Teams facing significant change tend to move through a recognizable emotional arc, even though people move through it at different speeds and with different intensity depending on their own circumstances and history with prior disruptions they’ve lived through before. This lesson maps out that arc so you know roughly what to expect from your own team.
Initial Shock or Denial
The first reaction to significant news is often a kind of disbelief or minimization — a hope that the change won’t really happen, or won’t really affect them personally in any meaningful way — and pushing people past this stage too quickly tends to backfire badly later on.
Frustration, Resistance, and Sometimes Anger
As the reality of a change sets in more fully over the following days, frustration and resistance often surface, sometimes directed at the change itself and sometimes redirected at a leader who had little actual control over the decision but is the most visible, available target nearby.
Gradual Acceptance and Re-Engagement
Eventually, most people move toward accepting the new reality and re-engaging with their work again, though this shift usually happens gradually rather than suddenly and all at once, and pushing for premature acceptance before people have processed the earlier stages tends to just prolong the whole process further.
Action Step
Think about a recent change your team went through, and identify roughly where each person seemed to be in this emotional arc, then note who might still need more support right now.
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