When change comes around, there are many people that do all they can to fight it. They decide that all change is bad and if they make the next change, their life will be more difficult. These people fight change so much that they get worn down, their stress level increases, and life becomes much more difficult. Additionally, people get tired of being around the change fighter because they know that any change they think of will be hard to implement.
When you fight the wrong battles you will experience fatigue and you could run into the following three challenges:
Loss of Emotional Energy
Everything you do either adds to your emotional reservoir or takes away from it. When you fight a winning battle, your confidence grows and you begin to feel energized. On the other hand, when you fight the wrong battles, you lose emotional energy. If you are consistently fighting the wrong battles, you will drain your reservoir more than you refill it. With time it will get depleted.
As your emotional reservoir gets drained in one setting, it can cause challenges in other aspects of your life such as family and social life, overall physical well-being, mental health, etc. It can lead to divorce, isolation from others, health problems, or other harmful activities. Overall, fighting the wrong battles will take a significant toll on you and the lives of those around you if done consistently over a long period of time.
Loss of Allies
It is important to build working relationships with others. Those relationships are very beneficial for a number of reasons. They can lead to success in the business world and help you to accomplish your goals. Each time you fight change in the workplace, you are potentially weakening those relationships. If you fight the same people over and over again, you can lose them as allies. They can get to the point that they don’t want to work with you anymore or they can feel great frustration towards you.
When you fight the wrong battles, it can easily become personal very quickly. People will feel like you are fighting them just to go against their idea of change. As a result, they will no longer want to be your allies when you face challenges or other difficulties.
Increased Resistance
When you fight changes driven by others, it is very common for them to start fighting your change ideas. They will do their best to make change difficult for you since you are making change difficult for them. This is a bad path to go down because it causes you and them to shut down. Your desire to work together for effective change is diminished and can either slow down dramatically or stop.
Don’t Fight the Wrong Battles
Every leader knows the importance of using care when choosing their battles. You can’t win every battle you fight, so you need to pick your battles wisely. If you find yourself fighting and losing battles, you should evaluate what types of battles you are fighting and what approach you are taking to fight them.
Some questions you can ask before fighting a battle are:
- If I win this battle, will it make a significant positive impact?
- What are the potential casualties if I lose this battle?
- How much emotional energy will it take to fight this battle?
- Will fighting this battle have lasting negative consequences? If so, is it worth the cost?
It is more important to fight a small but visible battle that you will likely win than one that will have a lot of casualties along the way.
Follow-up Questions
How do you know when you are fighting a winning battle and when you are not? How do you decide between what battles you take on and which ones you avoid? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!
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