To overcome their aversion to change, team members must first acknowledge their subconscious resistance, says Fleetham, whose approach is to put a blank sheet of paper in front of each team member and then instruct them to illustrate the journey that's being undertaken.
"They can tell you verbally that they support everything you are doing, but when you ask them to draw a picture of what it looks like, all of a sudden they are tied to the railroad tracks," says Fleetham, who instructs team members to first draw a starting point and end goal, before illustrating the journey itself.
"You'll find out within ten minutes how confident they are about the journey. If they draw a ship and they draw themselves on it alone, you know that they don't trust anyone at their table, at least unconsciously," he says.
Fleetham is author of The Search for Unrational Leadership: Using Rational & Irrational Methods to Change Your Life. The book outlines a management approach that encourages the use of intuitive, "right brain thinking" to achieve organizational goals.
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