How to Reduce Resistance to Change Without Damaging Trust

Of all the challenges that come with leading organizational change, resistance might be the most misunderstood.

The conventional wisdom is to treat it like a problem to solve. Communicate more clearly. Reinforce expectations. Hold people accountable for adapting quickly. And sure, those things can produce compliance in the short term.

But compliance and commitment are not the same thing.

People can follow instructions while remaining uncertain, disengaged, or quietly skeptical beneath the surface. They do what’s required, but they haven’t really bought in. And when that happens, change becomes fragile. It needs constant reinforcement to stay alive, and the burden of keeping it moving falls entirely on leadership.

If you want change that actually sticks, you have to start by understanding what resistance is actually telling you.

Resistance Is Usually a Signal, Not a Problem

Most people don’t resist change because they’re stubborn or unwilling to grow. They resist because something about the change feels unclear, unsafe, or misaligned with their ability to succeed.

Underneath most resistance, you’ll find one or more of these:

• Uncertainty about what’s actually expected of them
• Confusion about how their role or priorities are shifting
• Real concern about workload and capacity
• A loss of confidence in the familiar ways of doing things
• Past change efforts that didn’t go well and left some scar tissue
• Mixed messages coming from different leaders

The tricky part is that these concerns rarely get voiced directly. People might not have the language to articulate what they’re feeling, or they might not feel safe raising it. So instead of speaking up, they go quiet. Teams move more slowly. Questions increase. Engagement dips. Leaders sense hesitation even when everyone appears cooperative on the surface.

That hesitation isn’t failure. It’s information. It means people are still working through what this change actually means for them.

Pushing Harder Often Makes It Worse

When resistance shows up, the instinct is usually to increase clarity and urgency. Restate the reasons for the change. Emphasize the timeline. Make the expectations crystal clear.

Those instincts aren’t wrong exactly, but the timing matters a lot.

When you add pressure at the exact moment people need space to process, you don’t resolve the resistance. You just drive it underground. People stop raising concerns because it doesn’t feel worth it, or safe. They protect themselves by disengaging quietly rather than pushing back openly.

Now you have a bigger problem, because the resistance is still there. It’s just invisible.

Leaders may assume the change has been accepted, when in reality adoption is incomplete and quietly stalling.

Trust Is What Makes Change Actually Sustainable

At the core of all of this is trust.

Trust is what determines how people respond when things are uncertain. When it’s strong, people are willing to lean into change even when the outcome isn’t fully clear yet. They believe leadership will support them and course correct if needed. When it’s shaky, even a well-designed change initiative can trigger hesitation.

And trust isn’t built through announcements or all-hands meetings. It’s built through consistent behaviour over time.

Leaders strengthen trust when they:

• Acknowledge uncertainty honestly instead of projecting false confidence
• Create space for questions without getting defensive
• Follow through on what they say they’ll do
• Adjust expectations when capacity is genuinely stretched
• Stay present and available during the hard middle stretch of a transition

Trust doesn’t eliminate resistance. But it changes the nature of it. When people trust the environment they’re in, resistance can be expressed openly and addressed constructively rather than festering under the surface.

How Leaders Show Up Matters More Than the Strategy

People watch their leaders closely during change. Not just what they say, but how they respond to pressure, uncertainty, and feedback. That behaviour shapes how safe people feel moving forward.

When leaders show up calm, thoughtful, and consistent, people feel more confident. When leaders seem rushed, reactive, or distracted, uncertainty spreads quickly.

This doesn’t mean leaders need to have all the answers. In fact, pretending to have answers you don’t have usually backfires. What people are actually looking for is steadiness.

Something as simple as “We’re still working through some of the details, and I’ll keep you updated as things develop” lands well when it’s said with sincerity. It signals honesty and reliability, which is often more reassuring than a polished answer.

People don’t expect perfection from their leaders. They expect steadiness. Those are very different things.

When Leaders Aren’t Aligned, Resistance Fills the Gap

One of the most common and underappreciated sources of resistance is inconsistency among leaders.

When people receive different messages from different leaders about what the change means, what the priorities are, or how urgently things need to move, they freeze. They don’t know which direction to follow, so they hesitate. And that hesitation looks a lot like resistance.

When leaders share a genuine, consistent understanding of the change and communicate it in similar ways, teams feel more confident adapting. That alignment alone can reduce hesitation significantly, without any additional pressure.

But alignment doesn’t happen just because everyone nodded in the same room. It requires real conversation, space to surface concerns, and a shared approach to how the change will be led and communicated. That investment is worth making early.

You Can’t Separate Adoption From Capacity

Even when people genuinely support a change, they can struggle to adopt it if nothing else about their workload changes.

Change takes time, attention, and cognitive energy. If people are already running close to full capacity, they simply don’t have the bandwidth to integrate something new effectively, no matter how committed they are.

So what looks like resistance is sometimes just exhaustion. People doing their best with what they have, which isn’t enough to also absorb something new.

Leaders who recognize this and respond by reprioritizing work, adjusting timelines, or offering additional support aren’t lowering the bar. They’re creating the conditions where real adoption can actually happen. That’s what makes change sustainable long term.

Resistance to change doesn’t need to be eliminated. It needs to be understood.

When leaders approach it with curiosity instead of pressure, when they listen carefully, build alignment, and support their teams through the uncertainty, something shifts. Resistance becomes a source of insight rather than an obstacle. And change becomes something people move toward rather than something they’re pushed through.

That’s when it gets easier to adopt, easier to sustain, and a lot less costly for everyone involved.

Running into resistance in your organization right now?

Lisa Blanchet works with leadership teams to identify what’s underneath the resistance, strengthen alignment, and create the conditions needed for change to actually land. Book a consultation to explore how that support could help your organization move forward.