Employee resistance to change is normal, natural and hardwired into the brain, and HR professionals should stop trying to stamp it out and instead treat it as useful information, two change experts told a session at SHRM26 in Orlando, Fla., last month.
Barbara Trautlein, principal at Change Catalysts, and Darlyne Keller, president and CEO of Rock Valley Credit Union, urged the human resources audience to drop the common goal of overcoming resistance and adopt a different starting point.
“Shift the mindset from overcoming, pushing, forcing to how can we invite people to the dance of change?” Trautlein said.
That reframe matters because resistance is not a sign that something has gone wrong, she said. When neuroscientists attach electrodes to people’s brains and introduce a change, the same neuroreceptors fire as when a person feels physical pain, according to Trautlein.
“That resistance that we feel is normal and natural,” she said. “It’s literally why we survive as individuals and thrive as a species.”
HR sits in the ‘messy middle’
Trautlein, who spent the first two decades of her career as a change-management and leadership-development consultant, said HR often occupies what she called the “messy middle” of any change. HR is rarely the initiator, yet it is handed the job of communicating the change and carrying leaders and teams through it, she said.
She framed that position as an opportunity rather than a burden. When people say “I don’t get it,” “I don’t want it” or “I can’t do it,” each complaint points to a different fix, she said.
The framework she uses divides change leadership into three styles: head, heart and hands. Leading with the head means giving people the vision, strategy and business case so they understand why a change matters. Leading with the heart means addressing how a change affects people, teams and culture. Leading with the hands means supplying the tools, training and resources — and removing barriers — so people can actually do the work.
The goal, Trautlein said, is to get everyone “ready, willing and able,” so they get it, want it and can do it.
Emotions come first
Trautlein said the sequence matters because the brain processes feeling before thought. A sensation travels first to the brainstem, then to the limbic system that seats emotion, and only then to the cerebral cortex where thinking happens.
“Change is an emotional journey,” she said.
She pointed to research by Harvard’s John Kotter, author of “Leading Change” and “The Heart of Change,” to make the same case. The old model assumed people receive information, analyze it, think differently and then change, she said. Newer thinking flips that.
“It’s not information, think, change,” Trautlein said. “It’s see, feel, change.”
A CEO’s blind spot
Keller, who has spent about 25 years in financial services and some of that time in HR, said she learned the lesson the hard way. About eight years ago she became CEO of the credit union, based west of Chicago, and set a new high-tech strategy. Staff pushed back, worried that technology would cost jobs.
She said her frustration eventually gave way to a realization about her own approach.
“My strategy, my vision was totally fine,” Keller said. “It’s just how I was approaching and communicating that vision that wasn’t so great.”
Keller’s HR manager introduced her to Trautlein and the change-intelligence assessment. The results showed Keller as a strong “head” leader focused on vision and strategy, with a blind spot around the impact of change on people. The assessment also revealed that the leadership team had very few “hands” people to execute the plan.
When Keller had the whole organization take the assessment, close to two-thirds of staff scored as “heart” leaders, while the board scored as “head,” much like her. She said that gap became a communication tool with directors.
“I really wanted the board to understand what it was going to take to turn around the Titanic,” Keller said, because change would not move as fast as the head-driven leaders wanted.
The results
Keller said the credit union began its change-intelligence work in 2018, well before the pandemic, and credits it with measurable gains. She said financial progress was already showing by February 2020, before government pandemic support began flowing.
“I wouldn’t be a very good CEO of a financial institution if I didn’t talk about numbers,” Keller said.
She cited several outcomes:
- Digital conversion: In 2023, the credit union launched new online and mobile banking to its more than 15,000 members, and 90 per cent converted to the new platform within seven days.
- New branch: A new branch opened in under 90 days from lease signing to opening the doors, compared with the six months to a year Keller said such openings typically take.
- Merger: As of June 30, the credit union will acquire another credit union, a change she said the framework has helped guide.
Keller said the credit union has also won national and state awards as a great place to work, a recognition that she said “warms my HR heart.”
Where leaders sit shapes how they lead
Drawing on a global database of tens of thousands of change leaders, Trautlein said executives tend to lead from the head, while front-line staff and front-line supervisors tend to lead from the heart because change lands directly on them and their teams. Directors and managers also lean heart, she said, while the focus on equipping the hands thins out the higher up the organization a person goes.
That pattern, she said, helps explain change fatigue: leaders generate new priorities faster than organizations can absorb or execute them.
Trautlein said executives are not deliberately sabotaging change but can become unintentional blockers when they lack awareness, tools or support. That, she said, is where HR can step in — recognizing leaders’ strengths, pointing out blind spots and coaching them to communicate with empathy and clarity.
Middle managers make or break it
Keller singled out middle managers as a pivotal group, caught between strategy and execution and between executives and employees. She said they can swing too far in one direction: too much heart makes them overprotective and slows the pace of change, too much head makes them seem cold and disconnected, and too much hands overwhelms teams with tasks.
HR can coach those managers to check in on people and hold space for concerns while still keeping expectations clear and the work moving, she said.
Advice for HR
Both speakers offered practical steps for HR professionals coaching executives through change. Start with the business impact — revenue, growth, retention and expense — then give leaders a simple framework, and finally equip them to lead with tools, coaching and communication support, Keller said.
She added that clarity is the antidote to pushback. “Confusion breeds resistance,” Keller said, urging leaders to make the how and the why crystal clear, involve people early and create safe channels for feedback to travel up.
Trautlein said HR can also reframe how employees raise concerns so questions are heard as contributions rather than complaints. Behind resistance, she said, is often an unmet need.
“Behind every complaint is a request, and people complain before they commit,” Trautlein said.
She closed with a line from a leader who had absorbed the message: “Maybe it wasn’t them resisting. Maybe it was me not leading.”
Keller ended with a direct appeal to the HR audience about their role in leading change from any seat in the organization.
“You’ve got the power to change the direction of the train,” she said.
