96 / Rotman Management Spring 20 19

Q

&A

What is a CAVE person?

The acronym stands for Citizens Against Virtually Every-

thing. It’s a term I first heard in the 1990s while consulting

with a group of supervisors at a manufacturing plant. Meta-

phorically, it refers to people who resist any kind of change.

These people bypass the ‘wait and see how it goes’ step and

position themselves right away as anti-change advocates.

As employees, they can have a toxic effect, poisoning the at-

titudes of co-workers and building a wall of resistance. For

a change program to succeed, leaders have to address them

and neutralize their negativity.

What lies at the root of all the negativity towards change?

For lots of people, change is something to be feared. The

good news is, I have found that if it is well managed, most

people will get on board. Well-managed change entails a

few things. First, people need to know what specifically will

happen and why. Second, in terms of competencies, what

will they and their colleagues be expected to do differently?

People also need to know what resources they will have ac-

cess to in order to help them get though the clunky early days.

And finally, how will formal and informal ‘consequence sys-

tems’ line up to keep them engaged and motivated?

Even when these things are in place, you are still going

to get a small subset of people who continue to resist — often

quite vocally. Mostly, their negative mindsets and behav-

iours come from a place of fear and mistrust: Fear of losing

An expert on diversity and

inclusion explains how to

deal with ‘CAVE people’.

Interview by Karen Christensen

QUESTIONS FOR Laura Methot, Psychologist