People rarely have a binary attitude toward change. They are ambivalent, holding both pro and anti-change thoughts. An effective leader listens for an individual's own pro-change language and reflects it back, which makes them 11 times more likely to elaborate on their own reasons to change.

Given that seven out of eight major organizational changes produce no lasting results, employees who are skeptical are not being negative; they are being rational based on experience. Leaders must first acknowledge this earned skepticism to build the trust required for genuine engagement.

Resistance is critical information, not just a barrier. It often reveals a team's fear of losing something valuable, such as autonomy, their established identity, or a sense of expertise. Understanding what they're protecting is key to making change less threatening.

During organizational change, insecurity triggers employees' primal threat response, leading to dysfunctional behaviors like resistance. Executives often misinterpret this as the employee being weak or lazy, when it is actually a high-performer's brain reacting to a perceived threat to their stability.

Companies believe providing information or motivation drives change. However, the brain assesses safety and cost first. Resistance to change is often a nervous system's threat response, not a failure of understanding or buy-in, making traditional change management ineffective.

When new owners raise standards, employees often feel their past work is being judged and criticized. Their resistance isn't to the goal of improvement (the 'what'), but to the implementation method (the 'how') which can feel demeaning. Leaders must frame changes as a shared opportunity to join a "winning team."

Leaders often misjudge their teams' enthusiasm for AI. The reality is that skepticism and resistance are more common than excitement. This requires framing AI adoption as a human-centric change management challenge, focusing on winning over doubters rather than simply deploying new technology.

The change management industry overemphasizes technical skills like creating models and plans, which only reach those already aligned. The real gap is in conversational skills—the ability to sit with an employee's ambivalence and help them find their own intrinsic reasons to move forward.

Before labeling a team as not resilient, leaders should first examine their own expectations. Often, what appears as a lack of resilience is a natural reaction to systemic issues like overwork, underpayment, and inadequate support, making it a leadership problem, not an employee one.