What to do when staff resist change

Most school leaders have lived through this. A new initiative is launched in a staff briefing. The slides are clear, the reasons are sound, and a few people nod. Six weeks later, the new system is half used, quietly worked around or simply ignored. If you are trying to work out what to do when staff resist change, it is worth starting with a slightly uncomfortable question. What were they trying to tell you?

Resistance is usually information

It is tempting to see resistance as a people problem: a few negative colleagues who do not like anything new. Occasionally that is true. Far more often, resistance tells you something real about the change itself.

Teachers resist change when they cannot see why it matters, when it adds work without removing any, when they were not asked, or when the last three initiatives disappeared before anyone saw a result. None of those is unreasonable. Each of them is something a leader can do something about.

What to do when staff resist change

Listen before you persuade. Ask a small group of teachers, including the sceptics, what is getting in the way. Do it in person and write down what they say. You will often hear practical problems that never reached you: a login that does not work, a deadline that clashes with reports, a training session that never happened.

Explain the why, in their terms. "The data team needs it" is not a reason most teachers will rally behind. "This will show you which students are falling behind before the end of term" might be. Connect the change to something your staff already care about.

Take something away. If the change adds work, decide what it replaces. Asking busy people to do more without doing less is the quickest way to lose goodwill.

Make the first step small. A full rollout across every department in one week leaves no room to learn. Start with a group who are willing, fix what goes wrong and let them show others what it looks like when it works.

Give people the skills, not just the instruction. Some resistance is really uncertainty. A short, practical training session led by a colleague who already uses the system often does more than any number of reminders.

Keep talking after the launch

The launch is the easy part. The real work happens in the weeks afterwards, when early problems appear and enthusiasm fades. Check in regularly, share small successes and be honest about what you are adjusting. When staff see that their concerns led to real changes, they are far more willing to try the next step.

Over more than twenty years in education, I have learned that the changes which last are rarely the ones announced most confidently. They are the ones where leaders listened early, adjusted openly and stayed with it long enough for people to see the benefit.

If one of those conversations feels difficult, our free film The Conversation Nobody Wanted to Have introduces the CLEAR framework for honest, respectful conversations with colleagues.

So, a question for your next change. Who are the three people most likely to resist it, and have you asked them what they think yet?

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