Leadership Revolution

CHAPTER 5Break Down

Coach: I thought we agreed you were going to try a new approach. What happened?

The more I thought about it, the more I worried that it would fail.

Coach: So, what's your alternative?

Can't I just keep doing what always worked before?

There's a perfectly understandable reason why both experienced and aspiring leaders resist change. It's so commonplace, in fact, that entire training and human resource departments—and even entire organizations—struggle with how to address this problem. Fear of failure is part of it. But really the wall of resistance is grounded in the fact that the familiar is much more comforting. We all have a tendency to do what we've done before. It worked last time, so why wouldn't it work now? If your whole career is predicated on knowing what works, why would you try something new?

If your whole career is predicated on knowing what works, why would you try something new?

Rationally, we all know the answer to that. Refusal to experiment and a failure‐averse mindset are innovation killers. Moreover, even if you're content to stand pat, the rest of the work world is going to keep evolving whether you like it or not. Doing the same old thing eventually means falling behind, so even when you've punched that first hole in the wall of resistance, that's not enough. You have to keep working to tear it down. You need to keep experimenting.

If we know all of that rationally, then we also know that in real life our behavior isn't strictly ...