Your Staff Isn’t Resisting Change. They May Be Responding to What It Costs Them.
It's time to understand what research on change management can teach school leaders about helping people let go, adapt, and move forward.
Schools are always changing.
A new curriculum. A different schedule. A new leader. New technology. A restructuring of responsibilities. A different approach to enrollment. A shift in instructional practice. A new strategic plan.
And when change is necessary, leaders naturally spend a great deal of time thinking about what comes next.
What will improve? What problem will this solve? What opportunities will this create? How will the school be better because we made this decision?
Those are important questions.
But there is another question leaders should ask:
What are we asking people to give up in order to get there?
Because growth has a cost.
A teacher can believe a new curriculum is better for students and still struggle with giving up lessons she spent ten years developing.
A longtime employee can understand why roles need to be restructured and still feel unsettled by losing the position in which everyone knew she was the expert.
A school can need a new enrollment strategy while employees who built the previous approach hear the change as criticism of their work.
A leader can make the right decision and still have people who are genuinely struggling with it.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they are resistant to change.
It may mean they are responding to what the change costs them.
Why do school staff resist change? Often, what looks like resistance is a response to loss: familiar routines, expertise, autonomy, status, relationships, confidence, or a sense of belonging. School leaders can make change easier to implement by explaining why it is necessary, acknowledging what people are being asked to give up, providing meaningful influence and ongoing support, listening to feedback, and showing evidence of progress.
One of the easiest mistakes leaders can make is interpreting hesitation as unwillingness.
We announce a change. Someone questions it. Another person isn’t enthusiastic. Someone else keeps talking about how things used to work.
We think: They just don’t want to change.
Sometimes that’s true.
But sometimes people aren’t fighting the future. They’re trying to figure out what happens to something they valued in the past.
Change can affect competence, identity, routines, relationships, autonomy, status, confidence, and even a person’s sense of belonging within an organization.
That matters in schools, where people’s work is often deeply personal. Educators don’t simply execute processes. They build classrooms, programs, traditions, relationships, and ways of doing things over years.
When leaders change those things, we may be changing more than a procedure.
Research on implementation increasingly reflects this human reality. The Education Endowment Foundation describes implementation as fundamentally a social and collaborative process, emphasizing three behaviors throughout successful implementation: engage, unite, and reflect.
So how do we lead necessary change without ignoring the people being asked to make it?
Leaders often live with a problem much longer than everyone else before announcing a solution.
We have studied the enrollment numbers. Sat through the budget meetings. Read the data. Heard the complaints. Researched alternatives. Discussed the issue with the board or leadership team.
By the time we announce the change, we may have spent months mentally arriving at the decision.
Then we give everyone else 30 minutes.
And we’re surprised they aren’t where we are yet.
Don’t begin only with what is changing.
Help people understand why the current reality cannot remain the same.
What problem are we trying to solve? What evidence tells us something needs to change? What happens if we do nothing? What will success look like?
IES guidance on continuous improvement emphasizes transparency about identified needs, plans for change, and expectations for implementation. It also notes that when people affected by change are engaged and understand why it is happening, improvements are more likely to be accepted, implemented, and sustained.
Don’t assume the reason is obvious simply because it is obvious to you.
Before telling people everything they will gain, consider what the change may require them to give up.
Familiar routines.
Confidence.
Autonomy.
Expertise.
Relationships.
Status.
A program they helped build.
A tradition they care about.
Even the comfort of knowing exactly how to do their job.
You don’t have to agree that something should remain unchanged to recognize that losing it may be difficult.
This distinction matters.
Acknowledging the cost of change is not the same as apologizing for the decision. It doesn’t mean reversing course every time someone is unhappy.
It means demonstrating that you understand what you are asking of people.
There is a significant difference between saying, “This new system is going to be so much better,” and saying, “I know some of you have spent years becoming really good at the system we’re replacing. I also know starting over can make you feel like a beginner again. Here’s why we believe this change is necessary, and here’s how we’re going to support you through it.”
The decision hasn’t changed.
The leadership has.
One of the quickest ways to damage trust during change is to ask people for input when the decision has already been made.
People can usually tell.
Instead, be clear about what is decided and what is still open for discussion.
Perhaps the school has already selected the new curriculum. Teachers aren’t voting on whether to adopt it.
But they may have meaningful input into the implementation timeline, professional development needs, common assessments, supplemental resources, or what existing practices should be preserved.
That is real influence.
IES guidance encourages leaders to determine who will be affected by a change and engage those stakeholders meaningfully in the improvement process. The EEF similarly emphasizes engaging people so they can help shape what happens while leaders continue providing overall direction.
Input is not the same as veto power.
Good leaders can maintain responsibility for the decision while creating legitimate opportunities for the people closest to the work to influence how that decision becomes reality.
This happens all the time in schools.
We introduce something new.
We schedule professional development.
Everyone attends.
We check the box.
Then Monday comes.
Real implementation is messier.
Someone can’t remember how to do something. A process that made perfect sense during training doesn’t work quite as expected with 27 students in the room. Teachers interpret the new expectations differently. A team discovers that one part of the plan conflicts with another existing requirement.
That isn’t necessarily evidence that the change was a mistake.
It’s evidence that implementation is happening.
Current education implementation research reflects a much broader conception of support than initial training alone. One IES-supported implementation model, for example, combines assessment and feedback, leadership development, initial training, individual and group coaching, organizational strategy development, and professional learning collaboratives. Research supported by IES has also examined ongoing coaching, reflection, practice, and feedback as mechanisms for improving educator practice.
So instead of asking only:
How are we going to train everyone?
Ask:
What will people need three weeks after the training when this gets hard?
That’s where support becomes leadership.
When leaders believe strongly in a change, feedback can start sounding like resistance.
That’s dangerous.
The people implementing a decision will often discover things the people designing it couldn’t see.
Listen.
Where are people getting stuck?
What is taking considerably longer than expected?
What unintended consequences are appearing?
Which part of the change is working well?
Where are expectations unclear?
What support is missing?
And importantly: What are people telling you that you don’t particularly want to hear?
Continuous improvement models are built around this idea. Implementation should generate information that helps leaders determine whether practices should be continued, adapted, or reconsidered.
Listening doesn’t require leaders to agree with every complaint.
It requires enough curiosity to determine whether the complaint contains useful information.
Change asks people to exchange something familiar for something they cannot fully see yet.
That is a difficult trade.
If you’re asking teachers to change an instructional practice, employees to learn a new system, or an entire school community to embrace a different approach, eventually people need evidence that the effort is producing something worthwhile.
Don’t wait until the end of the year to show them.
Look for early evidence.
Share progress.
Celebrate improvements without pretending everything is perfect.
Tell people what the data shows.
And when something isn’t working, say that too.
Research on continuous improvement emphasizes collecting and using data throughout implementation, not simply evaluating results after the process is complete.
Visible progress helps answer a question people may never say aloud:
Is everything you’re asking me to do actually worth it?
They deserve an answer.
None of this means leaders should avoid difficult decisions.
Sometimes a program needs to end.
Sometimes a role needs to change.
Sometimes a school has held onto a tradition long after that tradition stopped serving students.
Sometimes the evidence is clear and the leader’s responsibility is to move.
And not every objection can determine the direction of an organization.
Leadership requires making decisions that won’t make everyone happy.
But there is a difference between protecting people from change and supporting people through change.
Supporting people through change means giving them clarity about why it is necessary.
It means recognizing what they are being asked to give up.
It means giving them influence where influence is genuinely possible.
It means providing support beyond the kickoff meeting or professional development day.
It means listening when implementation reveals something you didn’t anticipate.
And it means helping people see that their effort is moving the organization somewhere worth going.
School leaders are often responsible for deciding what needs to change.
But leadership doesn’t end when the decision is made.
In many ways, that’s when the harder work begins.
You have to help people move from what was to what comes next.
That requires clarity about why the change matters, honesty about what it will cost, support while people learn, and enough humility to listen and adjust along the way.
People don’t need leaders who make change painless.
They need leaders who understand that change has a cost and don’t ask people to pay it alone.