The Human Side of Change

Most change plans are built for movement. 

A timeline. A message. A launch date. A new structure. A clearer way forward. 

But change does not land on a team as a single, shared experience. It is filtered through each person’s expectations, motivations, relationships, and sense of what they need in order to succeed. That is why two people can hear the same announcement and respond in completely different ways. 

People are not simply receiving information when change comes along. They are interpreting the information and calculating risk. Trying to understand what the change means for their role, relationships, success, and stability. That is why communication alone is not enough.  

Someone who seemed supportive in the first meeting begins to ask sharper questions. Another team member goes quiet. A manager nods along, then delays decisions. A high performer, who usually adapts quickly, begins resisting almost everything. It is tempting to call this resistance to change, but often, it is not. Understanding how to meet people where they are can help. 

Prosci’s ADKAR model reinforces that organizational change requires individual change, and that people need awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement to move through change successfully (Prosci). And the tricky thing about people is we aren’t all the same. Even at Birkman, we’ve had millions of assessments taken, and no one person has received the same result.  

Change is hard for people, and organizations. And once change occurs, sustaining a new status quo can be just as hard. McKinsey’s research has shown how difficult transformation is to sustain, with less than one-third of respondents saying their organizations improved performance and sustained those improvements over time (McKinsey & Company). Thus, raising two important questions for leaders: how do we approach change and how do we ensure it sustains over time?  

Change Disrupts More Than the Work 

Volatility changes the rhythm of work. 

Priorities shift. Decisions are revised. What felt settled last month may no longer apply under new circumstances. 

For leaders, this may look like a necessary adaptation. For employees, it may feel like the ground keeps moving before they have found their footing. 

That distinction matters. 

A person may not be resisting the new direction but trying to regain enough stability to perform well inside it. When leaders only explain what is changing, they may miss what people are quietly losing: confidence, predictability, familiar relationships, or a clear sense of how to succeed.  

For some, they thrive without systems and can be quite flexible. But for others, that’s not the case. We see it in our own Birkman Reports all the time through our Insistence Score. Depending on the person, structure is essential or can be seen as limiting, but which you prefer isn’t always visible. 

People Experience Change Differently 

With a lack of structure, uncertainty arises. Uncertainty is not experienced equally, especially when it comes to navigating uncertainty at work 

One employee may hear an announcement and feel energized because possibilities open up, and a new challenge feels motivating. Another hears the same message and starts scanning for risk. 

What will be expected of me? 

Will I still be effective? 

Who can I trust? 

What happens if I cannot adapt fast enough? 

This reveals the human aspect that motivation is not uniform among individuals. McKinsey reports that managers and employees are “equally split among five forms of impact”: society, customer, company/shareholders, team, and self.” (Mckinsey) With each of these five forms impacting people differently, it can be challenging to identify how uncertainty manifests in each individual.  

Birkman’s perspective can be useful here because The Birkman Method’s insights don’t stop at visible behaviors but go deeper to uncover motivational drivers for respondents. Birkman describes Usual Behavior as how someone typically shows up when comfortable and considers these behaviors their strengths; Needs are the underlying expectations that help people stay motivated, productive, and satisfied to continue working in their Usual Behavior; and when those needs go unmet, Stress Behavior can emerge, which can lead to turnover, burnout, and unproductive use of strengths (Birkman).  

That is the insight leaders need during change. 

The question is not, “Who is adaptable and who is resistant?” 

The better question is, “What does this person need in order to move forward with confidence under these newfound circumstances?” 

Leaders Can Misread the Signals 

Complexity makes behavior easy to misread. 

In a complex environment (i.e., any environment with people), people are not responding only to the official change. They carry years of experience, their own expectations, and different motivational drivers that help them respond to shifting priorities, team dynamics, and workload pressure. 

So, what you see as hesitation may not be hesitation at all. 

It may be a request for clarity. 

Frustration may not be negativity. 

It may be the first visible sign that something important has gone unmet. 

Silence may not mean agreement. 

It may mean the person has not found a safe way to say what still feels unresolved. 

This is where leaders often lose vital information. They look for buy-in when what they really need is self-awareness and understanding. 

Sustainable Change Requires Human Understanding 

Ambiguity may be the most human part of change. 

It is not only that people lack answers. It is that they are making meaning from incomplete information. With everyone having differing behaviors and expectations, it can become clear that information or signals can be misconstrued. Without a personal understanding of yourself and your team members, it’s easy for these differences to cause strain when collaborating. 

Birkman helps leaders work at that level and gives them a way to understand how people perceive situations, what they need to stay engaged, and how stress may appear when those needs are not met. (Birkman) This aligns with Birkman’s broader mission: the goal is not to simply explain workplace behavior, but to reveal the human dynamics underneath it and give people the tools to, as we say, “See People Differently.” 

That kind of understanding does not remove volatility, uncertainty, complexity, or ambiguity. 

It changes how leaders move through them. 

They can create clarity without pretending everything is certain. 

They can listen without immediately defending the plan. 

They can notice when behavior is communicating something words have not yet said. 

Change fails because everyone hears the plan. 

It succeeds when people can find themselves inside it.