For meaningful transformation to take root, organisations must break out of inertia, challenge legacy thinking and be prepared for the emotional responses that may emerge from doing so.
Change of any kind inevitably creates a degree of discomfort, says Wojciech Materka, Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD and speaker at AHRI’s upcoming National Convention and Exhibition in August.
Within teams, that discomfort can manifest either as ‘acting out’ behaviours or, often, as inertia: a lack of energy and a reluctance to move towards new models of thinking and doing.
Both responses can be viewed as forms of resistance to change, and both can be a drain on an organisation’s productivity at a time when it’s needed most.
“Resistance should be understood not merely as obstruction, but as social defense against the anxiety of change,” says Materka.
“It’s there to protect the group from experiencing anxiety tied to perceived or imagined loss and uncertainty associated with change. So resistance is actually functional, and needs to be looked at from another angle by HR. [For example]: ‘What is the resistance defending? What is it protecting?’
“Strategic HR must support in containing that discomfort while also challenging the organisation to reflect on itself critically.”
Challenging ingrained core beliefs that no longer serve us
Organisations that respond to change-induced discomfort by doubling down on legacy thinking and familiar, comfortable ways of working face a longer road to transformation than those that respond in other ways, says Materka.
Below, he highlights three core beliefs that may have served organisations well in decades past, but can become drags on progress in a world now defined by uncertainty.
Myth #1: Performance is individual, not systemic.
“This belief isolates performance in individuals rather than seeing behaviours as messages from the group or symptoms of system-wide challenges,” says Materka.
When dynamics are reduced to individual assessments, organisations risk employees acting in self-defensive ways, such as engaging in scapegoating behaviours.
This defence may protect the group from confronting shared anxiety, conflict or misalignment, but it also stifles collaboration and information sharing, and incentivises tribal thinking and competitive behaviours.
How HR can help: Expand from an individual perspective to a systemic lens.
HR practitioners are invited to conversations with leaders in which department or team issues are investigated via assessments and evaluations of individuals and their performance, or visible and tangible measures such as turnover and engagement scores.
“Although important and necessary, these evaluations are, at best, pointers to deeper relational or group dynamics,” says Materka.
HR can help leaders examine what those behaviours reveal about systemic issues like misaligned incentives, unclear decision rights or conflicting priorities.
“The key shift is asking, ‘What is this behaviour telling us about how the system is really working?’ rather than, ‘How do we fix this person?’”
Myth #2: Rational planning is sufficient for change.
Legacy thinking assumes technical solutions like process redesigns, new tools and organisational restructures are enough. They are often the most tempting to go after, because they offer visible and tangible changes.
“But real change is rarely rational or immediately measurable,” says Materka. “It includes issues like identity, mindsets, status and belonging, to name just a few – domains of organisational life that actually make it possible to work, but are often ignored or overlooked.”
How HR can help: Strengthen the organisation’s capacity for containment.
Containment is the ability to absorb and work with the anxiety that change evokes rather than ejecting it through blame, avoidance or reactivity. Leaders play a central role in this.
“Containment isn’t soft or sentimental work – it’s emotionally demanding,” says Materka. “It requires leaders to stay present with others’ frustration, fear or confusion without becoming overwhelmed themselves. This might happen through facilitated group reflections, coaching spaces or simply in how a leader listens and responds in moments of stress.
“HR can help build that capacity by supporting group-level coaching, reflective spaces and development practices that allow teams to stay present [amid] difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed.”
The containment of emotional discomfort enables teams to keep thinking clearly while under pressure, which is vital for adaptive, thoughtful change and is the foundation of resilience, says Materka.
“The key shift is asking: ‘What is this behaviour telling us about how the system is really working?’ rather than ‘How do we fix this person?’” – Wojciech Materka, Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour, INSEAD
But containment doesn’t mean suppression, he adds.
“Whether a team is resisting change outright or withdrawing into silence, containment involves acknowledging those responses and helping people make sense of them. It doesn’t mean absorbing their distress, but by helping them stay with it long enough to learn something from it.
“Containment is about helping people think and feel at the same time, even in challenging circumstances. It’s not about fixing or soothing. It’s about creating a space where anxiety can be felt and processed, rather than avoided or pushed onto others.”
Whether you are dealing with a team that is resisting change through oppositional behaviour or that is emerging from a state of inertia and into one of fear, containment through the expression and subsequent absorption of emotion is key.
“When those emotions cannot be expressed, you have a whole bunch of people becoming passive aggressive: sulking in a corner, remaining oppositional or leaving entirely.”
Myth #3: Past success equals future security
When organisations cling to legacy practices, it’s often less about their utility and more about identity, says Materka.
“What worked in the past is associated with comfort of competence, recognition, familiarity and success. Letting go means facing uncertainty and risking the anxiety that comes with truly showing up in an ambiguous context.”
How HR can help: Reframe ‘results’ not only as successful implementation, but also as transformative learning.
“In complex transformation, failures are part of the process – it’s the space between what we intended and the outcomes we achieved,” says Materka. “That gap should be expected, not feared.”
HR can make experimentation a valued skill by requiring “strategic experiments” as part of leadership development. This shifts the culture from theoretical learning to practical application, making innovation a measurable competency rather than a risky deviation.
Read HRM’s article ‘How to create a culture that embraces failure’
Discomfort without judgement
Materka stresses that discomfort in the face of change is natural, and that the ensuing responses should not be viewed as signs of weakness at an individual or team level.
He uses the example of a manufacturing plant that had a strong culture of safety, with many well-developed procedures designed to protect workers.
Those procedures were born out of genuine care (and trauma from past accidents). But over time they began to have an unintended effect: they created an illusion of safety while suppressing innovation, critical reflection and honest and direct conversations in the face of evolving work demands.
“What had to break down for the plant to be more innovative was the legacy illusion that ‘rules’ equal safety,” says Materka.
The plant’s managers clung to those rules with the best of intentions. To help them let go, HR encouraged them to move from defining safety as conformity to defining safety as relational trust.
“In this reframe, safety was less about ‘more rules’ but more about ‘feeling more safe to speak up’, especially when something was new or different,” says Materka. “Safety began to mean mutual accountability, not top-down inspection.”
Hear more from Wojciech Materka at AHRI’s National Convention & Exhibition in Sydney on 19-21 August. Register now.
