The Inner Work of Change Leadership
Mastering yourself is the first step in leading others through change
It starts closer to home than you think
Change leadership doesn’t begin with a strategy deck or a stakeholder map. It starts inside the leader. Before you can guide others through uncertainty, you need to understand how you respond to it yourself. That’s not a soft skill. It’s the foundation of influence.
Your team will take their emotional cues from you long before they adopt your plan. If you move through ambiguity with presence, they’re more likely to stay engaged. If you rush to shut down discomfort, they’ll learn to mask their doubts instead of raising them. The inner work you do sets the tone for the entire change journey.
Most leaders are trained in the mechanics of change: how to communicate the vision, build the roadmap, and track progress. But few are equipped for the personal demands: holding space for ambiguity, staying grounded when anxiety spikes, resisting the urge to push for premature closure to relieve tension. These are not tactical challenges. They’re psychological ones.
This is where the distinction between change management and change leadership becomes clear. Management is procedural. Leadership is personal.
From resilience to Change Fitness
Resilience is often framed as the ability to bounce back after adversity. Change fitness is something different. It’s the capacity to stay adaptive while the ground is still shifting. It’s about noticing your own resistance before it leaks into the team. Staying emotionally available during challenging conversations and integrating new information without defensiveness. These are muscles you can build, but they require deliberate practice—not just more time in the arena.
An example
Let me introduce you to James, a founder I worked with last year. He was leading a strategic pivot after a failed product launch. The market had shifted, and his team was exhausted. James had a clear plan, but every time he presented it, the room went flat. No questions, no pushback, just quiet compliance. He thought they were aligned. They weren’t.
What James hadn’t realised was that his own discomfort with uncertainty had led him to over-control the narrative. He was presenting a finished solution when the team needed space to co-create. Once we unpacked that pattern, he redesigned his role. He stopped leading with answers and started leading with questions. Within weeks, the energy shifted. Engagement returned. The pivot stuck.
James had fallen into three common traps that many senior leaders face during change:
- Over-identifying with the plan. When critique feels personal, it’s easy to shut down the input you need.
- Prioritising speed over alignment. Driving timelines that outpace people’s ability to adapt wins compliance, but not commitment.
- Micromanaging under stress. Shrinking decision rights erodes the agency and ownership you need from your team.
Practical ways to work the “inner game”
The antidote starts with awareness. And from there, with practice.
Here are three tools I often recommend to leaders navigating the inner game of change:
- Emotional check-ins. Before key meetings, take 60 seconds to ask yourself, “Where am I at, and is that the state I want to project?”
- Narrative reframing. When faced with unwelcome news, pause and ask, “What else could this mean?” before deciding what it does mean.
- Role redesign. Delegate or trim tasks that pull you into low-value detail so you can reserve your best energy for high-leverage moments.
Why it’s worth the effort
Change isn’t sustained because the logic is sound. It’s sustained because people feel safe and inspired enough to stay engaged through the messy middle. The inner work creates the conditions for trust, curiosity, and perseverance. Without it, even the most well-funded, well-planned transformation can stall.
And the payoff? You become the kind of leader whose presence steadies a room—not because you have all the answers, but because you model how to lead without them.
If you recognise yourself in any of these patterns, you’re not failing. You’re human. But change leadership asks more of us than business-as-usual leadership. What shifts might be possible if you invested as much in your own adaptability as you do in your strategy?