Before You Ask Your Team to Change, Ask Yourself This

There's an old saying about workplace change: “People don't like change.”
Not true. People continually evolve — they move house, get new phones, try new hobbies.

What they resist is being asked to adapt when they feel unprepared.

Much of that "unpreparedness" is not the team's fault. It is because leaders are skipping through some of the simplest check-offs before unveiling something new.

Why Change Efforts Stumble

Think back to the last major change you saw in an organisation. Did the change fail because the idea was terrible? Probably not.

The truth is this: just 34% of change programs succeed, according to Employment Hero. Since the pandemic, 95% of companies have been seeking new ways of transforming and interacting with customers — but again, most are unable to successfully deliver change.

Most change efforts fail because:

• Clarity is missing – people don’t know why it’s happening.
• Confidence is low – they don’t believe they’ll have the skills or support.
• Capacity is stretched – it’s just “one more thing” on top of ten other priorities.
• Communication dries up – the launch announcement is made… and then silence.

Sound familiar?

The Stool Nobody Wants to Sit On

Effective change is like the four-legged stool of clarity, confidence, capacity, and communication.

If you're minus one leg, the stool is unstable. If you're minus two, nobody wants to be sitting on that stool.

Which is why the statistics speak for themselves:

• More than 80% of organisations still manage change top-down — that's why two-thirds of HR leaders aren't satisfied with the speed of change.

• 74% claim they are ready to change, but when the change is initiated from the top, only one-quarter actually adjust how they work.

However, leaders tend to push ahead assuming the team will adjust before ascertaining if the legs are solid.

A Quick Taste: 2 Questions Worth Asking

Before your next change, try pausing on these:

1. Can I clearly explain why this change is happening in one or two sentences?

2. Do I know what I could pause or stop to give my team space to adapt?

If you hesitated on either, you may be walking into trouble.

The Leader Self-Check Survey

Before you ask your team to adapt, check your own readiness first.

We’ve created a quick Leader Self-Check Survey — just 8 simple questions that give you a readiness score and show whether your team is:

• Strongly prepared,

• Moderately prepared, or

• At risk of resistance.

👉 Leader Self-Check Survey 

Once you’ve completed it, you’ll unlock our Team Reflection Template — a 15-minute guide and activity designed to help your team share what’s working, where they feel stretched, and what will help them adapt with confidence.