Over the past weekend, someone said to me (quoting Upton Sinclair) that it’s difficult to get people to understand something when their income depends on their not understanding it.

You could easily substitute power, prestige, or even survival for the word income. People have an extraordinarily difficult time believing in something—an idea, plan, strategy or initiative—that they perceive will cause them great harm.

Here’s the rub: this inability to believe such a thing often operates at the subconscious level. From the outside, it’s easy to mistakenly perceive that such a person is being stubborn, difficult or unreasonable. That’s often not the case.

How does this unfold in a business context? Plans that appear to threaten the welfare of members of your team often meet with resistance. But in many cases, people genuinely do not know they are unable to accept the new thinking; instead, they perceive the new idea as an illogical or misguided mistake.

Whether the resistance is visible or under the radar, it’s almost never helpful to call someone out for being “resistant to change” or “inflexible.” Instead, recognize and address the concerns that people have.

I would love to hear your experiences watching people struggle to understand or accept something that threatens their welfare. Perceived threats can be an obstacle to very positive and necessary changes.