Available November 26, 2025

Episode 008: The 12 Hidden Types of Resistance – When Support Isn’t Support
DURATION: 34 minutes
HOST: Kevin Novak
SHOW: The Human Factor PodcastLast month, a COO discovered her most enthusiastic champion was simultaneously running a shadow project to prove the old way still worked. He wasn’t lying when he supported the change. He genuinely believed in both futures at once, hedging his bets on which would win.

This is what we call positive resistance, and it’s one of the most dangerous forms of opposition your change efforts will ever face. It’s not malicious. It emerges from the subconscious. It can be driven by uncertainty, by a desire to protect what exists, by fear of what change will bring, or by some combination of all three.

People often say yes while their behavior ensures no. They volunteer while subtly sabotaging. They support while unconsciously undermining. They agree while holding tight to the past. And here’s what makes it so challenging: it often comes from people who genuinely want the initiative to succeed, even as their psychology works against it.

I’m Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040 Digital and Professor at the University of Maryland. I’m the author of The Truth About Transformation: Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty and Human Complexity. I also write the Ideas and Innovations weekly newsletter. Welcome to The Human Factor Podcast, where we explore the intersection of humanity, technology, and transformation, along with the psychology that determines whether change succeeds or fails.

Today we’re exploring the 12 types of hidden resistance that kill change initiatives even when everyone claims to be supportive.

Most leaders focus on visible resistance: the vocal critics, the training avoiders, the openly skeptical. These are the people who are seen and heard, and they’re often the easiest to address. But here’s the thing. Visible resistance only accounts for maybe 20% of project failures.

The other 80% comes from psychological resistance operating below conscious awareness. It shows up as helpfulness, as quality concerns, as thoughtful questions that somehow never permit action. It appears reasonable rather than resistant. And that’s exactly what makes it deadly.

I’ve identified twelve distinct types of hidden resistance that operate unconsciously in organizations and individuals. Each has its own psychology. Each serves a protective function. Each sounds legitimate while functioning as obstruction.

These twelve patterns cluster into four categories. The first category is identity-based resistance, which protects who we believe ourselves to be. The second is competence-based resistance, which protects our sense of capability. The third is social-based resistance, which operates through relationships and group dynamics. And the fourth is environmental-based resistance, which emerges from organizational conditions themselves.

Let’s talk about what’s really happening in your organization, and very likely in yourself.

SEGMENT 1: THE PROBLEM WITH RESISTANCE (8 minutes)

Here’s how we typically think about resistance: There are people who support the initiative, people who oppose it, and people who are neutral. We invest energy converting the opponents and motivating the neutral parties. The supporters? They’re on our side. We don’t need to worry about them.

This mental framework is fundamentally wrong.

Research from implementation science shows that self-reported support for organizational change usually runs between 70 and 85 percent. People genuinely believe they support the initiative. But actual adoption rates, measured by behavior change rather than survey responses, average between 30 and 45 percent. That’s a massive gap between what people say, how they feel, and what they actually do.

The traditional explanation for this gap is poor execution. We assume the team failed to communicate effectively, didn’t provide adequate training, or moved too quickly. But that’s not the primary cause. The primary cause is unconscious resistance operating through twelve distinct psychological patterns that appear helpful and professional while systematically preventing success.

The supporters aren’t lying about their commitment. They’re operating with multiple simultaneous truths that they can’t consciously reconcile. Yes, they believe the change is necessary. Yes, they think the current state needs to evolve. And yes, their psychology is protecting them from that change through patterns that feel like professionalism, quality control, or risk management.

Understanding these patterns requires looking honestly at human psychology in ways that make us uncomfortable, because every one of these patterns operates in us too. We may not realize the influence our unconscious patterns are having. We may not even question why we’ve made certain statements or taken certain actions. They felt right. They felt productive. They made us feel better.

As I walk through each of the twelve types, I want you thinking about your current projects, particularly anything involving change or innovation. You’re going to recognize these patterns. They show up in almost every initiative, sometimes even in day to day work.

The question isn’t whether hidden resistance exists in your organization or in yourself. It’s whether you’ve developed the psychological insight to recognize it in yourself, your team, and your colleagues.

SEGMENT 2: THE TWELVE TYPES OF HIDDEN RESISTANCE (22 minutes)

CATEGORY 1: IDENTITY-BASED RESISTANCE

Let’s start with Category One: Identity-Based Resistance. This category contains the most powerful forms of hidden resistance, those that emerge when change threatens professional identity. I’m not talking about job security in the obvious sense. I’m talking about identity security: the psychological certainty that you know who you are and what makes you valuable. When that certainty gets threatened, the mind responds in predictable ways. There are three types of resistance in this category.

The first type is Expert Identity Protection. This pattern emerges when skilled employees unconsciously protect their expert status by resisting changes that would make their specialized knowledge less valuable, or that would require them to become beginners again.

The psychology is straightforward: when expertise becomes core to professional identity, anything that threatens that expertise threatens their sense of self. The resistance shows up as quality concerns, technical objections, or the identification of edge cases that somehow prove new approaches won’t work.

Think about financial analysts who resist new platforms because those platforms would let junior people perform tasks that previously required years of specialized knowledge. The analysts aren’t being difficult. They’re protecting an identity built on that specialization.

But expertise isn’t the only aspect of professional identity that change can threaten. Sometimes it’s not about what you know. It’s about the role you play. That brings us to the second type Role Relevance Anxiety.

This is unconscious fear that the initiative will eliminate a role or make contributions less valuable. It drives behaviors that make people appear more indispensable.

High performers become suddenly risk-averse. They start micromanaging details they used to delegate. They create unnecessary complexity in simple processes. They’re not consciously trying to create dependencies. They’re unconsciously responding to identity threat.

Production supervisors who insist on manual reviews of automated schedules while finding edge cases that prove human judgment remains essential? That’s Role Relevance Anxiety in action.

Expert Identity Protection is about preserving current value. Role Relevance Anxiety is about protecting present contributions. But for some people, their sense of self isn’t just tied to what they know or do today. It’s tied to what they’ve accomplished over the years. That’s the third type in this category Historical Success Attachment.

When personal identity becomes intertwined with historical organizational success, change feels like rejection of professional legacy.

This pattern shows up as constant references to how we used to do things, and as subtle undermining of new processes by highlighting past successes. Veterans aren’t being nostalgic. They’re protecting an identity built on the very practices being replaced.

They’re protecting what they see as their value to the organization: being a mentor, being a knowledge source, being the person others come to for guidance. The resistance sounds like organizational memory or wisdom, but it actually functions as change prevention.

So those are the three types in Category One Expert Identity Protection, Role Relevance Anxiety, and Historical Success Attachment. They all defend who people believe themselves to be.

But identity isn’t the only thing change threatens. Sometimes the fear isn’t about who you are. It’s about whether you can actually do what’s being asked of you. That brings us to Category Two Competence-Based Resistance.

This category emerges when change highlights competence gaps. These patterns protect people’s sense of being capable. And if you’re wondering where this plays out, think about organizations right now demanding their employees incorporate AI into everything they do. There are three types in this category.

The first in this category, is Imposter Syndrome Amplification. When a change effort highlights knowledge gaps, it can trigger or amplify existing imposter syndrome: that fear of being found out as less competent than others believe.

Capable employees become overly cautious. They seek excessive validation. They avoid taking initiative with new processes. The project didn’t create their imposter syndrome, but it amplified it by creating visible learning situations that feel psychologically threatening.

Senior consultants who research extensively before attempting simple tasks in new software? They aren’t incompetent. They’re terrified of appearing incompetent.

Imposter syndrome is an internal experience. But competence threats also emerge from comparison with others. When people look around and see colleagues adapting at different speeds, a new form of anxiety takes hold. That’s the fifth type Learning Velocity Mismatch.

Individual learning styles and speeds create anxiety about keeping up or being held back. Think again about the pressure many employees face right now to learn and use AI.

That frustration gets directed at the initiative itself, not at the real issue: different people learn at different speeds. Fast learners become impatient mentors. Slow learners avoid training sessions. Informal cliques form around learning speed, quick to share their prowess while excluding others.

Resentment builds on all sides. And all of it gets aimed at the project instead of at the structural failure to accommodate different learning speeds.

Both Imposter Syndrome Amplification and Learning Velocity Mismatch create discomfort with the process of becoming competent. But for some people, the problem isn’t fear of looking incompetent or falling behind. It’s an inability to tolerate being anything less than perfect. That’s the sixth type Perfectionist Paralysis.

This pattern emerges when fear of making mistakes conflicts with perfectionist self-image. People delay adapting until they feel completely competent.

They bury themselves in existing systems while consuming training material endlessly. They’re trying to achieve perfection before they begin, so they never begin. Competence requires practice, and perfectionism prevents practice.

Think about attorneys refusing to touch a new case management system until they’ve read every manual. They aren’t being thorough. They’re letting perfectionism prevent the practice that would actually build competence.

So those are the three types in Category Two Imposter Syndrome Amplification, Learning Velocity Mismatch, and Perfectionist Paralysis. They all operate primarily within the individual, driven by personal fears and internal experiences. But humans don’t exist in isolation. We work in teams and organizations where relationships matter enormously. And that’s where Category Three emerges.

Category Three is Social-Based Resistance. These patterns operate through social dynamics. They create resistance that feels like solidarity, wisdom, or prudence rather than obstruction. There are three types in this category.

The first in this category, is Loyalty Conflict. Employees experience conflict between loyalty to respected colleagues who resist change and their commitment to organizational goals. They’re not being difficult. They’re being torn.

When influential team members express skepticism about new approaches, others face genuine psychological tension between supporting the initiative and maintaining important relationships. This creates hesitation that looks like careful consideration while actually functioning as social resistance.

Loyalty Conflict is about maintaining specific relationships. But social influence operates even when there’s no personal relationship at stake. Sometimes people resist simply because they’re watching everyone else wait. That’s the eighth type Social Proof Shortage.

When everyone waits for peers to adopt first before committing themselves, it creates standstills where nobody leads.

This is classic social proof dynamics playing out in organizational change. People look to others to determine appropriate behavior, and when nobody moves first, nobody moves at all. The waiting looks prudent, but it actually produces organizational paralysis.

Loyalty Conflict and Social Proof Shortage are about relationships and conformity. But there’s a third social pattern that’s more strategic. Some people resist change not because of relationships. They resist because of power. That’s the ninth type Influence Network Disruption.

Change efforts often disrupt informal influence patterns and social status within organizations. This triggers unconscious fear in people who benefit from current power structures.

The resistance appears as concern about organizational effectiveness while actually protecting personal influence. People aren’t being political. They’re responding to genuine psychological threat about their social position.

So those are the three types in Category Three, Loyalty Conflict, Social Proof Shortage, and Influence Network Disruption.

They all emerge from how humans relate to each other. But there’s one more category, and it operates at an entirely different level. Sometimes the resistance isn’t coming from individual psychology or social dynamics. Sometimes it’s being created by the organizational environment itself. That’s Category Four Environmental-Based Resistance.

This final category operates through environmental factors that create fear, doubt, or conflict around change. There are three types in this category.

The first is Safety Uncertainty. When people fear expressing concerns or making mistakes during a change effort, they engage in surface compliance without genuine adoption.

Psychological safety research shows that environments lacking safety produce outward agreement masking internal resistance. People smile in meetings about new systems while running shadow workflows that actually get work done.

They’re not being dishonest. The environment doesn’t permit honest engagement with initiative challenges.

Safety Uncertainty is about the present: whether it’s safe to engage authentically right now. But environmental resistance can also emerge from the past. When organizations have a history of abandoning initiatives, that history creates its own form of resistance. That’s the eleventh type Resource Skepticism.

This pattern emerges from doubt about whether the organization will actually commit the necessary resources for success. That doubt causes people to hedge their investments in the effort.

They’ve seen initiatives launched with enthusiasm only to be under-resourced six months later. So they protect themselves by maintaining dual systems or work processes. The skepticism looks like wise caution, but it functions as self-fulfilling prophecy. Hedged commitment produces exactly the under-resourced results they feared.

Resource Skepticism draws on organizational history. But the final type of hidden resistance operates at the deepest level: organizational culture. Sometimes the resistance isn’t about safety or resources. It’s about fundamental values. That’s the twelfth and final type Culture Misalignment.

When initiative requirements conflict with deeply held organizational values, people experience internal resistance to what feels like betraying cultural principles they’ve internalized over time.

This isn’t about being stuck in the past. It’s about genuine psychological conflict between new requirements and identity-defining values. The resistance appears as principled opposition while actually reflecting unresolved tension between where the organization is headed and who it has been.

SEGMENT 3: FROM RECOGNITION TO REDIRECTION (5 minutes)

So we’ve walked through all twelve types across four categories. Category One, Identity-Based Resistance, with Expert Identity Protection, Role Relevance Anxiety, and Historical Success Attachment. Category Two, Competence-Based Resistance, with Imposter Syndrome Amplification, Learning Velocity Mismatch, and Perfectionist Paralysis. Category Three, Social-Based Resistance, with Loyalty Conflict, Social Proof Shortage, and Influence Network Disruption. And Category Four, Environmental-Based Resistance, with Safety Uncertainty, Resource Skepticism, and Culture Misalignment.

Here’s what matters most: these aren’t personality traits. They’re behavioral patterns we all deploy depending on what change threatens us.

The same person who embraces strategic shifts might activate Expert Identity Protection when their technical domain faces disruption. The executive who champions innovation in other departments might trigger Historical Success Attachment when their own division faces change.

The solution isn’t eliminating resistance. That’s impossible. Resistance contains intelligence about what matters to people and what those managing the effort might be missing.

The solution is developing the psychological insight to recognize these patterns, starting with ourselves.

What change are you currently facing that triggers discomfort? Which patterns are you activating? Are you protecting expertise?

Experiencing learning velocity anxiety? Demanding perfection that prevents practice?

The most effective approach isn’t arguing with resistance. It’s redirecting it by addressing the underlying psychology.

When someone shows Expert Identity Protection, the question isn’t “why are you resisting?” It’s “what matters to you that feels threatened?” That redirects resistance from unproductive opposition to constructive dialogue.

When someone displays Role Relevance Anxiety, the conversation should connect initiative success to future value creation.

When someone exhibits Perfectionist Paralysis, the intervention should reframe perfection as continuous improvement through practice rather than error-free performance from day one.

Remember the COO’s champion from the beginning of this episode? The one running the shadow project? He wasn’t a hypocrite. He was experiencing Historical Success Attachment and Role Relevance Anxiety at the same time. When the COO helped him name what he was protecting and created a transition plan that honored those contributions while embracing new approaches, he became the project’s strongest advocate.

The goal wasn’t to make him stop caring about what he had built. It was to help him find a way to care about what comes next.

SEGMENT 4: WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (8 minutes)

Understanding these patterns is essential, but recognition alone doesn’t solve the problem. So what do you actually do when you see them operating?

You can’t ignore them. They represent real concerns even when driven by unconscious resistance. You can’t dismiss them as irrational. The people raising these concerns are operating in good faith. They genuinely believe they’re being helpful.

Here’s the framework I use, drawn from implementation science and my work with change projects. It’s built on recognizing that resistance patterns serve protective functions. You don’t eliminate them. You reduce the psychological need for them.

First, make the patterns visible without blame.

Most leaders, when they recognize these patterns, feel frustrated. That frustration leads to confrontation. Confrontation triggers defensiveness. Defensiveness intensifies the resistance.

Instead, describe what you’re observing as organizational dynamic rather than individual behavior. In a steering committee meeting, you might say something like: “I’m noticing a pattern across our initiative. We keep asking for one more test, one more documentation cycle, one more governance review before moving forward. Each request makes sense on its own. But the pattern suggests we might be unconsciously protecting ourselves from the discomfort of change. What’s actually making us uncomfortable here?”

Notice what that does. It names the pattern without attacking individuals. It includes yourself in the “we” rather than positioning yourself outside the resistance.

Second, create structured space for discussing underlying fears.

These resistance patterns exist because people don’t feel safe expressing what they’re actually worried about. They can’t say “I’m afraid I won’t be competent in the new system” so they say “we need more training.” They can’t say “I’m worried my expertise won’t matter anymore” so they say “we need comprehensive documentation.”

The solution isn’t forcing people to admit their fears. It’s creating a structured conversation where those fears can surface without judgment. Ask your project team: “If we’re completely honest with ourselves, what are we actually protecting by moving slowly? What would we lose if this effort succeeded tomorrow?”

Third, validate underlying concerns while distinguishing them from protective behaviors.

When someone raises a quality concern that you recognize as unconscious resistance to competence threat, don’t dismiss it. Don’t argue that quality doesn’t matter. Instead, separate the legitimate need from the unconscious pattern.

You might say: “Quality is absolutely critical. We can’t compromise on that. What I’m concerned about is whether our current quality standards are measuring what we actually need to measure, or whether they’re measuring our comfort with the current approach.”

Fourth, create visible momentum through small wins that demonstrate safety.

These resistance patterns exist because change feels psychologically threatening. The most effective way to reduce resistance isn’t arguing against it. It’s demonstrating that the initiative doesn’t create the catastrophe people unconsciously fear.

The quality director who fears becoming incompetent needs to see someone like them developing new competence successfully. The knowledge holder who fears losing status needs to see that expertise evolves rather than disappears. Small wins reduce the psychological threat that generates resistance.

Fifth, sustain the conversation about resistance as ongoing rather than something you resolve once.

These patterns don’t disappear because you addressed them in one meeting. They regenerate because they’re protective responses to ongoing psychological threat. The goal isn’t eliminating resistance. It’s developing shared awareness and collective capability to recognize when these patterns are operating.

Over time, teams develop the capacity to call out their own patterns. Someone catches themselves proposing another round of testing and says, “Wait, I think I’m doing the Expert Identity Protection thing we talked about.” When resistance becomes discussable, it becomes manageable.

CLOSING (3 minutes)

The twelve types of resistance I’ve described today exist in every change effort I’ve ever studied. They are not signs that something is wrong with your people or your initiative. They are signs that the effort is working. They are evidence that people recognize, even if only unconsciously, that real change is about to happen.

That their identity, competence, status, or relationships are genuinely being subject to change.

The resistance then is evidence that the initiative matters enough to trigger psychological defense mechanisms.

Most leaders fight these patterns as obstacles. They see resistance as something to overcome, defeat, or circumvent. But that approach intensifies the resistance because it confirms the threat that triggered the protective behaviors in the first place.

The implementation science approach, the approach embedded in The Human Factor Method, treats resistance as information. It’s a signal about underlying psychology that needs attention. Not because people are being difficult, but because change creates legitimate psychological challenges that our brains are designed to protect us from.

The resistance you can’t see is creating challenges in organizations everywhere right now. Whether it’s a project, new system, new process, or organization-wide transformation, hidden resistance is operating in your best people, appearing as helpfulness while functioning as obstruction.

And here’s the uncomfortable part: it’s likely operating in you too. We all activate these patterns depending on what the change threatens.

For anyone, addressing resistance is uncomfortable work. It requires looking honestly at human psychology, including your own. It means acknowledging that the analysts protecting their expertise, the supervisors creating dependencies, the veterans defending historical practices, they’re not being difficult. They’re protecting something that genuinely matters: their sense of who they are and what makes them valuable.

Until that underlying psychology gets addressed, no amount of communication, training, or change management will overcome it.

The question isn’t whether hidden resistance exists in your organization. It’s whether you’re willing to develop the uncomfortable skill of seeing it, starting with yourself.

In our next episode, we’re exploring something that connects everything we’ve discussed in this series: transformation fatigue.

What happens when your organization hasn’t just developed resistance to a specific change but has lost the psychological capacity to engage with change at all?

We’ve spent eight episodes exploring individual barriers: why smart people resist, why communication fails, why vulnerability matters, and these twelve hidden resistance patterns. Episode 9 is about what happens when all of those psychological forces compound without recovery time.

When AI mandates layered on top of restructuring, layered on top of return-to-office policies, and layered on top of economic uncertainty. Each change might be manageable in isolation.

Together, they exceed human cognitive architecture. If you’ve ever wondered why your well-designed initiative stalled despite executive support and adequate resources, Episode 9 will show you the invisible crisis no one’s measuring and what you can actually do about it.

If you found today’s episode valuable, subscribe to The Human Factor Podcast wherever you listen, leave a rating and comment, and share this episode with your team. Understanding the psychology at play helps everyone.

For weekly insights about change psychology, organizational behavior, and the human factors that determine success, subscribe to the Ideas and Innovations newsletter on Substack.

Until next time, remember: Resistance isn’t the enemy. Invisible resistance is the enemy. Once you can see these patterns, you can work with them instead of fighting them. And that’s when real change becomes possible.

This is The Human Factor Podcast. I’m Kevin Novak. Thanks for watching or listening.

END OF EPISODE

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Upcoming: Available December 4, 2025

EPISODE 009: Transformation Fatigue – When Your Organization Can’t Absorb More Change

We’re designed to focus on one challenge, resolve it, recover, and then move to the next challenge.

When your organization doesn’t just face resistance to change but becomes fundamentally incapable of processing any more of it, it is time to understand better how to manage the human factor.

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