Addressing Team Concerns About Change Initiatives

Your Team Resisting Continuous Improvement This is one of the most common leadership challenges I see inside organizations today. You introduce a change initiative or improvement program and instead of excitement, you’re met with resistance, indifference, or quiet compliance. Let’s talk about what’s really going on and how to navigate it. Most teams aren’t resisting change because they’re lazy or negative. They’re resisting because they’re overwhelmed. They’ve seen process improvement programs come and go. Each one demands more energy, more reporting, more meetings while their day-to-day pressures remain untouched. So resistance shows up like this: ▪️“We don’t have time for this.” ▪️“What we’re doing now is working fine.” ▪️Passive attendance in improvement meetings(no follow-through). ▪️Quiet reversion to old habits after the hype fades. All these sound familiar? Well, to break this cycle, you have to stop selling the vision and start solving real pain. Here’s how: → Start with their pain, not your plan Ask: “What’s frustrating you the most right now?” Build your first improvement around that. Solve something that slows them down today, not next quarter. → Keep it micro Forget transformation. Focus on a small win. Ask: “What’s one task we could make easier this week?” Success creates momentum. People buy into what works. → Make it theirs If you’re the only one pushing, it’s not sustainable. Invite the team to identify pain points, test ideas, and lead change. When it’s their idea, the energy is different. → Celebrate learning and not just success Teams need to know that failed experiments won’t be punished. If a trial doesn’t work, ask: “What did we learn?” That’s what builds a culture of real improvement. When teams own improvement: ▫️They become faster at spotting and fixing issues. ▫️Innovation happens closer to the work. ▫️Change doesn’t have to come from the top. It just happens from within. But when they don’t: ▪️Progress stalls. ▪️Leaders spend energy enforcing instead of empowering. ▪️The culture becomes resistant, not resilient. And if you can build teams that lean into improvement, you are able to: 📍Position yourself as a leader who drives results through people. 📍Reduce friction in delivery. 📍Increase the long-term capacity and agility of your team. But if you're always the one pushing change onto people, you risk being seen as the “process person” and not the strategic leader. Here's something to remember Don’t sell continuous improvement. Co-create it. Start small. Start real. Make it theirs. 👉 What are the resistance patterns you see and what’s one small improvement you could adopt?

Most change initiatives don't fail because of the change that's happening, they fail because of how the change is communicated. I've watched brilliant restructurings collapse and transformative acquisitions unravel… Not because the plan was flawed, but because leaders were more focused on explaining the "what" and "why" than on how they were addressing the fears and concerns of the people on their team. People don't resist change because they don't understand it. They resist because they haven't been given a compelling story about their role in it. This is where the Venture Scape framework becomes invaluable. The framework maps your team's journey through five distinct stages of change: The Dream - When you envision something better and need to spark belief The Leap - When you commit to action and need to build confidence The Fight - When you face resistance and need to inspire bravery The Climb - When progress feels slow and you need to fuel endurance The Arrival - When you achieve success and need to honor the journey The key is knowing exactly where your team is in this journey and tailoring your communication accordingly. If you're announcing a merger during the Leap stage, don't deliver a message about endurance. Your team needs a moment of commitment–stories and symbols that anchor them in the decision and clarify the values that remain unchanged. You can’t know where your team is on this spectrum without talking to them. Don’t just guess. Have real conversations. Listen to their specific concerns. Then craft messages that speak directly to those fears while calling on their courage. Your job isn't just to announce change, but to walk beside your team and help your team understand what role they play in the story at each stage. #LeadershipCommunication #Illuminate

Your team just told you they're burned out. What you say in the next 30 seconds will either build trust or destroy it forever. Most leaders think trust is built through big gestures and annual reviews. But after coaching hundreds of executives, I've learned the truth: trust lives in those split-second moments when someone brings you a problem. Here's what happens when your team raises concerns: What breaks trust: ❌ Dismissing their reality → "Everyone's busy right now" → Translation: Your wellbeing doesn't matter ❌ Making it about you → "I worked 80 hours last week too" → Translation: Your struggle isn't valid ❌ Using guilt as motivation → "We need team players here" → Translation: Speaking up makes you disloyal Instead of defaulting to defensiveness, here’s how we guide leaders to respond—using the CHANGES framework from Conversational Intelligence®: 🤝 C - Co-Creating (Shift from Excluding to Including) → "Thank you for trusting me with this - let's solve it together" → Makes them part of the solution, not the problem 🤝 H - Humanizing (Shift from Judging to Appreciating) → "Your honesty takes courage and helps our whole team" → Demonstrate respect for their contribution 🤝 A - Aspiring (Shift from Limiting to Expanding Aspirations) → "This feedback helps us create the culture we want" → Connect their concern to bigger organizational goals 🤝 N - Navigating (Shift from Withholding to Sharing) → "Let me share what I'm seeing and hear your perspective" → Create transparency around challenges and solutions 🤝 G - Generativity (Shift from Knowing to Discovering) → "What ideas do you have that we haven't tried yet?" → Reward their insights and encourage innovation 🤝 E - Expressing (Shift from Dictating to Developing) → "How can we empower you to make decisions about your workload?" → Inspire them to own solutions 🤝 S - Synchronizing (Shift from Criticizing to Celebrating) → "Here's what we're changing because you spoke up" → Celebrate their courage and close the feedback loop The hidden cost of getting this wrong: – Your best people stop bringing you problems – Issues explode instead of getting solved early – Innovation dies because psychological safety doesn't exist The payoff of getting this right: – Teams that come to you first when things go wrong, not last. – Projects move faster because the sticky points come up early. – Conflict fades as respect and tolerance goes up. Your next conversation is your next opportunity to choose trust over control. Start with one letter that comes most easily and work your way through CHANGES… one each day. P.S. Which CHANGES element do you need most right now? 🔔 Follow me, Jill Avey, for more leadership insights that move careers forward ♻️ Share to help leaders build stronger teams

A long-time client has asked me to put together a short talk on why most change initiatives fail — and what to do about it. The first concept I’ll introduce is this.... Too many leaders focus on the change itself—the new org chart, the new strategy, the new electronic health record system—but forget about the emotional impact of the transition. People don’t necessarily resist change. They resist loss. 🥀 A loss of control 🥀 A loss of identity 🥀 A loss of certainty Here are 3 ways to help people navigate the loss of control, identity, and certainty that change can bring: OVER-COMMUNICATE (THEN COMMUNICATE AGAIN) Uncertainty breeds anxiety. Share updates even when there’s no news. This will reduce speculation and gossip. Be honest about what’s known, what’s unknown, and what’s evolving. GIVE CONTROL BACK IN SMALL WAYS When people feel powerless, even small choices restore a sense of agency. Let them decide how to implement changes in their teams and let them contribute ideas to shape the transition. ANCHOR ON A BIGGER PURPOSE People need to see the “why” behind the change. Here’s an example of what that could sound like using my above reference to a new electronic health record system. Doctors may resist the implementation of a system like this because it feels like more bureaucracy. Instead of focusing on efficiency, leaders should focus on the bigger purpose: “This new system isn’t just about data entry—it’s ultimately about saving lives. With faster access to patient histories, we can provide better care. When patients need you the most, you’ll have the right information at your fingertips.” When leaders help their employees process emotions and see the bigger picture, they will have more success implementing their changes.

When I was a logistics director, we decided to adjust our warehouse layout. Our customers demanded new value-added services like having products ticketed with custom price tags. If we lengthened and restructured the conveyors, our warehouse technicians would spend less time pushing product carts around and instead could use the time working on the new services. 😬 When we first talked to the team, I was surprised to see and hear their reluctance about the proposed change. After digging deeper, I learned the reasons behind their concerns. We had emphasized the savings in labor hours so much that they wondered if the technology would eventually replace them. I empathized with this fear because I remembered what it was like to be an hourly employee trying to make ends meet. Any threat to job security was a threat to a person’s livelihood. Once we understood this concern, we reiterated how the saved labor hours would transfer over from one type of work to another. There was no automated solution to ticketing products or putting special labels on boxes. Technology couldn’t solve these tasks, so the new layout would allow us to shift labor hours from picking product to doing value-added services. The explanation eased their worries, but they had another concern. 😬 The team was also nervous about the expense of the warehouse modification because they thought it would eat into their wages. I understood how they concluded this because they weren’t responsible for the departmental budget and weren’t privy to how it worked. Many of them hadn’t yet received their annual raises, which added to their worries. The warehouse manager explained that the budget for the project was separate and unrelated to their wages. He reassured them that their pay was intact and raises would carry on as planned. Our initial meeting to communicate the change ended up taking much longer than expected, but the extra time was worth it. The warehouse team left the meeting knowing we heard and understood them. We left knowing they were on board with the change because of it. 🚢 If a change is in process and red flags are raised, stop the ship and correct the course. It’s better to slow the process than to speed the failure. #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #womenleaders #womeninleadership #servantleadership #christianwomenleaders #faithandwork #sacredwork