Leadership and Human Behaviour in Transformation

01

Why is human behaviour so often the missing piece in transformation?

I've been working on transformation for over 20 years, and I keep seeing the same challenge: the human side is often the weakest part of the process.

Technology evolves incredibly fast, but people don't change at the same pace. We have emotions, habits, concerns and different ways of reacting to change. And these things take time.

One of the first challenges is that leaders and decision-makers are often much further along in their own change journey. They've been thinking about the transformation, discussing it and preparing for it for months, sometimes years. But for the people impacted, the journey may only just be starting. We often forget that difference.

There's also an economic reality. Technology projects are already expensive, and when organizations need to make trade-offs, the human side is often where they try to save money. It's less tangible, harder to measure, and therefore harder to justify.

Investing in change management means additional costs upfront, while the benefits, such as faster adoption or less resistance, are not always easy to quantify. And giving people more time to adapt can also mean delaying a project, which comes at a cost.

So organizations often underestimate what it really takes to help people through change.

But the fundamental issue is that change is experienced individually. People don't all have the same concerns, motivations or interests. They don't experience the same impact, and they certainly don't move at the same speed.

Supporting that individual journey takes time, attention and resources. And these are precisely the things that are often missing from transformation plans.

I think we still tend to hope that once the technology is ready and the process is defined, people will naturally follow. But that's rarely how change works.

02

What signals do employees usually see before senior leaders realize that a transformation is going off track?

I think this is quite subtle, because people within an organization talk to each other, and there's often a filter between what's happening on the ground and what reaches senior management.

Employees pick up on things that aren't necessarily said openly. They notice body language, facial expressions, hesitation, and the conversations happening informally. They also see what's happening in everyday work: whether people are actually using the new tools or processes, or whether they're quietly going back to their old ways.

But I would argue that managers often see and hear these signals too. The difference is how they interpret them.

As leaders, we have a natural tendency to dismiss these signals, to question their validity, or simply to label them as resistance to change.

And that's where I think we miss something important.

Resistance doesn't come from nowhere. There's always a reason behind it. It may be emotional, practical, or linked to something we haven't fully understood. But whatever the reason, we need to be curious enough to explore it rather than dismiss it.

And one of the most effective ways to do that is surprisingly simple: take the time to listen.

In my experience, just listening can resolve half the problem. People want to feel heard. They want to know that their concerns are being taken seriously. That doesn't mean we have to agree with everything or necessarily change our decisions. But simply acknowledging what they're experiencing can help them move forward.

And listening reveals very real operational issues that management hasn't anticipated.

For example, a new process may look perfectly efficient from a management perspective, but in reality, it could be adding 15 or 30 minutes to someone's daily workload. Multiply that across a team, and suddenly what looks like resistance may actually be a legitimate problem with how the change has been designed.

So for me, the early warning sign isn't necessarily resistance itself. It's when we stop being curious about what's behind it.

That's often when a transformation starts to go off track.

03

How do you distinguish genuine resistance to change from legitimate feedback that leadership should actually listen to?

I would actually challenge the distinction a little. What do we mean by genuine resistance? Does that imply that some resistance is legitimate and some isn't?

Going back to my earlier point, I think the first step is to listen and understand what's really happening. Of course, we need to look at the facts. Sometimes people raise very real operational issues that need to be addressed.

But not everything is about facts. Change is also deeply emotional.

I often refer to the SCARF model, developed by David Rock, which looks at five dimensions of our social experience: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness.

What I find particularly useful about this framework is that it helps us look beyond what people are saying and explore what's really driving their reactions.

For example, someone may say they're struggling with a new system. But perhaps the real issue isn't the technology itself. Maybe they feel they're losing autonomy, or that their expertise and status are being challenged. Or perhaps the change means leaving behind a team or a community where they felt they belonged.

These concerns may not always be expressed openly, and they aren't necessarily easy to identify.

So rather than trying to separate genuine resistance from legitimate feedback, I think the real question is: What's behind this reaction, and what can we learn from it?

That requires curiosity, listening and sometimes the ability to have conversations that go beyond the surface. And that's not always easy. It requires skills that not every manager has had the opportunity to develop.

For me, the goal isn't to eliminate resistance. It's to understand it well enough to know what needs to be addressed, whether that's a practical problem, an emotional concern, or both.

04

How do you create genuine ownership of a transformation rather than simple compliance with it?

For me, there's no secret: you need to involve people.

That means creating opportunities for dialogue, listening to their concerns, and making them feel that they're part of the process. Change is always more difficult when it's imposed. Nobody likes being forced into something or feeling they have no control over what's happening. And I think, as leaders, we can all relate to that.

But I also think we need to distinguish between different types of change, because not every transformation requires the same level of human involvement.

Let me give you a simple example.

Imagine you want people to recycle more in the workplace, so you introduce recycling bins. The technology or infrastructure is there, but people still need to change their habits. They need to understand what to do, why it matters, and adopt a new behaviour. So you need to support that change.

Now imagine you install automatic lighting in meeting rooms. The lights switch on and off when people enter or leave. In this case, the change is primarily technical. People don't really need to change their behaviour because the system does the work for them.

So one of the first questions I would ask is: How much does the success of this transformation actually depend on people changing their behaviour?

And the more it depends on behavioural change, the more important it becomes to involve people in the process.

Of course, this becomes more complicated when we're talking about major organizational transformations, particularly restructuring.

In these situations, not everything can be shared or opened up for discussion. Some decisions are confidential, and some outcomes may already be determined. But that doesn't mean people can't be involved. Employee representatives, for example, can play an important role in the discussions.

And this brings me to something I think is often misunderstood: transparency.

We tend to associate transparency with sharing the final decisions or outcomes. But in times of uncertainty, what people often need most is transparency about the process.

For example, during a restructuring, you may not be able to tell employees immediately which positions will be affected. But you can explain how the process will work, how long it's expected to take, when they can expect updates, and what information can or cannot be shared at each stage.

You might say, "We're starting a restructuring process that we expect to take six months. We'll provide monthly updates on our progress and share what we can as decisions are made."

That doesn't remove the uncertainty, but it gives people some clarity about what to expect.

And I think that's important because ownership doesn't necessarily mean that everyone gets to make the decisions or that everyone agrees with them.

It's about giving people a voice, helping them understand the process, and allowing them to influence what they genuinely can.

That's how we move beyond simply asking people to comply with change and start creating the conditions for them to engage with it.

05

What leadership behaviour can undermine a transformation surprisingly quickly?

From my experience, it's the lack of listening and empathy.

As I mentioned earlier, listening doesn't mean that we have to agree with every concern or address every point of resistance. But we do need to hear people and show them that we're genuinely listening.

I've often seen leaders dismiss concerns and simply say, "Well, this is how we're doing things now. You have to use the new system, and that's it."

And I think that's one of the worst things you can do during a transformation.

Because when people feel that their concerns are being ignored, they disengage. They may comply with the decision, but that doesn't mean they've accepted the change.

As leaders, we sometimes forget that listening isn't about giving people everything they ask for. It's about acknowledging what they're experiencing, even when we cannot change the decision.

People need to feel heard. I really cannot emphasize that enough.

And sometimes, the simple act of listening can make a much bigger difference than we realize.

06

Beyond training completion and adoption statistics, how should leaders know whether change has really taken hold?

I love this question, because I think the question itself reveals part of the problem.

We're talking about training completion rates, adoption statistics and KPIs, but these are mainly process indicators.

As a leader, what really matters to me isn't how many people completed the training or even what percentage adopted the new system. What matters is whether we've achieved the business outcome we were expecting.

And I think this is where organizations often make a fundamental mistake: we're not always clear enough about what we actually want to achieve.

In a restructuring, for example, the objective may be to reduce overhead costs or a certain number of positions. That's relatively straightforward to measure.

But when implementing a new system, things can be much less clear.

Let me give you an example from my own experience.

I worked in an organization where we replaced the learning management system. The real reason for the change was that the existing system was becoming obsolete, and maintaining it would become increasingly expensive.

That was a perfectly valid business reason. But for individual employees, it didn't necessarily mean much. They weren't particularly concerned about IT maintenance costs.

And what often happens in these situations is that organizations try to present the change as a revolution, when in reality, it's simply a necessary evolution.

There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we need to replace technology to remain efficient and control costs.

But if we're expecting people to fundamentally change their behaviours, then we need to create value that makes sense beyond the technical or financial justification.

In the case of the learning system, perhaps the opportunity is to make learning more engaging, introduce more video-based content, or improve the overall learning experience.

And then the question becomes: are people more engaged in their learning? Are they retaining more information? Are they applying what they've learned more effectively?

Ultimately, are they better trained and making fewer mistakes in their daily work?

Those are the outcomes I would want to measure, using relevant indicators to understand whether the transformation is actually delivering value.

Because adoption tells you whether people are using something. It doesn't necessarily tell you whether the change has made anything better.

And for me, that's the real measure of a successful transformation.