CUMULUS
COACHING
CUMULUS
COACHING
Change is a constant in the business world. Organisations evolve, markets shift, and technologies advance, pushing companies to adapt or risk decline. The road to successful transformation is often fraught with challenges that can lead us to defend our positions, but this instinct can become a major barrier to change.
Defending our positions can hinder organisational change when protecting past decisions becomes more important than considering new evidence, listening to colleagues or adapting to shared priorities. For leaders, this reaction often reflects a sense of responsibility, pressure or concern about losing something they have worked hard to build.
Change is a constant in business. Organisations evolve, markets shift and technologies advance. Yet adapting involves more than agreeing a new strategy. It asks people to reconsider familiar approaches, sometimes including the decisions and practices that helped them succeed.
Understanding what sits beneath defensiveness can help leaders respond more thoughtfully, both in themselves and in their teams.
A basic human desire for stability and control can drive our instinct to defend our positions. As leaders, our sense of authority and identity may be closely tied to the decisions we have made and the roles we hold.
When new ideas, changing strategies or organisational priorities challenge those decisions, it can feel as though someone is questioning our competence. We may find ourselves explaining why the existing approach works before we have fully heard the alternative.
That reaction is understandable. However, when defending our position becomes our default response, we risk closing down the discussion that could help us make a better decision.
There is an important distinction here: raising a legitimate concern about change is valuable. The difficulty arises when we stop examining whether our concern still holds, or become unwilling to consider another approach.
Change programmes ask leaders and teams to question established practices and explore unfamiliar territory. Alongside that expectation, they still have services to deliver, people to support and targets to meet.
Resistance can emerge when leaders feel that these responsibilities are threatened. It may appear as quick dismissal, withdrawal of support or repeated requests for more detail.
The following examples show how this can happen.
Laura is a strong, results-focused leader who appreciates clarity and certainty. Although she considers herself open to new ideas, she rarely seeks feedback. She is therefore unaware that colleagues sometimes experience her as having a closed mind.
She assesses suggestions confidently, but often dismisses ideas that contradict her existing beliefs or strategies before exploring them fully. Over time, people may become less willing to contribute. The organisation loses access to ideas that could improve its approach.
Laura’s opportunity is to notice the effect of her certainty and make more room for other people’s thinking before reaching a conclusion.
Ali feels under siege. The sheer volume of new initiatives threatens his ability to deliver and leaves him concerned about what his team can realistically manage.
Without deliberately deciding to resist, he begins to withdraw support for change initiatives. His team takes his lead and becomes less engaged with other departments’ priorities.
This creates tension within the leadership team and weakens the cooperation needed to deliver change. Exploring Ali’s capacity concerns could help the organisation address a practical problem before it becomes an entrenched disagreement.
Carl is proud of the quality his team delivers. His attention to detail has served the organisation well, and he doesn't want to risk that reputation.
When urgent change requests arrive, he insists on a detailed prioritisation process that gives him time to protect quality and sustain results. From his perspective, this is responsible leadership.
However, his approach delays other work that depends on his team’s decisions. Colleagues become frustrated, and opportunities pass while the organisation waits.
Carl needs a shared discussion about acceptable risk, essential quality standards and the consequences of delay. That would help him protect what matters while recognising the wider organisation's needs.
Shared leadership draws on the judgement, expertise, and contributions of several people. Different team members may lead particular decisions or activities according to their knowledge and responsibilities.
This approach can reduce the pressure on any one leader to have every answer. It also creates opportunities to examine an issue from several perspectives before committing to a course of action.
For this to work, accountability must remain clear. People need to understand who contributes, who decides and how disagreements will be resolved. Otherwise, shared leadership can introduce its own uncertainty.
A useful starting point is to explore what a decision means for the organisation as a whole, including the teams and stakeholders whose voices are less often heard.
Notice when you start preparing your response before someone finishes speaking, repeat your original argument, or dismiss a suggestion unusually quickly.
These reactions can offer useful information. You may be protecting your reputation, your team’s capacity or a standard you believe matters. Naming the concern makes it easier to discuss it openly and assess whether your response is proportionate.
Leaders do not need to have every answer immediately. Acknowledging uncertainty gives others permission to contribute and makes it easier to examine assumptions together.
A response such as “I can see why you are suggesting that; I need to think through the implications” keeps the discussion open without committing you prematurely.
When pressure rises, it is easy to focus on the targets you are personally accountable for. Take time to consider how your decision affects the wider organisation.
A useful question is: “What are we protecting here, and what might it cost elsewhere?”
This helps the leadership team examine competing priorities and agree where a local compromise may support a more important collective outcome.
Create space for people to explain differing views, including concerns about the proposed change. Listen for the issue beneath the position: capacity, quality, trust, timing or uncertainty about responsibility.
Ask colleagues to explain how their challenge could benefit the whole team or organisation. This gives disagreement a shared purpose and helps prevent discussion from becoming a contest between individuals.
My article on how to handle conflict within your team explores ways to understand competing interests and work toward practical agreement.
It can be difficult to recognise an established pattern when you are part of it. A coach can help leaders examine assumptions, understand their reactions and explore the conversations they have been avoiding.
For a leadership team, that space can also reveal how individually reasonable decisions create difficulties when combined. The aim is to develop enough shared understanding to make progress and take responsibility for what happens next.
A well-developed business plan gives direction, but its assumptions still need testing as circumstances change. Priorities shift, key people move on, and new technology affects how work gets done.
Agree review points and consider what evidence would justify changing the plan. This lets leaders adapt deliberately while keeping a clear sense of purpose.
I explore this further in Adaptive Leadership for Experienced Leaders, including the importance of listening to different perspectives and noticing changes in organisational culture.
Moving beyond defensiveness takes practice, particularly when pressure is high and the consequences of a decision feel personal. Leaders can begin by noticing what they are protecting, listening carefully to what others see and making the trade-offs explicit.
You can hold a strong view and remain willing to revise it. Giving colleagues room to influence your thinking helps the organisation draw on its existing experience, making it easier to move forward together.
Quoting Seth Godin, Brene Brown writes [ii],“Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable... It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers. It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail. It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle. When you identify that discomfort, you find where a leader is needed. If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential.”
[i] Yukl, G. (1999). An evaluation of conceptual weaknesses in transformational and
charismatic leadership theories. Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 285–305.
[ii] Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Gotham Books.
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Cumulus Coaching works with individuals and groups to open leadership discussions, and create environments that drive purpose-driven results.
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