13 August 2026
Managing Change: Why Resistance Usually Starts Long Before the Change Does
By
Kate Waterfall Hill
Change has become one of those words that sits in the background of almost every organisation. Sometimes it's a restructure. Sometimes it's a new system, a different way of working or another shift in priorities. Occasionally, it's another piece of software that promises to save everyone time, shortly before requiring sixteen training sessions and three weeks of frustration.
For most leaders, change isn't an occasional event anymore. It's become part of the backdrop to everyday work. Yet despite how common it is, many organisations still approach change as though the difficult part is making the decision.
In reality, making the decision is often the simplest stage. Helping people move with it is where leadership begins.
If you’d prefer to listen, this topic is also explored in the Summer Season podcast episode on Managing Change.
One of the reasons I find this topic so interesting is that I've sat on both sides of it. I've led organisations through significant periods of change, and I've spent years coaching leaders who are trying to help their own teams navigate uncertainty. The patterns are remarkably consistent.
Most resistance isn't what leaders often imagine it to be. More often, it's people trying to work out what's changing while still delivering the work they already have on their desk. Those are two very different things, and recognising the difference changes how you lead.
Linda's approach to change is wonderfully straightforward. She announces it on a Tuesday afternoon, explains very little, assumes everyone will immediately understand why it's necessary and then spends the following fortnight wondering why morale has mysteriously disappeared.
She's also convinced that involving people beforehand would simply slow everything down. She never seems to factor the months spent managing the confusion into her calculations.
A classic Linda economy.
Most leaders smile when they hear Linda because they've worked for someone like her. Occasionally, they realise they've been a little bit Linda themselves.
That usually isn't because they don't care about their people, but by the time they're announcing the change, they've been living with it for weeks or sometimes months. They've debated it with finance, discussed it with HR, wrestled with the commercial implications and gradually come to terms with what needs to happen.
Their team, however, is hearing about it for the first time. That difference in timing explains a great deal of what happens next.
Leaders often read questions as resistance, silence as agreement and hesitation as negativity. Sometimes they're seeing none of those things. People are simply trying to catch up with a decision that's already had weeks or months to settle in someone else's thinking..
One of the biggest misconceptions about managing change is that people dislike change itself. Most of us don't. We change jobs, move house, start businesses, become parents and learn entirely new skills throughout our lives.
What tends to unsettle people at work isn't change in itself, but uncertainty. Uncertainty about what the change means, whether their role is secure, whether they'll still be good at their job, or whether expectations have shifted without anyone quite saying so. When those questions aren't answered, people tend to answer them for themselves.
You've probably seen it happen. A senior leader spends half an hour with HR and suddenly the whole office resembles a group of amateur detectives piecing together a corporate drama from three calendar invites and somebody's facial expression. A delayed email suddenly feels significant. A cancelled meeting develops its own mythology. Someone notices a consultant in reception and quietly concludes there must be a restructure.
It sounds faintly ridiculous when you write it down, yet almost every organisation has lived through some version of it. Most people don't invent stories just to be difficult. They're simply trying to make sense of missing information. Unfortunately, when people are under pressure, the stories they create are rarely the reassuring ones.
Communication matters here far more than many leaders realise. It isn't about longer emails or polished presentations, and it certainly isn't about pretending you have every answer. Most leaders don't have every answer. What matters is helping people distinguish between what is known, what is still evolving and, perhaps most importantly, what they should be focusing on today.
That final point is often overlooked. Leaders sometimes feel they need to eliminate uncertainty before they can communicate, when the opposite is usually true. Good communication reduces unnecessary uncertainty, even when genuine uncertainty remains.
There's a world of difference between saying, "We're still working through the final structure. We'll update you next Thursday," and saying nothing because you don't yet have every detail. People can usually cope with uncertainty far better than silence. Silence has an unfortunate habit of turning into speculation.
Another pattern I see regularly is leaders assuming that because a change makes perfect sense commercially, everyone else will naturally support it.
Commercial logic does matter. Businesses need to evolve. Markets shift, clients' expectations change, technology moves on and standing still is rarely a realistic option. But commercial logic and emotional readiness don't usually arrive at the same time.
Leaders often spend weeks, sometimes months, discussing budgets, efficiencies, future strategy and the reasons a particular change needs to happen. Their teams experience all of that thinking condensed into a single meeting. One conversation simply can't compress months of leadership discussion, reflection and decision-making.
That's one of the reasons involvement can make such a difference.
This doesn't mean every organisational decision becomes a democratic exercise. Leadership still requires leaders to make decisions, and some changes simply have to happen. What involvement means is giving people an opportunity to influence how the change is implemented, rather than simply announcing the finished solution and expecting immediate enthusiasm.
I've seen this work particularly well when organisations introduce new systems or processes. One leader I worked with resisted the temptation to unveil the completed solution. Instead, they invited a small cross-functional group to test it first. The group quickly identified issues that nobody else had spotted, suggested practical improvements and, perhaps most importantly, became genuine advocates for the new system because they'd helped shape it.
By the time the wider rollout began, the conversation had already changed. People weren't hearing about another management initiative; they were hearing trusted colleagues talk positively about something they'd genuinely influenced. Once people feel they've had some influence, ownership spreads surprisingly quickly. Resistance tends to do the same when it feels it hasn't.
Another area that deserves far more attention is support. Leaders frequently underestimate how much learning sits underneath even relatively small changes.
We'd never hand someone the keys to a car and say, "You'll work it out after a few junctions," yet organisations introduce new technology, revised processes or entirely different ways of working and expect confidence to appear by Tuesday afternoon.
Support doesn't always require expensive training programmes or lengthy workshops. Quite often it comes down to clear guidance, someone nearby who knows the answer, or simply acknowledging that people won't remember everything the first time they hear it.
I worked with one organisation that appointed "champions" within each department whenever new software was introduced. They weren't technical specialists or members of the IT team. They were trusted colleagues who'd had a little more time with the system and could answer the everyday questions that inevitably crop up. People were far more willing to lean across the desk and ask someone they knew than submit a support ticket that somehow felt far more daunting than the question itself.
It's often those relatively small decisions that make the biggest difference to how confidently people move through change.
Of course, even with good communication, genuine involvement and thoughtful support, change rarely unfolds exactly as planned. Businesses aren't instruction manuals; they're collections of human beings. Plans evolve, timelines slip and new information emerges along the way. Leaders who cling rigidly to the original plan often create more frustration than flexibility.
The strongest leaders I've worked with aren't those who never change direction. They're the ones who explain why the direction has changed. That distinction matters because people generally cope far better with revised plans when they understand the thinking behind them.
One idea I've found useful over the years starts with a fairly simple observation. Most people are naturally invested in the way things currently work. Even if the system isn't perfect, it's familiar, and familiarity has a reassuring quality when work already feels demanding.
People usually need three things to move towards something new. They need to understand why staying where they are is becoming increasingly difficult. They need a picture of where they're heading. And they need a first step that feels manageable enough to begin.
When one of those elements is missing, resistance tends to grow. People either can't see why the change matters, they struggle to imagine what success looks like, or they simply don't know where to begin.
Interestingly, leaders often spend the greatest amount of time describing the destination, while their teams are asking rather different questions. Why can't we keep doing it this way? What happens to my role? What do I need to do tomorrow morning? Those questions deserve answers too, because they shape whether people feel able to move forwards.
Perhaps the most important aspect of leading change, though, is recognising that your own behaviour sets the emotional temperature for everyone else.
Teams watch leaders remarkably closely during periods of uncertainty. They notice how decisions are made, whether priorities change every few days, whether difficult conversations are avoided and whether actions consistently match words. Leadership credibility is built far more through those everyday moments than through carefully prepared speeches.
If you remain calm, thoughtful and consistent, that steadiness has a habit of spreading through the team. If you're visibly reactive or constantly changing course without explanation, that spreads just as quickly.
None of this removes the pressure of leading change. Creating clarity while you're still working through uncertainty yourself is one of the more demanding parts of leadership. It can feel lonely, messy and occasionally as though everyone expects certainty from you before you've had a chance to gather all the information yourself.
Over the years I've noticed that organisations navigate change most successfully when people understand what's happening, why it matters, what they need to focus on next and feel able to ask questions along the way.
People don't expect perfection from their leaders. They expect leadership.
If you're leading a team through change and this feels familiar, it's exactly the sort of challenge we explore inside the Leadership Accelerator Premium. We work on the behaviours that create clarity under pressure, strengthen communication and help leaders guide change without feeling they have to carry every decision themselves.
You'll also find more practical leadership insights, together with the How to Lead podcast and other resources, at waterfallhill.co.uk.
