Change blockers are the part of us that make us resist change and limit our abilities to embrace it. They are emotional strategies that we’ve developed over time to avoid pain and discomfort. The result of these blockers is that we often won’t or can’t take on sufficient responsibility to develop ourselves (or members of our team). These patterns may involve both fear of change in general and fear of specific negative consequences that a certain kind of change can bring. They are collective behavior responses that we all can identify with. John P. Kotter and Leonard A. Schlesinger (2008) explain that people typically have a distaste for change if they:
- are afraid that they will lose something of value
- believe the proposed change has disadvantages or will require too much effort
- are resigned to the current situation.
