With the tempo of change accelerating, it’s clear that organizations want leaders who can do greater than execute properly. They want leaders who can navigate ambiguity, mobilize individuals via uncertainty, and adapt sooner than situations are altering.
However many leaders are struggling to make that leap.
Harvard Enterprise Impression’s 2025 Global Leadership Development Study discovered that 71% of organizations now say the power to steer via fixed change is essential, up from 58% in 2024. But the worldwide management consulting agency DDI has discovered that solely 18% of leaders really feel able to anticipating and reacting to alter.
Widespread explanations level outward: Change is going on too quick, leaders are underequipped, incentives are misaligned, and workers resist change. All of those matter.
However in my work as a management researcher and marketing consultant, I’ve discovered that leaders are sometimes resistant to alter for a motive that’s generally neglected: Change threatens the very interior drives that helped them grow to be profitable.
Research has shown that when individuals stake their self-worth on being profitable, that may each drive achievement and create vulnerability, as a result of any failure feels essentially threatening to their id. These leaders grow to be captive to what I name self-protective drives to protect their value, picture, management, safety, or relevance. These behaviors typically gasoline the self-discipline, possession, and excessive requirements that make leaders efficient. However when change requires experimentation, uncertainty, and letting go, these identical forces can grow to be constraining.
Throughout my work with tons of of leaders, I’ve discovered three self-protective drives that mostly maintain leaders from changing into prepared for change.
1. The drive to show your value
One CEO I labored with had constructed a profitable firm. From the skin, issues appeared spectacular. The group had doubled to about 1,000 workers within the prior 18 months, however the development was changing into unhealthy and unsustainable.
The CEO had simply returned from a month-long sabbatical tied to a stress-related well being situation, and he was not the one government coping with related pressure.
I used to be introduced in to assist the staff work out methods to proceed rising with out rising burnout. Early in my work with the CEO, I requested him why he began the enterprise.
His reply: “To show others unsuitable.”
That drive had helped him construct one thing substantial, however as the corporate grew, the identical drive started shaping your entire group. He and his government staff stayed deep within the day-to-day, pushing relentlessly, fearing that if issues slowed or slipped, the proof they have been chasing would disappear.
That’s the reason this drive can undermine change-readiness. Change requires leaders to experiment, tempo themselves, create area, and construct capability in others. However when leaders are pushed to show their value, they typically push more durable as an alternative of working from a strategic place.
2. The drive to regulate the end result
One other chief advised me she knew she was battling change as a result of she was micromanaging. However she felt she had no selection.
In apply, that appeared like repeatedly checking in on the main points of a proposal, revising items her staff ought to have owned, and never giving individuals sufficient area to work via challenges themselves.
Once we explored what was driving how she operated, she mentioned, “If I don’t keep on prime of every little thing, it received’t come out proper, and I’ll look unhealthy due to it.”
Her drive for management was not nearly high quality. It was about safety.
That drive could have helped her grow to be dependable and trusted. However in a altering atmosphere, it made her the bottleneck. It prevented her staff from taking possession and diminished the group’s agility.
Change-ready leaders can’t personally management each end result. They should distribute possession, construct belief, and create the situations for others to adapt rapidly.
3. The drive to guard your competence
A 3rd chief realized he was stifling change as a result of he not often invited the opinions of his staff. And when individuals did supply concepts, he shut them down rapidly.
As we unpacked it, he mentioned, “If the nice concepts come from somebody aside from me, I’ll grow to be much less related.”
That sentence captures one thing many leaders really feel however not often say out loud.
The drive to be seen as competent may help leaders construct credibility early on. However later, it may make them defensive, closed, and overly connected to being the neatest voice within the room.
The irony is that defending competence typically blocks the very data leaders must adapt—and stay competent. Change requires curiosity, humility, and openness to weak indicators. If leaders shut down enter to protect their picture, they lower themselves off from the perception wanted to navigate change.
The shift change-ready leaders should make
The drives to show your value, management outcomes, and shield competence can result in robust efficiency in steady environments. However when the atmosphere turns into extra complicated, these drives trigger leaders to be self-focused. As a substitute of asking, “What does this case require?” they ask, “How do I ensure I nonetheless look precious, in management, and succesful?”
Leaders’ capability to drive change and make an influence will all the time be restricted in the event that they’re unconsciously working from an interior want to guard themselves.
The leaders most prepared for change are those safe sufficient to launch management, invite contribution, and transfer towards uncertainty with curiosity slightly than self-protection.
