Every few years a phrase sweeps through leadership circles and becomes part of the furniture. “People do not like change” is one of those lines. It lives on conference slides, in strategy papers, and in the quiet conversations managers have when a new initiative stalls. It feels wise. It feels like an insight earned from weary experience. It is quoted with the same confidence given to more famous leadership slogans, as if it were an established psychological truth.
Yet no serious scholar of human behaviour has ever claimed it so bluntly. Neither Kurt Lewin nor any of the researchers who built on his work offered such a universal rule. The line does not appear in social identity theory, behavioural science, motivation research, or transition studies. It seems to have grown not from evidence but from convenience. Leaders needed a simple explanation for why change efforts falter, and the phrase offered one.
There is a strange irony in this. If people truly hated change, the world would look very different. No one would move home, start families, switch careers, explore new hobbies, or adopt new technologies. No one would seek promotions or take on new challenges. Human history is a steady flow of adaptation, reinvention, and experimentation. People change all the time.
What people struggle with is something far more subtle. As William Bridges argued, people resist endings, not beginnings. In his model of transitions, change is situational. Transition is psychological. The two are often confused (Bridges, 1991). When we compress this complexity into a slogan about disliking change, we obscure something crucial. We dismiss the emotional labour people perform when something familiar is replaced with something uncertain.
The persistence of the phrase also reveals something about organisational life. It reflects leaders’ frustration. When a new system fails to land or a new way of working is met with silence, the easiest conclusion is that people simply do not like change. It spares us from having to ask harder questions about trust, clarity, involvement, or past failures. The line offers a shortcut. It saves face.
But the shortcut creates its own problems. Once a leader assumes people fundamentally dislike change, resistance is no longer seen as feedback or information. It becomes pathology. It becomes something to fix or challenge. The phrase shapes how leaders interpret behaviour long before they explore the context that produced it. In this sense, the myth becomes self reinforcing. It frames the conversation before it even begins.
The truth is gentler and more demanding. People do not dislike change. They dislike loss, confusion, unfairness, and change that is done to them rather than with them. This is a very different claim, and one that shifts responsibility back to leadership practice.
When we challenge the slogan, we do not deny the difficulty of leading change. Instead, we open space for a more honest conversation about what people need in order to make sense of it.
The problem with the phrase
The trouble with “people do not like change” is not only that it is inaccurate. It is that it misdirects attention. It reduces a complex human process to a tidy rule that fits neatly on a slide. It encourages leaders to treat resistance as a fixed trait rather than a relational or contextual signal. Once spoken, the phrase becomes a lens through which all hesitation is interpreted.
Research on motivation, identity, and uncertainty paints a very different picture. People are not inherently opposed to change. They are attuned to what change means for their sense of competence, status, autonomy, and belonging. Daniel Kahneman’s work on loss aversion illustrates how people weigh losses more heavily than gains (Kahneman, 2011). When a change threatens something valued, even subtly, it can feel disproportionate. Not because the change is bad, but because the meaning attached to it is unclear.
This is where William Bridges’ distinction between change and transition becomes helpful. Bridges argued that people resist the endings created by change because those endings disrupt identity, relationships, or ways of working that once felt safe or familiar (Bridges, 1991). Change itself can be positive or neutral. It is the disruption that triggers emotion. The slogan collapses these dynamics into a single judgement about people themselves.
There is also a linguistic problem. The phrase treats “people” as a monolith, as if everyone responds to uncertainty in the same way. Yet decades of organisational behaviour research show that people differ widely in their openness to novelty and ambiguity. Roni Oreg’s work on individual dispositions to resist or support change demonstrates this variability clearly (Oreg, 2003). Some individuals actively seek novelty. Others tread more carefully. Most fall somewhere in between. The slogan obscures this diversity.
Another problem lies in what the phrase implies about leadership responsibility. If people simply do not like change, then resistance is inevitable and somewhat unchangeable. The leader’s task becomes managing reluctance rather than designing conditions that make the change meaningful. The focus drifts away from clarity, fairness, participation, and psychological safety. It becomes easier to blame the audience than to question the message, timing, or process.
The simplicity of the phrase hides another truth. The content of a change rarely determines the reaction. The experience of the change does. People respond not only to what is altered, but how the alteration is introduced, explained, and reinforced. Research from Kotter and Schlesinger highlights that misunderstandings, fear of loss, and differing assessments of the situation, not dislike of change itself, drive resistance (Kotter and Schlesinger, 2008). When leaders collapse these nuances into a single phrase, they lose the ability to see what is actually happening.
What makes the slogan particularly unhelpful is that it can become a self fulfilling prophecy. When leaders expect resistance, they communicate defensively. When they communicate defensively, trust erodes. When trust erodes, people hesitate. The hesitation confirms the leader’s expectation, reinforcing the belief that people fundamentally dislike change. The cycle then repeats, often without anyone noticing that its origin was an assumption, not evidence.
The problem with the phrase, therefore, is not only its inaccuracy. It is that it closes curiosity. It shuts down inquiry into how people interpret change, what they value, and what might help them move through uncertainty with confidence. Leaders gain far more by assuming that resistance is information rather than instinct, and by exploring what that information reveals about the system they are trying to shift.
Why the myth endures
If the idea that “people do not like change” is so imprecise, it is reasonable to ask why it remains so persistent. Myths hold on because they offer emotional comfort, not because they are accurate. This one survives in leadership culture for several reasons.
The first is that the phrase offers leaders a simple explanation for a difficult phenomenon. Change efforts often stall for reasons that are complex and uncomfortable to examine. People may be uncertain. They may not trust the sponsor. They may be overwhelmed by competing priorities. They may be responding to years of poorly managed initiatives. Each of these possibilities invites leaders to look critically at context, history, and their own role. The slogan offers a gentler route. It externalises the problem. It suggests that resistance sits naturally within people rather than within the system.
The second reason is that the phrase mirrors a long tradition of management thinking that places the individual at the centre of organisational difficulties. The assumption that behaviour stems from personal preference is far easier to digest than the idea that behaviour is shaped by structures, incentives, and culture. Research in organisational psychology has shown repeatedly that people respond more to perceived fairness, trustworthiness, and clarity than to the content of a change itself (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter and Ng, 2001). Yet slogans rarely capture these subtleties. They condense a century of behavioural science into a five word mantra that feels easier to apply.
The third reason the myth endures is that it sounds plausible. Leaders observe hesitation or caution and interpret it as dislike. They see questions as objections. They assume silence is resistance rather than processing. They watch people cling to familiar routines and mistake familiarity for preference. Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety illustrates how often people remain quiet not because they resist change, but because they fear the consequences of speaking too soon or asking for clarity (Edmondson, 1999). Behaviour that looks like reluctance may in fact be an entirely rational response to uncertainty.
There is also a social element to the myth. Quoting it allows leaders to connect with one another. It signals a shared struggle. It gives voice to the frustration of trying to move a system that seems reluctant to move itself. In this sense, the phrase functions less as an analytic statement and more as a form of emotional shorthand. It makes complex organisational experiences feel comprehensible.
Another reason for its longevity lies in the way organisational stories spread. As Karl Weick noted, people create meaning through the stories they tell about what is happening around them (Weick, 1995). Once a phrase becomes part of the narrative toolkit, it gains its own momentum. It becomes the default explanation because it is familiar, not because it is correct. And because it is repeated often enough, it begins to sound like an empirical fact rather than a judgement.
Finally, the myth persists because it reflects a deeper human truth: change is not neutral. It carries risk, ambiguity, and emotional labour. Leaders feel this as much as anyone else. Saying “people do not like change” is sometimes a way of acknowledging their own discomfort without saying so directly. The myth serves a psychological function for both leaders and teams.
The endurance of the phrase, therefore, is not accidental. It survives because it fits the emotional contours of organisational life. It resonates with frustration, fear, and the desire for simplicity. But like many enduring myths, it obscures more than it reveals. To lead change well, we must understand not only why people hesitate but why the myth itself has such magnetic appeal.
Once we look past the slogan and into the research, a different picture emerges. People do not reject change in a blanket sense. They respond to how change is framed, introduced, explained, and experienced. Across decades of studies, a consistent finding appears: people engage with change when they perceive purpose, fairness, agency, and psychological safety.
What the evidence actually says about change
John Kotter’s work on organisational transformation shows that people are far more willing to change when they understand the rationale behind the shift and feel a sense of urgency that is grounded in evidence rather than fear (Kotter, 1996). When the narrative is vague, overly technical, or delivered without context, people struggle to connect their daily work to the broader aim. The problem is not change. The problem is meaning.
Self determination theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, adds another layer. Their research demonstrates that people persist through difficult change when they experience autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Deci and Ryan, 2000). If a change erodes these psychological needs, resistance becomes not only predictable but protective. When leaders design change that supports these needs, people adapt with energy.
Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety provides further insight. Her studies show that individuals and teams engage more actively with new ideas when they believe the environment is safe for questioning, experimenting, and making mistakes (Edmondson, 1999). Change requires learning. Learning requires vulnerability. Vulnerability requires safety. Remove safety and change begins to look risky, not promising.
There is also robust evidence that people embrace change when they see its benefits clearly. Research on technology adoption by Davis (1989) highlights perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use as primary predictors of willingness to adopt new tools. If the change makes work easier, faster, or more meaningful, adoption accelerates. If the value is unclear or the workload increases, hesitation is rational.
Identity plays a powerful role too. Herminia Ibarra’s work shows that people shift behaviour more readily when they can try on new identities in low risk ways before fully committing to them (Ibarra, 1999). Change often requires people to see themselves differently. When leaders create space for experimentation, this identity work becomes possible. When they present change as an immediate leap, people pull back.
A final insight comes from studies of organisational trust. Denise Rousseau and colleagues found that trust enables people to move through uncertainty because it reduces perceived vulnerability (Rousseau et al., 1998). Change magnifies uncertainty. Trust mitigates it. When trust in leadership is high, people assume good intent. When trust is low, even benign changes can feel threatening.
Taken together, the evidence points to a clear conclusion. People do not resist change itself. They resist change that threatens their sense of meaning, agency, identity, fairness, or safety. They embrace change that strengthens these same qualities. The driver is not preference but perception. When leaders pay attention to these human needs, change becomes not a battle against resistance but a process of building shared understanding.
The science contradicts the myth. People are not static. They are remarkably adaptive. What they need is clarity, voice, and respect for the psychological work required to move from the known to the unknown.
The false dichotomy: people versus change
One of the most persistent errors in leadership thinking is the habit of framing people and change as opposing forces, as if human beings naturally lean backward while change pushes forward. This creates an artificial contest. On one side sits the logical necessity of organisational evolution. On the other sits the assumed emotional reluctance of the workforce. The myth positions these two as adversaries rather than partners in a shared process.
The framing is misleading because it misunderstands what people react to. Change is rarely the true source of discomfort. People adapt to new conditions constantly. What they resist is the threat that can accompany change: threat to identity, to competence, to belonging, or to status. Karl Weick’s work on sensemaking emphasises that people seek coherence. When change disrupts the stories they use to understand their work, confusion fills the space where meaning used to be (Weick, 1995). The struggle is with disorientation, not with movement.
Identity research adds similar nuance. When a change asks people to behave differently, it also asks them to see themselves differently. Herminia Ibarra’s work shows that identity shifts occur through experimentation, not instruction (Ibarra, 1999). People need time, safety, and experience to test new versions of themselves. When change is imposed abruptly, without space to explore this identity work, resistance emerges not from dislike of change but from a natural desire to preserve a coherent sense of self.
There is also a systemic dimension. Organisations often encourage stability through their routines, structures, incentives, and cultural norms. As Ralph Stacey notes, organisations behave more like complex adaptive systems than machines (Stacey, 2011). Systems seek equilibrium. When leaders introduce change without adjusting the surrounding conditions, the old system simply pulls people back into familiar patterns. The challenge is not that people resist. It is that the system resists.
The false dichotomy distracts leaders from these deeper dynamics. It encourages a view that people are barriers to overcome rather than stakeholders to engage. It shifts attention away from questions about context, timing, coherence, and fairness. Leaders may then try to fix people rather than redesigning the conditions that shape their behaviour.
A clearer way to understand this is to distinguish between change and the experience of change. Change is the external shift. The experience of change is the internal journey people take in response. When leaders focus only on the former, they treat change as an instruction. When they focus on the latter, they treat change as a shared meaning making process.
The dichotomy also fails because it ignores the power of agency. Research consistently shows that when people feel they have a voice in shaping change, they commit more strongly to it (Armenakis, Harris and Mossholder, 1993). Agency does not mean consensus. It means involvement. Even small degrees of influence can transform the emotional texture of a change initiative. People support what they help to shape because participation builds ownership.
Most importantly, the dichotomy frames change as a contest between the organisation’s needs and people’s preferences. In reality, these needs are intertwined. Organisations change because people change. People change because they see purpose, fairness, and possibility. Treating people and change as rivals obscures the simple truth that both sides ultimately seek the same thing: progress that makes sense.
The myth survives because it offers a neat explanation. The truth is more demanding. People do not resist change. They resist the loss of meaning, identity, safety, or voice. When leaders recognise this, the conversation shifts from “How do we overcome resistance?” to “How do we design change that honours human experience?”
What leaders misinterpret as resistance
Much of what leaders label as resistance is not resistance at all. It is the ordinary, predictable set of human responses to uncertainty. These responses become problematic only when they are misunderstood. When leaders misread the signals, they intervene in ways that amplify anxiety rather than ease it.
One common misinterpretation is confusion. People often need time to understand what a change means for their work, their routines, or their relationships. This processing period is cognitive, not emotional. It reflects the work of sensemaking. Karl Weick argued that people first try to interpret what is happening before deciding how to act (Weick, 1995). Questions or requests for clarity do not signal reluctance. They are part of the meaning-making process that allows people to adapt with confidence.
Another behaviour frequently misread is caution. When people proceed slowly, leaders may assume they are resisting. In reality, caution is often a response to unclear expectations or mixed messages. William Bridges noted that transitions contain a neutral zone between the ending of the old and the beginning of the new, a period marked by ambiguity and lower certainty (Bridges, 1991). Cautious behaviour in this zone is natural. It reflects the need to understand new boundaries before acting boldly within them.
Overload is another source of misunderstanding. Many organisations run multiple initiatives simultaneously, each with its own deadlines, acronyms, and metrics. People who appear reluctant may simply be stretched. Studies on cognitive load and change show that capacity constraints, not attitude, often shape behaviour during transitions (Sweller, 1988). When leaders assume emotional resistance rather than acknowledging workload pressures, they risk making the change feel even heavier.
Silence is also frequently misinterpreted. Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety shows that people remain quiet when they fear that speaking up may carry social or career penalties (Edmondson, 1999). Silence can reflect vigilance rather than resistance. People sometimes wait to see whether leaders follow through before investing their own credibility in a change. What looks like reluctance may be a rational test of trust.
Then there is mourning, a rarely acknowledged but real part of organisational life. Change often requires people to let go of routines, relationships, or identities that once anchored their sense of competence. Bridges emphasised that endings require emotional processing, not just intellectual acceptance (Bridges, 1991). When leaders rush people through these emotions, the grief becomes disguised as pushback.
Testing is another misunderstood behaviour. People sometimes trial a change in small ways before fully committing. Herminia Ibarra’s identity work research shows that people experiment with new behaviours to assess whether they feel authentic and sustainable (Ibarra, 1999). This experimentation may look like hesitancy, but it is often a constructive step toward adoption.
These misinterpretations matter because they shape leadership responses. When leaders assume resistance, they often respond with persuasion, pressure, or increased monitoring. These interventions can provoke the very reluctance they were trying to address. People feel less trusted, less involved, and less safe. Momentum slows.
A more helpful stance is to see these behaviours not as barriers but as information. Confusion signals a need for clarity. Caution signals a need for coherence. Silence signals a need for safety. Overload signals a need for prioritisation. Mourning signals a need for empathy. Testing signals a need for time. Each behaviour points to a condition leaders can influence.
When leaders shift from diagnosing resistance within people to diagnosing conditions within the system, change becomes a shared journey rather than a contest of wills.
When people really do resist and why
There are times when people truly resist change, but these moments do not originate from a deep seated aversion to change itself. They arise when the change threatens something important or violates expectations of fairness, competence, or trust. In these moments, resistance is not irrational. It is adaptive. It signals that the system or the process surrounding the change needs attention.
One clear cause of genuine resistance is the perceived loss of resources. Changes that increase workload, reduce autonomy, or stretch people beyond their capacity trigger protective behaviour. Research shows that resource loss is one of the strongest predictors of resistance, particularly when people believe they do not have the time or energy to absorb the shift. People resist not because they dislike change but because they are already at the limits of what they can sustain.
Another source of resistance is lack of trust. If people have experienced poorly handled changes in the past, they approach new initiatives with scepticism. Trust is cumulative and fragile. Denise Rousseau and colleagues emphasise that trust reduces perceived vulnerability during periods of uncertainty (Rousseau et al., 1998). When trust is low, even well intentioned changes can be interpreted as threats. The resistance is not to the change itself, but to the perceived motives behind it.
Resistance can also stem from misalignment between stated values and lived reality. When leaders advocate collaboration but reward individual performance, or when they promote transparency but make decisions behind closed doors, the inconsistency erodes credibility. Studies on organisational cynicism show that people resist most strongly when they sense hypocrisy in leadership actions (Dean, Brandes and Dharwadkar, 1998). The resistance is a response to incongruence, not to the idea of change.
A different form of resistance arises when people feel unseen or excluded. Changes designed without meaningful consultation often provoke pushback. Armenakis and Harris argue that readiness for change is shaped by beliefs about the need for change, the appropriateness of the change, and the leader’s ability to support it (Armenakis and Harris, 2002). When people are left out of the conversation, they cannot build these beliefs, and resistance fills the gap.
Fear of incompetence also plays a role. When change introduces new skills, tools, or expectations, people may worry privately that they will not be able to meet the new standard. Research on self efficacy by Albert Bandura highlights that people resist situations where they doubt their ability to perform (Bandura, 1997). This resistance is not a rejection of the future but a protection of identity and competence.
Sometimes resistance is a rational defence of quality or safety. Professionals in healthcare, engineering, aviation, and other high stakes fields push back when they believe a change compromises standards. This form of resistance is grounded in expertise, not reluctance. It is often the most valuable feedback leaders can receive.
Finally, resistance may reflect cultural dynamics. Edgar Schein notes that culture contains shared assumptions about what is normal, safe, and acceptable (Schein, 2010). When a change challenges these assumptions, resistance acts as a stabilising mechanism, a way of protecting coherence. The issue is not that people resist but that the proposed change conflicts with deeper, often unspoken norms.
In every case, genuine resistance tells a story. It signals where the system is under strain, where trust is fragile, where identity is threatened, or where misalignment persists. Leaders who treat resistance as information rather than defiance gain a diagnostic advantage. They learn what the organisation needs in order to move forward.
Resistance becomes a barrier only when leaders dismiss it. When they listen, it becomes insight.
Examples that show people embrace change
If the myth were true, we would expect to see consistent patterns of reluctance whenever an organisation attempts something new. Yet the opposite is often the case. People embrace change readily when they understand the purpose, trust the leadership, and see the benefit for themselves, their colleagues, or their customers. Across industries and sectors, examples of enthusiastic adaptation are easier to find than examples of immovable resistance.
Microsoft provides a useful illustration. When Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, he introduced a shift towards a growth mindset culture, drawing from the work of Carol Dweck (Dweck, 2006). This was not a superficial rebranding exercise. It required people to rethink how they collaborated, learned, and shared knowledge. Far from resisting, employees generally welcomed the shift because it was accompanied by transparency, clarity of intent, and visible modelling from senior leaders. The success of this cultural evolution suggests that people do not resist change when they believe it supports their development and aligns with their values.
Patagonia offers a different example. The company’s longstanding commitment to environmental stewardship has required continuous adaptation. Employees embrace changes to materials, processes, and product lines because these shifts are consistent with the organisation’s purpose. Research on purpose driven organisations shows that when people experience strong alignment between personal and organisational values, they are more willing to adapt and innovate (Carton, 2018). In this context, change is not disruption. It is enactment of identity.
Healthcare provides another instructive case. When new protocols are introduced that clearly improve patient safety, adoption tends to be rapid and widespread. Studies from Atul Gawande and colleagues show that surgical teams quickly adopted checklists that reduced infection rates and improved outcomes (Gawande, 2010). Their motivation was not compliance but care. When people see the tangible benefit of a change, resistance becomes irrelevant.
In technology organisations, people often embrace new tools, processes, and methods with enthusiasm. The widespread adoption of agile practices is a good example. Teams in software development shifted from waterfall methodologies to iterative cycles because they experienced greater autonomy, clearer feedback loops, and more meaningful progress (Rigby, Sutherland and Takeuchi, 2016). The change increased agency, and as a result, uptake accelerated.
Even in highly regulated environments such as aviation, people adapt willingly when change strengthens safety or professionalism. Pilots, cabin crew, and engineers consistently update their practices to comply with new standards because those standards align with the shared purpose of protecting passengers. Research from the International Civil Aviation Organization shows that compliance increases when changes reinforce identity as much as procedure (ICAO, 2019).
What these cases have in common is not the nature of the change but the conditions surrounding it. People embrace change when it:
• reinforces shared identity
• increases capability or autonomy
• improves outcomes that matter
• is communicated clearly and honestly
• is modelled by leaders who live the change themselves
These examples demonstrate a simple truth: people move quickly when they believe the change is worthwhile. Resistance is not the norm. It is the exception, triggered when conditions are poor. When the conditions are right, people do not merely accept change. They drive it.
Towards a more useful framing
If the old slogan positions people as obstacles to change, a more useful stance is to see them as co-authors of it. Change is not something leaders impose on passive recipients. It is a social process shaped by meaning, emotion, context, and interaction. When we replace the myth with a richer understanding, the task of leadership shifts from managing resistance to cultivating conditions in which people can move with clarity and confidence.
A simple reframing can help: people do not dislike change. They dislike loss, confusion, and change that disregards their voice or dignity. They embrace change that brings coherence, purpose, and possibility. This perspective aligns far more closely with the evidence from behavioural science, organisational psychology, and systems thinking.
One way to think about this is through the metaphor of the weather. Change is like weather; it surrounds everyone in the organisation. People can walk through storms if they trust the captain of the ship, understand where they are going, and believe the vessel is sound. They falter when the skies darken without explanation or when leaders deny the presence of clouds. The problem is not the weather. It is the absence of navigation.
Systems thinkers such as Donella Meadows remind us that organisations behave as interconnected wholes, not mechanical parts (Meadows, 2008). In such systems, change is influenced by feedback loops, culture, incentives, and informal relationships. When leaders focus only on structural changes and ignore these dynamics, the system pushes back. When they work with the system rather than against it, change becomes a natural extension of collective learning.
Ralph Stacey’s work adds another dimension. He argues that organisations operate at the edge of predictability and complexity, where the future cannot be reduced to linear plans (Stacey, 2011). In this environment, successful change depends less on control and more on conversation. Leaders shape change by influencing the patterns of interaction that produce new meaning. They cannot dictate change into existence. They can only create the conditions where it becomes possible.
A second shift comes from questioning the assumption that clarity alone is sufficient. Clarity matters, but coherence matters more. People need to see how the change fits with the organisation’s purpose, values, and identity. They also need to see how it fits with their own role. Research shows that when leaders connect change to shared meaning, adoption increases significantly (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991). Without that coherence, even well designed changes feel arbitrary.
A more constructive framing also acknowledges the emotional dimension. Change disrupts certainty. It stirs hope and anxiety in equal measure. Leaders who engage with this emotional landscape, rather than bypass it, foster resilience. They recognise that questions are not threats but signals. They treat hesitation as part of the journey rather than evidence of resistance.
Finally, framing change as a collective endeavour shifts the focus from persuasion to participation. When people help shape the change, they invest differently. They become contributors rather than critics. Research on co creation and participatory design consistently shows that involvement increases commitment and reduces friction. The shift is from delivering change to designing it together.
A more useful framing, therefore, begins with humility. Leaders cannot control how people feel or respond, but they can influence the conditions that shape those responses. They can cultivate trust, invite participation, create clarity, and pay attention to the emotional signals that guide people through uncertainty. When leaders treat change as a shared human process rather than a mechanical rollout, the organisation stops fighting itself and starts evolving.
The myth fades when we replace it with something more grounded: people do not resist change. They resist change that neglects their humanity. When change honours their strengths, purpose, and dignity, the energy that emerges is not resistance but momentum.
Four practical questions for leaders
If we move beyond the myth that people dislike change, leadership practice becomes less about overcoming resistance and more about designing the conditions that allow change to take root. This requires curiosity rather than certainty. It asks leaders to pay attention not only to strategy and structure but also to experience, identity, and emotion. Small shifts in perspective can transform how change unfolds.
Four questions can help leaders navigate this work with greater clarity and honesty.
1. What losses, real or perceived, does this change create for people?
Every change involves some form of ending. It may alter routines, relationships, or symbols of competence. William Bridges emphasises that people must process these endings before they can embrace new beginnings (Bridges, 1991). Leaders who acknowledge these losses, and who show empathy for the emotions they evoke, reduce the risk of resistance surfacing later in disguised forms. Naming loss gives people permission to move through it.
2. How have I involved people in shaping the change?
Research consistently shows that involvement builds ownership. When people participate in the design, sequencing, or testing of a change, they develop a sense of agency that strengthens commitment (Armenakis and Harris, 2002). Involvement does not mean consensus. It means voice. Even limited opportunities for contribution signal respect and reduce the sense that change is something done to people rather than with them.
3. Where might confusion or ambiguity be mistaken for resistance?
Leaders often misinterpret questions or caution as reluctance. Karl Weick reminds us that people need time to construct meaning from what they experience (Weick, 1995). Clarifying expectations, explaining the purpose, and making decision paths visible can shift the emotional tone of a change initiative. When leaders treat early hesitation as part of the learning curve rather than as opposition, they prevent unnecessary escalation.
4. What conditions in the system are working against the change?
People adapt when the environment around them supports the new behaviour. When it does not, the system pulls them back to the old equilibrium. Ralph Stacey’s work on complexity highlights the importance of addressing structures, incentives, routines, and informal norms that shape everyday action (Stacey, 2011). If these elements contradict the change, resistance becomes rational. Leaders must align systems with intentions.
These questions do not promise simple answers. They invite leaders to look beneath the surface of behaviour and to engage with the deeper forces that shape how people interpret and respond to change. They also shift responsibility from diagnosing attitudes to designing conditions. When leaders work with people’s motivations rather than against their fears, change feels less like imposition and more like progress.
The paradox is that focusing on humanity, not persuasion, often accelerates adoption. People commit to change when they feel respected, informed, and involved. They disengage when they feel rushed, ignored, or misunderstood. Paying attention to these quiet signals is a strategic act.
Change succeeds not because leaders demand enthusiasm but because they create environments in which enthusiasm can emerge naturally.
Closing reflection, what this means for leaders
It is easy to repeat the phrase “people do not like change” and feel as though it explains something. It offers a neat frame for the messy reality of organisational life. Yet like many enduring management slogans, it simplifies a truth until it becomes misleading. The fuller reality is more textured. People do not resist change. They resist change that threatens identity, fairness, competence, or trust. They resist change that arrives without explanation or invitation. They resist change that disregards the human work of transition.
When leaders understand this, the conversation shifts. Change becomes less about managing reluctance and more about attending to meaning. Strategy defines what needs to happen. People’s interpretations determine how it will happen. If the two remain disconnected, energy seeps out of the system. People comply without committing, or they retreat quietly, hoping that the latest initiative will fade like those before it.
Leading change well requires a different kind of attention. It asks leaders to look beyond plans and timelines and into the human experience beneath them. It asks them to notice what people admire, what they fear, what they hope for, and what they believe about the future. This kind of attention cannot be automated or delegated. It requires presence and humility.
Leaders can begin with a few quiet questions of their own:
• Does this change protect dignity as much as it demands performance?
• Have I explained not only the what but the why in language people understand?
• What stories are circulating that reveal how people are making sense of the shift?
• In what ways might my own behaviour be reinforcing the past rather than enabling the future?
Answers to these questions do not appear in dashboards. They emerge in conversations, in moments of hesitation, in the tone of meetings, and in what people say when they feel safe. Paying attention to these signals is not a soft skill. It is strategic. It helps leaders understand whether the organisation is ready to move or whether it needs time to process what is ending.
The myth persists because it points toward a sentiment leaders recognise: change is hard. But difficulty is not the same as dislike. People are remarkably adaptive when they feel respected, informed, involved, and supported. They move through uncertainty with courage when they trust the path and the people guiding them. When leaders align purpose, process, and humanity, change becomes not a burden but a shared accomplishment.
The challenge is not to overcome resistance. It is to understand the system that produces it. The opportunity is to design conditions in which people can bring their best energy to what comes next. When leaders do this well, the myth loses its power. What remains is the simple truth that organisations evolve at the speed of meaning, not mandate.
Do you have any tips or advice for supporting people through change?
What has worked for you?
Do you have any recommended resources to explore?
Thanks for reading!
Sources:
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