Opposition to change comes in two forms: passive (surface compliance with no follow-through) and active (open pushback and arguing). About twenty percent of people will fall into some form of opposition. The response is not to fight them first, it's to build momentum with early adopters so the opposing voice isn't the only voice in the room. Time is your ally. Allow it to pass. One of three healthy outcomes will follow: they get on board, they leave voluntarily, or you make the call for them to leave. The fourth option, allowing ongoing misalignment to stay in place, is the only one you can't accept. Stay focused on the mission. You don't owe every critic a conversation. You owe your calling your commitment.
Opposition is not the same thing as resistance. Resistance is internal and often subconscious. Opposition is intentional and aimed at stopping the change. When you try to implement something real, someone in the room will actively try to derail it. That's not a reason to stop. It's part of what implementing change actually looks like.
This is the final episode in a three-part arc on implementing change. I cover the distinction between passive and active opposition, the pendulum framework for thinking about where people sit in their resistance, and what you actually do with each type.
- Resistance is internal and involuntary. Opposition is external and intentional. They need different responses.
- About twenty percent of people will oppose a change in some form. That's normal. It doesn't mean the change is wrong.
- Passive opposition, people who say the right things but do nothing, is less dangerous than active opposition, but still needs to be watched.
- Your response to active opposition is not to fight it directly. It's to build enough momentum with early adopters that the opposing voice isn't the only voice in the room.
- Don't get pulled into the drama. Negative attention is still attention. Keep your eyes on the mission and let time pass.
- One of three outcomes will resolve opposition: they get on board, they leave voluntarily, or you make the call. Allowing ongoing misalignment to stay is the only option that hurts everyone.
- You don't owe every critic a conversation. You owe your calling your commitment. Nehemiah kept building the wall. That's the model.
What is the difference between resistance and opposition to change?
Resistance is internal and often subconscious. It's the hesitation, discomfort, and reluctance people feel when something familiar is changing. People experiencing resistance may not even realize they're doing it. It's common in the early stages of any change, and it doesn't mean someone is against the change. It just means it's new.
Opposition is something different. It's external and intentional. It's a conscious effort to prevent the change from happening, to influence others against it, or to simply outlast it until it dies on its own. Opposition aims to stop the change, not just process it slowly.
The pendulum analogy is useful here: on one side is opposition, on the other is adoption, and in the middle is resistance. The goal with any person is to move them from wherever they start toward adoption. Most people begin with resistance and naturally move toward adoption over time. The ones who start in opposition require a different kind of response.
Resistance is internal and emotional. It's hesitation, discomfort, or reluctance people feel when something familiar is changing. It's often subconscious and people may not even realize that they're resisting. Opposition is external and intentional. It is a conscious resistance to change that really aims to influence that the change stops.
Amy Dardis, Episode 11How do I handle someone who is openly pushing back against a change I'm trying to implement?
Don't fight them directly, at least not first. The mistake most leaders make is letting the loudest opposition become the focal point of the whole change effort. When you spend your energy trying to win over the most resistant person, you ignore the people who would actually get on board quickly, and the opposing voice fills the room.
The first move is to build momentum elsewhere. Go to your early adopters. Get wins with the people most likely to follow through and generate success stories. Once you have multiple people excited and benefiting from the change, the active opposition is no longer the only voice. The person who was openly pushing back now hears their colleagues saying different things and sees real results happening around them.
Give it time. In most cases, active opposition either wears off when people see the change is sticking and others are benefiting, or it doesn't, in which case you'll know within a few months what category that person falls into. Don't make hard assessments too early. What someone looks like in week one rarely reflects where they'll be in month six.
Your active opposition is definitely going to be the biggest threat, but they don't have to be the only voice in the room, nor do they have to be the loudest.
Amy Dardis, Episode 11What are the possible outcomes when someone won't accept a change in my business?
There are four, and only one of them is acceptable to avoid.
Misalignment allowed to persist will derail your business. It's not good for you, it's not good for the team, and it's not even good for the person in opposition, who is stuck in an environment that doesn't match how they want to operate.
How do I stay motivated when opposition is loud and the change feels like it's not working?
Keep your eyes on the mission, not the opposition. When you let active opposition pull your attention and your energy, you're giving it exactly what it needs to slow the momentum. You can't stop the opposition by engaging with it. You stop it by making the change so real and so visible that the opposition loses relevance.
I point to Nehemiah as the model. He was called to rebuild the wall. Three influential opponents sent him letters constantly, trying to get him to come down and have a meeting, trying to trick him and derail the work. His response was direct: I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?
That's the posture. Not dismissive, not arrogant, but clear: the mission matters more than the argument. You don't owe every critic a conversation. You owe your calling your commitment.
I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?
Nehemiah 6:3, quoted in Episode 11When God calls you to something, you're going to face opposition. That opposition is also shaping you. Every time you push through it, your endurance builds, your conviction deepens, and you become more capable of leading the next change. Don't just survive the opposition. Recognize that God is using it to refine you for what comes after.
Resources mentioned
- Free Brand Clarity Resources — Downloads to help you build the processes and team structures that make change stick
- Ep 9 — The First Step to Implementing Real and Lasting Change — Part one of this three-part series: ownership and commitment
- Ep 10 — How to Implement Change and What to Expect in the Process — Part two of this three-part series
- Ep 5 — How to Build Accountability to Protect Your Brand and Culture
Full transcript
Welcome to the Building a Clear Authentic Brand podcast. I'm your host, Amy Dardis. And today we're diving into one of the most difficult but also most defining parts of leadership: dealing with opposition when you're implementing change. If you've been following this three-part mini-series, you know that we've been walking through the process of implementing change. Episode one was about ownership and commitment, two things we have to have in order to successfully implement change. Then moving on to what to do to implement change and what to expect in that process. And now we're coming around to this third part: opposition. Because the truth is, anytime you try to move something forward, anytime you try to implement something new or change in some way, you will face opposition. It's not a matter of if, it's just a matter of when. And how you respond to that opposition determines whether the change takes root or it dies in the process.
Let's start by defining the difference between resistance versus opposition. Last episode we talked about resistance. Resistance is internal and emotional. It's hesitation, discomfort, or reluctance people feel when something familiar is changing. It's often subconscious and people may not even realize they're resisting. It's very common during the early stages of processing change. I shared the story of feeling resistant every time I go to play a new board game. Even though I like board games and I'm excited to play it, there's this internal and emotional part of me that's just like, what if I don't understand this game? What if I don't like it? What if it takes too long? It's almost an involuntary reaction. But it's something we work through.
Opposition is external and intentional. It is a conscious resistance to change that aims to influence that the change stops, that it does not happen, that we prevent the change from taking place. I like to think of it as a pendulum. On one side of the pendulum we have opposition. On the other side we have adoption. And in the middle is resistance. Ideally, you present an idea and someone starts with resistance and moves toward adoption. Other times someone starts with opposition. And the goal is to move people along the process.
Opposition has two forms. We have passive opposition, which are people who resist change quietly. It looks like compliance on the surface but resistance underneath. These are the people who tell you what you want to hear to your face. They say okay, they might even say good things about it publicly, but there's no follow-through. There is no action. There is no change. It is all lip service. And then they go about and do their own thing anyway, because the thoughts in their head are saying: I don't like this. I don't think this is going to stick. So I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and wait for this thing to fall apart.
The other type is active opposition. This is the most obvious kind. It's open pushback, questioning, arguing, resistance to decisions. When you have active opposition, you know you have opposition. When we implement change, whether it's technology, a process, a structure, a new culture shift, opposition will make up about twenty percent of your people. This is a general estimate, not scientific, but it's to give you an idea. If you have a hundred people in the room, twenty of them are going to have opposition in some form, and there are varying degrees.
Just because they're opposing doesn't mean they're on the far end of opposition. They could just be a little bit past natural resistance, or they could be further down the line. Everybody is going to be different. And in the very beginning of implementing change, we can't make any hard and fast assessments because it's all new anyway. Whatever someone starts out as doesn't define them. It's just like a bad first impression. You just gotta give them a chance. You go and talk to them again, give them some time to process, and then later see where things shake out.
Everyone else, if they're not in active or passive opposition, they're either on the fence or they're early adopters. The people on the fence are neutral. They're like: okay, let's just see how it goes. If it sticks, I'm on board. If not, that's okay too. And then you have your early adopters, the people who can see the vision, get excited early, and start to take action. Those are the people you get to spend a lot of time with in order to get traction, momentum, and proof of concept.
When you're dealing with opposition, whether passive or active, the first thing is just to let it play out for a little bit. Observe, look around, see how people are reacting. Within the first few months, I will start to categorize them very gently: where do I think this person falls? Are they in opposition, neutral, or on board? And then I will focus on the people who are the most on board.
Your passive people aren't a huge threat because they're not going around saying negative things to other people. They're talking like they're on board, they're just not doing anything about it. So it's like: I'm going to watch that and see how it plays out. Your active opposition is definitely going to be the biggest threat. But they don't have to be the only voice in the room, nor do they have to be the loudest. Think of it like this: they are one person or a small minority. The first thing we have to do is balance it out so that the person most actively in opposition isn't the only voice everyone is hearing.
We do that by spending time and energy planting seeds and getting the most traction we can as quickly as possible. You have to get proof of concept, you have to be able to have success stories. You're going to do that with the people most likely to follow through, act, and get excited. Then you have more people in your corner, and it's not just this select few bold enough to openly oppose you.
A lot of it is a mindset shift: we are focusing on the bigger picture. We believe this is worth it, we believe it's for the greater good. We talked about this in both the first and second episodes in this series. This ownership, this conviction that this is worth it. So even though we face opposition, even though we're going up against these obstacles, we know that if we don't follow through, if we stay the same, it will be more painful and more destructive than anything we're currently facing. So we keep our eyes on the mission, on the calling. And there will be people and there will be opposition that wants to distract us from that. We can't get caught up in that.
We can't get caught up in the drama, in the arguments, because negative attention is still attention. If you're a parent of a toddler, it's like the tantrum. Sometimes you have to just let them play it out and express their feelings without putting all of your time and attention toward it when there's something more important that needs to happen. And you're also showing them that when they make a big enough stink, they don't derail this momentum you're trying to build. It's not about winning that opposition over at first. It's really about winning as many people over as possible so this change actually starts to implement. You're keeping your eyes on the mission, not getting trapped into their game, not losing control of the situation.
Just because it starts as opposition doesn't mean they will always oppose the idea. The important part is to measure the progress and adoption to the change. Is the amount of opposition you're facing lessening? This requires a longer timeline. Not a week, maybe not even a month. This could be a few months. So it's on you to have thick skin, focus on the people who are excited, get those wins, and let time pass. Time is your friend here. Days and weeks and months are going to pass, and you can look and see: did the initial opposition wear off? Did they get their feathers ruffled about it and be a little loud and complaining, but then did they get over it? Did they see that other people got on board? Did they start hearing success stories and realize it's not as bad as they thought?
If you have someone who is either passive or active in their opposition, one of three things will end up happening. Number one: they get on board. Whether fully or not fully. Maybe active opposition moves to passive opposition. They lose energy for the fight, realize it's not a mountain they're going to die on, and they just kind of accept it. They may not ever fully love it, but they're no longer opposed.
Option number two: they don't accept the change. They're going to leave. They realize change is happening and this is a thing, they see everyone getting on board, but they just don't want to be part of it. It's too much for them. And so they leave voluntarily. And that's good. That's good for everyone involved.
The third option: you, as the leader, recognize that they are not going to change. They are not going to move from this place of opposition. And you make the decision for them to leave, because ultimately it is an issue of misalignment. They are not aligning with this change, with how we value doing business, and it's causing friction. It is causing problems, it is creating double standards. And your business cannot continue to operate at its highest level while allowing misalignment. Misalignment derails businesses.
The fourth potential option, which I don't even want to be an option, is that they stay in opposition, they do not get on board, and you allow them to stay. You allow that misalignment to happen, which will hurt your business. It will hurt your team, it will hurt the standards, it will hurt the output and the results you're able to achieve. It's not healthy and it's not good for anyone involved. It's not good for you as a leader, it's not good for the employees who are getting on board and seeing double standards, and it's not good for the employee who's allowed to continue to be in opposition. That breeds friction, toxicity, drama, distrust, internal chaos. And that will derail your business.
This opposition, when we're implementing change, it changes our business because we're doing something new. It changes our team in the way we work through something together, face fear and uncertainty and a learning curve together as a cohesive unit, overcoming challenges together, building trust, seeing results, getting wins. And it brings us closer together. And for us as the leader, it changes us through this process. Because in any process of implementing change, since you're dealing with opposition and resistance and people, there's only so much we can do as humans.
Change has taught me that I need God more than anything. I can do all of the things, but I'm also praying with all that I have that he is opening doors, he is softening hearts, he is opening eyes, and he is moving and working on my behalf. Inviting the power of the Holy Spirit into this process, into this change, instead of striving in my own strength.
A story in the Bible that really portrays these concepts of opposition and staying committed to the mission is in Nehemiah. Nehemiah is rebuilding the wall because God calls him to. He gives him this clear mission, this purpose, and he knows exactly what it is he needs to do. But he was daily just dealing with opposition. And in spite of that, he didn't stop. He continued to pray, he continued to prepare, and he continued to keep building.
There are three people, three influential and very active opposition people who are badgering him all the time, trying to get him to stop building this wall: Tobiah, Sanballat, and Geshem. They are throwing everything they've got at him to keep him from building. They send him a letter. They're like, we need you to come and meet with us. We need to talk about this. And Nehemiah 6:3 records his response: and I sent messengers to them saying, I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?
His response captures everything we've talked about. I am doing a great work. I believe this is worth it. I am clear on this mission, on this vision, and I need to see this through. I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you? With people who want to create active opposition, why should we stop what we're doing? Why should we allow ourselves to be distracted? We have to stay on mission. We have to know that what we're doing is a great work and it's worth it.
It's not just that you need this CRM or this new process. It's the principle of what it stands for. When you set out to implement change, when you set out on this mission, you will see it through. It's not because the thing you're implementing is world-changing in some eternal sense. It's that when God calls us to something, we're going to see it through. We're not going to allow people to derail us. And it's this conviction that builds so that when we have other battles to face, when we have other change efforts to go through, we've been shaped, we've been refined, we've been strengthened. Our endurance has been built through these trials along the way. God uses all of these experiences to shape us for his purposes, for his kingdom.
When we look at it like that, that is going to carry over into so many different areas of our life. And it's also going to carry over into the lives of the people around us. So when you're on this mission, remember: you don't owe every critic a conversation. You owe your calling your commitment. You owe it to see it through, because it's bigger than you. That wraps up our three-part series on implementing change. You can learn more at clearauthenticbrands.com. That's all for this episode. I will see you in the next one.