TL;DR: Organizations can plan change carefully and still struggle with implementation if they overlook how people experience the transition. Leaders can help by creating clarity, involving people where appropriate, providing the support they need to adapt and reinforcing progress along the way.
Change is part of organizational life. A new strategy, system, structure, leader or way of working can all require people to adjust what they do and, sometimes, how they think about their role.
We tend to spend a lot of time planning the change itself. What needs to happen? Who is responsible? What’s the timeline? What resources do we need? Those are important questions, but they don’t necessarily tell us whether people are ready to work differently when the time comes.
That’s where leadership becomes particularly important. Implementing change involves managing the work while also helping people make the transition from what they know today to what will be expected tomorrow.
Managing Change and Leading People Through It
Project management and change management are related, but they solve different parts of the problem.
- Project management focuses on the work required to implement a change, including timelines, resources, responsibilities and deliverables.
- Change management focuses on helping people understand, adopt and work effectively within the change.
An organization can execute the technical side of a project extremely well and still have difficulty if the people expected to use the new process, structure or system don’t understand it or aren’t prepared for it.
For leaders, this means paying attention to both. It’s not enough to announce what is changing and assume people will move immediately from the old way of working to the new one.
Change Happens Faster Than Transition
William Bridges made a useful distinction between change and transition. Change is the external event: the new role, system, structure or strategy. Transition is the internal process people go through as they adjust to it.
His transition model describes three broad stages:
- Ending, Losing and Letting Go: People recognize that something familiar is ending. Even when they understand the reason for the change, they may still be frustrated about what they’re losing.
- The Neutral Zone: The old way is disappearing, but the new way isn’t yet comfortable. Roles, processes and expectations may still be taking shape, which can make this stage feel uncertain.
- The New Beginning: People begin to understand the new direction, develop confidence and see how they fit within it.
People don’t necessarily move through these stages at the same pace. A leader who has spent six months planning a change may already be excited about what’s next, while an employee hearing about it for the first time is still trying to understand what they’re losing. Remembering that difference can help leaders avoid becoming frustrated when people aren’t immediately as enthusiastic about the change as they are.
Resistance Can Tell You Something
It’s tempting to see resistance as a problem to overcome. Sometimes it is. But resistance can also provide useful information about what people don’t understand, what they’re concerned about or what leaders may have overlooked. Someone questioning a new process may be protecting an old habit, or they may understand an operational issue that wasn’t considered when the process was designed. An employee who seems hesitant may not oppose the direction at all. They may simply be unsure whether they have the skills to succeed in the new environment.
Leaders don’t have to agree with every concern, and not every decision can be made by consensus. But listening before dismissing resistance can help uncover issues earlier and give leaders a better understanding of what people need in order to move forward.
Four Ways Leaders Can Support Change
There isn’t one communication plan or change model that will make every transition easy. There are, however, a few things leaders can consistently pay attention to.
Communicate with Context
People need to know more than what’s changing. They need enough context to understand why the change is happening, what it means for them and what is expected next. That doesn’t mean leaders need to have every answer before communicating. During significant change, some questions genuinely won’t have answers yet. Saying, “Here’s what we know today, here’s what we’re still working through, and here’s when we’ll update you again” can be more useful than waiting for perfect certainty.
Communication also needs to continue after the initial announcement. Leaders have often been discussing a change much longer than the rest of the organization, so what feels repetitive to them may still be relatively new to everyone else.
Involve People Where It Makes Sense
Not every change can be collaborative from the beginning. Sometimes a strategic or operational decision has already been made. Even then, there may be opportunities to involve employees in how the change is implemented.
The people closest to the work can often identify practical challenges, unintended consequences and opportunities that aren’t obvious from the leadership table. Involving them can improve implementation while also giving people some ownership over how the new way of working takes shape.
Provide the Support to Work Differently
Telling someone that their role or process is changing doesn’t automatically give them the capability to succeed in the new environment. They may need training, coaching, new tools, clearer decision rights or simply time to practise.
This is particularly important when the change asks leaders themselves to behave differently. A new organizational structure, for example, may require a manager to delegate more, work across departments differently or make decisions at a different level than they did before. Those are leadership changes as much as structural ones.
Reinforce Progress
Change can lose momentum after the initial launch, particularly when the old way of working remains easier or more familiar. Leaders need to continue reinforcing what’s expected and paying attention to whether new behaviours are actually taking hold.
Early wins can help because they make the change more tangible. If a new process is reducing delays, a different meeting structure is improving decisions or a new approach is helping teams collaborate more effectively, talk about it. People are more likely to see progress when leaders help connect the change to what is happening in the organization.
Leading Change Requires Leaders to Adapt Too
One of the harder parts of leading change is recognizing that leaders aren’t standing outside of it. They’re going through the transition as well.
A leader may be asked to support a decision they didn’t make, communicate something they don’t yet have complete clarity on or change a way of working that has been successful for years. Their team will be watching how they respond.
That doesn’t mean leaders have to pretend every change is easy or that they agree with every detail. It does mean they need to work through their own concerns well enough to provide the clarity and consistency their people need.
At X5, leading change is one of the capabilities we include within Leading the Organization. As leaders take on broader responsibility, their role increasingly involves helping other people navigate uncertainty while continuing to move the organization forward.
Change Isn’t Only About Technology
Artificial intelligence is one obvious example of change organizations are navigating today, but it isn’t the only one. Growth, acquisitions, succession, restructuring, new leadership, changing customer expectations and new systems can all require people to adjust. The specific change will continue to evolve. The leadership challenge underneath it is much more consistent: helping people understand where they’re going, what it means for them and how they can successfully move from the current state to what comes next.
Organizations that do this well don’t eliminate uncertainty or resistance. They create enough clarity, involvement and support for people to work through it.
Developing Leaders Who Can Lead Through Change
Leading through change requires communication, judgment, adaptability and the ability to understand how different people are experiencing the transition. Those capabilities become increasingly important as leaders take on greater responsibility.
X5 Management works with leaders and leadership teams through Leadership Development Coaching and Executive Coaching to strengthen their ability to lead people through growth, transition and change.
Preparing your leaders or organization for change? Let’s talk.
About the Author
Kris Schinke, MBA, is VP Integration and a Leadership Coach with X5 Management. She works with leaders and teams to strengthen leadership capability, improve communication and turn development into practical action. Her coaching focuses on helping leaders build greater self-awareness, strengthen how they lead others and develop the capabilities they need as their responsibilities grow.
