14.2 Common Reasons for Resistance and How to Deal With Them

Alongside the neural factors, CM3 sets out common causes of resistance with matched responses, drawing on Kanter (2012). These pairings are heavily examined: you are given a described resistance and asked which response fits, or given a response and asked which reason it addresses. Learn them as pairs.

The reasons and their responses

The pairs that are easy to confuse

Excessive uncertainty and change sprung as a surprise both involve people not knowing things, but the responses differ. Uncertainty is about the future and is answered with process certainty, clear steps and timetables — you may not be able to say what the outcome will be, but you can say how and when it will be decided. Surprise is about the past — the change was planned without them — and is answered by not planning in secret.

Too many differences at once and change is more work both involve volume, but the first is about variety and the second about effort. Too many differences is answered by minimising unrelated changes and keeping things familiar; more work is answered by resourcing — letting some people focus exclusively on the change and rewarding participants.

Loss of face and past resentments both concern the past. Loss of face is about people whose identity is tied to the current state being implicitly criticised, answered by celebrating what is worth honouring. Past resentments are older grievances that the disruption brings back to the surface, answered by gestures to heal the past before focusing on the future.

Two responses worth dwelling on

Avoid change for change's sake

This is the response to too many differences at once, and it asks something of the change team that few change teams do: drop changes that are not necessary. Programmes accumulate changes — a process improvement here, a terminology update there — that were individually reasonable and collectively overwhelming. Auditing the change for differences that could simply be left alone reduces resistance more cheaply than any communication.

Where possible keep things familiar is the same principle applied positively, and it echoes Bridges' advice to let people know what will not change.

Be honest, transparent, fast and fair

The response to sometimes the threat is real is the most important item in the table, because it acknowledges what most change communication avoids: sometimes resistance is correct. The change genuinely will hurt some people, and no amount of engagement changes that.

CM3's guidance is specific — be honest, transparent, fast and fair — and its example is instructive: one big layoff with lots of support is better than a series of smaller cuts. Drawn-out uncertainty is worse for everyone than a decisive, well-supported action, even though instalments feel kinder to the people making the decision.

This is where the change manager's professional integrity is actually tested. The temptation is to manage a real threat with reassuring language, which costs trust and, once discovered, contaminates every other message the change team sends.

Resistance can be helpful

CM3 frames resistance as something to understand rather than defeat, and the table demonstrates why. Every reason on it identifies a genuine deficiency in the change as designed — control removed unnecessarily, uncertainty left unresolved, ripple effects unassessed, competence unsupported. Each response fixes the deficiency rather than persuading people to accept it.

Read that way, the resistance table is a design checklist. Running through the ten reasons before delivery, and asking which apply and whether the matched response is in the plan, prevents a large proportion of the resistance that would otherwise have to be managed later.