Leading Change You Didn't Choose

Written by Ed Cook and Roxanne Brown

You've just walked out of a meeting where leadership announced a major change. Your team will be looking to you for direction, but inside, you're struggling. You weren't consulted. You don't agree with the decision. You might even think it's a terrible idea.

And yet, you're expected to get on board and lead it.

This is one of the most challenging positions a manager can face: being accountable for implementing a change decision you didn't participate in making and may not like. It's a situation that tests your integrity, your leadership philosophy, and your mental models about what it means to lead.

The Mental Model Pitfall

In our post, "Mental Models: Power and Pitfalls," we described how Mental Models are a “sensemaking” technique that guides us in navigating uncertainty.

When faced with a change you don't like, you might find yourself thinking:

• "If I implement this change, I'm being inauthentic."
• "My team will lose respect for me if I support something I don't believe in."
• "I should push back harder or escalate my concerns."

These thoughts may be a reasonable response to the situation. But here's the pitfall: they may limit your ability to lead effectively in this moment.

It's Not Resistance—It's Sensemaking

In "Change Resistance is a Myth!" we challenged the frequent refrain that "people don't like change." The truth is, people resist things that don't make sense to them. When you encounter pushback from your team, it's usually not just a knee-jerk resistance to change. It's a rational response based on their life experience.

When you're asked to lead a change you dislike, you're experiencing exactly what your team will experience: the discomfort of something that doesn't fit your life experience. The difference is that your role requires you to help others make sense of it, even while you're still working through your own sensemaking process.

Feeling conflicted doesn't make you a hypocrite. It makes you human.

Reframing the Mental Model: What Leadership Actually Requires

A Guide to Joy at Work explores how creating joy in the workplace, especially during times of change, requires intentional choices about how we show up. One of those choices is examining our mental models and asking: "Is this model serving me and my team right now?"

Here's an alternative mental model to consider:

The Change Leader’s Role is to create the conditions to make it easier for people to do things in a new way that will achieve the value of the change. 

You can make that practical by doing two things:

• Understand the impact to others of the coming change
• Do what’s reasonable to make it easier for others to adopt the new ways of working

This reframe doesn't require you to abandon your concerns or fake enthusiasm. Instead, it clarifies your actual responsibility: to lead your team to change.

A Framework for Leading Change You Didn't Choose

When you're caught in the discomfort of leading a decision to change you didn't make and don't really like, it's easy to feel stuck. In the Joyful Change Leader Course, we outline a three-part approach to handling a change you dislike.  It moves you from "I’m not on board" to "Here's what I can do."

Part 1: Get Clear on the Specifics

Before you can lead effectively, you need to separate the facts from your feelings about the facts. This is about sensemaking. Even when you didn't make the decision about WHAT the change is, you can still choose HOW the change is implemented.

Understanding the "why" behind the change doesn't mean you have to like it, or even agree with it, but it does help you lead with context. When you can explain the reasoning behind the change to your team, you're helping their sensemaking.

Part 2: Examine Your Personal Reaction

Next, look at your own response. This is where mental models come into play. Your reaction to this change isn't just about the change itself. It's about how it fits (or doesn't fit) with your mental models about work, leadership, and your role. You are asking: ”What is really bothering me about this change?” 

This question can be uncomfortable, but it opens you to the idea that sometimes what looks like a bad decision is actually just a decision that conflicts with your mental model of how things should be. This self-awareness sets you up to manage your reaction for the sake of the team.

Part 3: Focus on Leading Your Team

This is where you move from internal processing to external action. Even when you can't control the change decision, you have enormous influence over how that change impacts your team's experience.

Understand your team's perspective.  Notice that you're not trying to predict whether they'll like it or agree with it. You're trying to understand their sensemaking process. Because, as we explored in "Change Resistance is a Myth!", pushback isn't resistance; from their point of view, it's just a rational response to their life experience.

Growing Joy at Work in Unlikely Circumstances

In The Guide to Joy at Work, we share that some of the most meaningful experiences of joy at work happen precisely during times of challenge and change. So even if you didn’t make the decision to change and don’t like it, you can choose to be the leader who:

• Models integrity by being both honest about concerns and committed to success
• Creates psychological safety by acknowledging uncertainty while providing direction
• Develops your team by involving them in implementation decisions
• Demonstrates respect for your team, the decision-makers, the company, and yourself
• Builds trust by following through on your commitments, even when it's hard

These choices help grow Joy at Work for your team and for yourself!