Recognizing When You’re the Problem

The Specific Leadership Behaviors That Create Resistance Even When the Change Is Necessary, How to Recognize When Your Approach Is Causing the Problems You’re Trying to Solve, and What to Do About It Without Losing Credibility

The Uncomfortable Truth About Change and Transformation Resistance

Leaders naturally attribute change and transformation resistance to others. Employees resist because they fear change. Middle managers resist because they’re protecting territory. Senior leaders resist because they’re invested in the status quo. The common assumption is that resistance originates in those being asked to change, while leaders are simply trying to move the organization forward.

This attribution bias protects the leader’s ego but prevents effective diagnosis. In many cases, the leader’s own behavior creates or intensifies the resistance they’re experiencing. Not resistance to the change itself, but resistance to how the change is being led. The distinction matters because behavior-generated resistance can be resolved by changing leadership approach, while change-generated resistance requires different interventions entirely.

This article examines the specific leadership patterns that generate resistance even when the transformation direction is sound. The goal isn’t to induce leadership guilt but to enable accurate diagnosis. When leaders can distinguish between resistance to change and resistance to leadership, they can intervene appropriately rather than applying generic change management techniques to problems that require leadership adjustment.

Common Leader-Generated Resistance Patterns

Certain leadership behaviors reliably generate resistance regardless of change or transformation merit. These patterns are often invisible to the leaders exhibiting them precisely because they feel like effective leadership.

Dismissing Valid Concerns as Resistance

One of the most common patterns is labeling legitimate concerns as resistance to be overcome rather than feedback to be incorporated. When employees raise practical problems with implementation plans, leaders sometimes dismiss these concerns as disguised resistance rather than valuable operational insight. This dismissal creates actual resistance because people feel unheard and disrespected.

The pattern intensifies when leaders have been trained to expect resistance. Change management frameworks that emphasize overcoming resistance can prime leaders to interpret all pushback as psychological resistance rather than distinguishing between emotional reactions to change and substantive concerns about how change is being implemented. People who have legitimate concerns that get dismissed as resistance become genuinely resistant because they’ve been treated as obstacles rather than partners.

Communicating Without Listening

Leaders are often counseled to communicate extensively during change and transformation, but communication that flows only downward creates resistance. When leaders talk without listening, they signal that employee perspectives don’t matter. They miss information that would improve implementation. They create the experience of being done to rather than engaged with. The result is compliance at best and sabotage at worst.

The listening deficit often isn’t intentional. Leaders may believe they’re listening because they’ve created Q&A sessions and feedback channels. But programmatic listening differs from genuine openness to influence. People can tell whether their input might actually change anything or whether it’s being collected for the appearance of inclusion. Performative listening often generates more cynicism than no listening at all.

Moving Faster Than People Can Follow

Leaders who have processed the need for change and transformation often forget that others are just beginning that journey. They’ve had months to reach acceptance while announcing changes to people who are hearing about them for the first time. The resulting pace mismatch creates resistance because people feel steamrolled rather than led.

Urgency can intensify this pattern. Leaders feel pressure to move quickly and interpret deliberate pace as resistance. But psychological transition takes time regardless of organizational urgency. Pushing faster doesn’t accelerate transition; it creates the appearance of compliance while actual transition lags behind. Leaders who mistake compliance for transition are often surprised when resistance surfaces later, seemingly from nowhere.

Inconsistency Between Words and Actions

Nothing generates resistance faster than leaders who ask others to change while exempting themselves. When leaders advocate for behaviors they don’t model, they communicate that the transformation is for others, not for leadership. Employees watch leaders closely during change and transformation and notice every gap between espoused values and actual behavior. These gaps create cynicism that manifests as resistance.

The inconsistency is often unintentional. Leaders may genuinely believe they’re modeling desired behaviors while blind spots prevent them from seeing their own inconsistencies. Getting honest feedback about alignment between words and actions requires psychological safety that leaders must deliberately create, which creates a recursive challenge for leaders whose behavior has already damaged trust.

Recognizing Your Own Contribution

Recognizing when you’re generating resistance requires overcoming the natural defensiveness that prevents honest self-assessment. Several approaches can help.

Look for Patterns Across Contexts

If you’re encountering resistance from multiple teams, multiple levels, or multiple transformation initiatives, the common factor may be you rather than the change. Individual instances of resistance might be situational, but patterns suggest something more systematic. Leaders who find themselves repeatedly frustrated by resistant organizations might benefit from examining whether their leadership approach consistently generates the resistance they experience.

Seek Honest Feedback From Those Who Can Give It

Most employees won’t tell leaders that leadership is the problem because doing so feels too risky. Finding people who will be honest requires deliberately seeking feedback from those with sufficient psychological safety to provide it: trusted peers, external coaches, and former colleagues who no longer report to you. The question isn’t “how am I doing?” but rather “what might I be doing that’s making this harder than it needs to be?”

Examine Resistance Timing

When resistance intensifies immediately after specific leadership actions, those actions may be generating resistance. If resistance spikes after a particular communication, meeting, or decision, the leadership behavior surrounding that moment deserves examination. Resistance that correlates with leadership behavior is more likely to be leader-generated than resistance that appears independent of what leaders do.

Consider the Resistance That Isn’t Happening

If some teams or individuals are navigating the change or transformation smoothly while others resist, examine what’s different. Sometimes the difference is the people, but often it’s how different leaders are approaching the same transformation. Leaders whose teams are struggling might learn from leaders whose teams are succeeding, particularly about what leadership behaviors are creating different outcomes.

Addressing Leader-Generated Resistance Without Losing Credibility

Once you recognize that your behavior is contributing to resistance, the challenge becomes addressing it without undermining the credibility your role requires. This requires a nuanced approach that acknowledges problems while maintaining leadership presence.

Change Behavior Before Making Announcements

The instinct when recognizing a problem is often to acknowledge it publicly. But announcing that you’ve been part of the problem before demonstrating changed behavior invites skepticism. People have seen too many leadership mea culpas followed by unchanged behavior. More effective is changing behavior first and letting the changed behavior speak for itself, with acknowledgment coming after people have experienced the difference.

Acknowledge Specific Behaviors Rather Than Character

When acknowledgment is appropriate, focus on specific behaviors rather than general character. “I’ve been moving faster than was helpful, and I’m adjusting my pace” is more credible than “I’ve been a bad leader.” Specific acknowledgments suggest you’ve diagnosed the actual problem and know what to fix. General acknowledgments suggest you’re apologizing without understanding what went wrong.

Frame Changes as Learning Rather Than Failure

Behavioral changes can be framed as learning rather than the correction of mistakes. “Based on what I’ve been learning from this process, I’m going to approach this differently.” Positions change as growth. This framing is honest because you genuinely are learning, and it maintains the leadership image of someone who adapts and improves rather than someone who was doing it wrong.

Invite Ongoing Feedback

Creating channels for ongoing feedback about leadership behavior signals commitment to continued improvement. “I’d like you to tell me when my approach isn’t working,” invites partnership in leadership development. This requires actually being receptive to feedback when it comes, which can be difficult when the feedback is critical. Leaders who invite feedback and then react defensively do more damage than leaders who never invite it.

The Courage to Self-Examine

Honest self-examination during transformation requires courage because it threatens leader’s identity. Admitting that you might be the problem means acknowledging that your leadership approach, possibly one that has worked well in other contexts, isn’t working here. This admission challenges the competence narrative that leadership identity depends on.

Yet the courage to self-examine is precisely what effective change and transformation leadership requires. Leaders who cannot examine their own contribution to problems are limited to interventions aimed at others. They can implement change management techniques, increase communication, and develop their teams, but they cannot address the portion of resistance that their own behavior generates.

The most effective change leaders combine confidence in direction with humility about approach. They believe in the transformation while remaining open to learning that their leadership approach needs adjustment. This combination allows them to provide the directional certainty teams need while adapting their behavior to reduce the resistance they inadvertently create.

Take Action: Examine Your Own Contribution

Recognizing when you’re the problem isn’t about self-blame or leadership inadequacy. It’s about an accurate diagnosis. When leaders can distinguish between resistance to change and resistance to leadership, they can intervene appropriately. Changes to leadership approach often resolve resistance more effectively than additional change management techniques because they address the actual source of the problem.

This recognition also models the learning and adaptation that transformation requires from everyone. Leaders who can acknowledge and adjust their own behavior demonstrate that no one is exempt from the growth, change and transformation required. This modeling often does more to reduce resistance than any communication campaign because it shows rather than tells that change applies to everyone.

Final article in the series: We explore the systematic approach to developing change and transformation leadership capability, examining how leaders build psychology-first skills, measure their effectiveness, and continuously improve their ability to lead transformation successfully.