Why Organisational Change Meets Resistance: What Leaders Often Miss

By Ishanki de Mel

Why does well-planned organisational change so often hit a wall of resistance? Following a recent ODNE Coaching Petal webinar with Megan De Klerk, this article explores the common psychological dynamics rarely captured in change plans – from timeline mismatches to unacknowledged loss – and how curiosity can bridge the distance between leadership intent and staff reality.

She had spent months preparing to deliver significant organisational change. After building the case, debating with other leaders, and working through her own doubts, she genuinely believed in the proposal. But the wider response was not what she expected. Managers kept saying they were too busy. Questions felt like challenges. Meetings created frustration instead of momentum. 

This pattern will feel familiar to many. At our Coaching Petal webinar, Megan De Klerk, a Certified Business Psychologist and the Founder and Director of Think Curious, described delivering change to 36,000 people with 800 stakeholders. It took six months longer than it should have, with managers repeatedly pushing back, saying “I don’t have time!”. 

Here’s what helped — rather than pushing forward with what she believed needed to happen, she got curious about what was actually happening for those teams and stakeholders. Once she understood what they were experiencing, and linked the change to that, more people came onboard and progress followed.

When we try to drive change on our own terms, we tend to miss what’s actually happening for the people around us. There are a few patterns that come up, time and again, that are worth paying attention to. 

The timeline gap

By the time leaders are ready to communicate a change, they’ve usually been living with it for months. Those hearing it for the first time are only just starting that journey; their emotional response is very different to the leaders and those driving change, who feel ready to move towards the finish line. 

Most of the time, people simply need time to catch up and process things, emotionally as much as logistically.

Acknowledge the loss, not just the gain

Organisations tend to communicate almost exclusively about what people stand to gain from a change, because that’s the energising part. But Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ work reminds us that we experience loss before we experience gain. Grief, anxiety, and disorientation are a normal part of any significant change. Our feelings can shape our decisions and responses more than we’d like to admit, as Jonathan Haidt’s research on emotion and decision-making shows. If we cannot name what we are losing, whether that's a way of working, an individual or team identity, or a sense of purpose, it's harder to label and regulate the complex emotions that arise, which eventually help us accept change. 

So, making space to acknowledge the loss and emotions can be a helpful first step towards bringing people along.

What’s underneath the resistance?

When individuals and teams become resistant to change, it helps to get curious about what’s underneath that, because resistance is a response, not the root cause. It often signals identity loss, a threat to how a person or team understands themselves and their place in the organisation. That loss often goes unnamed because it doesn’t fit neatly into a project timeline or plan, but it shows up anyway, as stubbornness, withdrawal, or impulsive reactions. 

Start by asking what identities are changing, and how you might maintain them so that people can continue to function as a team. Sometimes, it can be as simple as explicitly naming what isn’t changing.

The models aren’t the problem, it’s how they are applied.

We naturally reach for models and frameworks when trying to bridge these gaps. But as Abraham Maslow observed, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Models and frameworks are genuinely useful in the right context. The problem arises when we treat them as linear solutions to what is fundamentally an iterative, emotional process. 

The wisdom is in having a range of tools, staying flexible in when and how we use them, and recognising that there will always be things no model can predict or surface. That’s where our curiosity and genuine connection with others become vitally important.

Starting with ourselves

As leaders, coaches, and OD practitioners, our own assumptions, anxieties, and relationship with change shape how we show up for others. All of the patterns described here, the timeline gap, the unacknowledged loss, and the resistance we misread, can be just as present in us as in the people we’re trying to work with. 

The webinar was a helpful reminder that meeting people where they are requires knowing where we are, too.