Leading through change requires ongoing conversation, not a single announcement or polished presentation. People need opportunities to understand the reason, name concerns, and influence how the change will work in practice. Fruitful Friction® helps leaders treat questions and resistance as useful information that can create alignment and traction.
Why Does Leading Through Change Require More Conversation?
In the last year, I’ve worked with leaders navigating mergers, layoffs, restructures, hybrid workforce shifts, generational transitions, and the tidal wave of AI reshaping how we work. Some of these changes are strategic. Others are reactive.
All of them are deeply human. The challenge isn’t that change is happening. The challenge is how we respond to it.
How Should Communication Adapt to the Speed of Change?
Most organizations I work with feel the change and are being pro-active. Others are surprised by the change and are in reactive mode. The pace of change demands that our conversation skills be top-notch to ensure positive outcomes and success.
Leaders rush to manage expectations, and employees try to stay afloat. Communication is key, and somewhere in the process of shifts and strategic moves, unsupported and underdeveloped conversation skills lead to a breakdown in communication.
Several possible points of breakdown include people not asking questions, assuming leadership already knows, and leaders stopping listening, assuming the team will figure it out. One group recently realized that they honestly expected the merger to be much smoother or perhaps easier than it has been. There’s so much change in the industry that they felt they should be better at flowing with it. And yet, they are human.
That gap between what’s changing and what’s being talked about is where trust begins to erode. Developing skills to have these conversations are where opportunity abounds.
Where Do Organizational Change Efforts Get Stuck?
The patterns of sticking points repeat across industries and roles. Recognizing the pattern makes it easier to choose a more useful response.
A 2019 study of 608 employees found that change communication factors such as involvement, participation, and appreciation explained the largest share of differences in attitudes toward change and support. The findings reinforce the value of involving people in the conversation rather than relying on announcements alone.
Common challenges include the following.
- Employee resistance. Fear of the unknown, job insecurity, and lacking trust in leadership create quiet paralysis. If people don’t see the benefit for themselves, they disengage or subtly act out.
- Inadequate communication. When messages are unclear, inconsistent, or too polished, employees fill in the blanks. They create a story based on the facts they are provided. And what they imagine is rarely optimistic.
- Lack of examples from leadership. Change fails quickly when leaders don’t model commitment or communicate a cohesive vision.
- Change-resistant culture. “We’ve always done it this way” and other common phrases show a lack of being prepared and become the creators of stagnation.
- Poor planning and execution. Without clear goals and follow-through, teams experience confusion, frustration, and chaos.
- Insufficient resources. Too few people, too little time, and insufficient expertise make meaningful progress impossible.
- Lack of engagement and trust. When employees don’t feel heard or valued, they disengage. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes completely.
- Change fatigue. Too many shifts at once lead to burnout and an emotional shutdown that drains creativity.
Each of these challenges shows up differently depending on company and team differences, and underneath all is the same missing ingredient: conversation. The work requires engaged dialogue that goes beyond messaging.
Why Is Change Without Conversation Only a Directive?
I hear it in many sessions of coaching and training. “We’re just supposed to get on board.”
“We thought we explained this was coming.” “No one understood the why.”
“We all thought this would be simpler.” Leaders often mistake an announcement for alignment, and they are surprised. People don’t commit to what they don’t understand, or trust what they haven’t been invited to discuss.
The classic aphorism rings true again: Change done to people creates resistance. Change done with people builds resilience. That’s why staying in conversation, even when it’s messy or uncomfortable, is essential to finding and following the path.
How Does Fruitful Friction® Help People Stay in the Conversation?
When friction shows up during change, most organizations react to it as pushback or negativity. What if it’s actually energy trying to connect and communicate?
Fruitful Friction® teaches teams to listen to that energy instead of shutting it down. Providing tools with techniques to name what’s real without blame or spin.
To turn tension into traction through presence and skill. Here are a few of the tools, practical and straightforward – and you need the skill to use them well: Transparency. Share what’s known and admit what’s not. People can handle truth and uncertainty better than silence.
Acknowledge and Respond. Speak to what others have said before redirecting. The others feel heard before you counter or redirect. It builds trust in small, conversational moments.
Fact—Story—Emotion. The old model of fact and story is too limited, missing the additional human element of emotions being part of the process. Distinguish what happened from the story we tell about it and make room for the feelings underneath. All three are part of human communication, and ignoring one without acknowledging the impact of the other two is damaging.
Handled with skill and technique, these tools don’t make change easy, but they make it doable. They keep communication flowing so trust can be built or reestablished as teams move forward.
How Does Leading Through Change Build Trust?
Across industries—healthcare, tech, construction, finance—I see the same outcome. Teams that start talking in what we call the messy middle come out stronger and more aligned than those that avoid friction altogether. The messy middle is the land of opportunity where we stay in conversations even when awkward.
Change often leaves residue, a little lingering film or grit: confusion, grief, hope, and personal needs all mixed together. The awareness that because we’re moving forward doesn’t mean we all feel squeaky clean for talking it out. Residue acknowledges the human reality of communication that there’s rarely an all-clear feeling at the end, and we still agree to the next step.
Leading through change works better when we stay in conversation and create the conditions for trust to take root. Trust doesn’t come from perfect plans or polished speeches. It grows when leaders and teams keep showing up, keep listening, and keep talking until traction returns.
That’s the work of Fruitful Friction®. That’s how we move effectively and successfully through change together.
ARTiculate: Real&Clear is here to support your team with powerful workshops and coaching to develop the skills and techniques to activate Fruitful Friction® and navigate the messy middle for company success. Call us. We’re ready to partner with you.
Frequently Asked Questions About Leading Through Change
Why do change announcements fail to create alignment?
An announcement gives people information, but it does not automatically address meaning, impact, uncertainty, or trust. Alignment grows through repeated conversations in which leaders listen, clarify, and respond to what people are experiencing.
How does Fruitful Friction® support organizational change?
Fruitful Friction® gives teams a way to stay engaged when perspectives, emotions, and priorities differ. It helps leaders name what is real, separate facts from stories, and keep the conversation moving toward workable commitments.
Hilary Blair is a leadership keynote speaker based out of Denver, CO, and is the co-founder of ARTiculate: Real&Clear. She is also a highly regarded actor, improviser, facilitator, voice-over artist, and voice expert coach. Connect with us, we are dedicated to and passionate about clarifying communication. Start a conversation as we explore the multiple ways we can support your unique communication style and technique.
