direction of change.