Recently, I started to think about a question I’m often asked: “What makes a great change manager?”
There’s no single right answer, but in my experience it comes down to three qualities:
- Empathy – Understanding what people are going through and meeting them where they are.
- Curiosity – Seeking to understand different perspectives and asking why when outcomes don’t align with expectations.
- Openness – Accepting that you don’t always have the right answer, and being willing to explore new solutions.
To be a change manager is to be a leader. Unlike traditional leadership, change managers often lead through influence rather than authority. That means building trust by supporting others, helping them achieve their goals, and demonstrating that you’re in it with them.
Curiosity is equally important. Change doesn’t always unfold as expected. A new process that seemed like a sure win may be met with resistance. A once-reliable promoter may start showing signs of disengagement. Strong leaders don’t default to defensiveness — they lean in with curiosity to uncover what’s driving those reactions.
Finally, great leaders recognize the complexity of organizations. They know that what worked in the past may not work in the future. There are no guarantees when managing change, and the most effective leaders embrace that reality.
Fighting for What’s Right
Another layer to this is the role of a change manager as an advocate. At our best, we fight for what’s right to help those who will be impacted by change. That could mean co-creating solutions, providing robust training programs, or ensuring communication happens early and often.
But here’s the challenge: what’s “right” for the end user often translates into more work for an already stretched project team. These teams are rarely dedicated solely to one initiative — and sometimes the people we’re leaning on most are the same ones struggling to keep up with competing demands.
That’s where empathy expands. It isn’t just for the employees who will eventually adopt the change; it’s also for the subject matter experts, trainers, and communicators asked to help deliver it. Yes, a comprehensive training program is the “right” thing to do, but if the training team can’t possibly meet that demand, what’s the best use of their limited time?
This is where the trifecta comes back in:
- Empathy for the project team’s realities.
- Curiosity to explore alternative solutions.
- Openness to the fact that you might not be able to do everything you ideally want.
In practice, that often means rolling up your sleeves. Maybe you help the training team by completing part of the needs assessment. Maybe you draft communications for the comms team to refine. Maybe you build a project plan to coordinate activities. Leaning in shows your stakeholders that you’re there with them — not just offering ideas from the sidelines, but helping get the work across the finish line.
Extending Empathy to Yourself
And then there’s the hardest piece: remembering to extend empathy to yourself. I’ll be honest — I don’t get it right all the time. I get frustrated when stakeholders don’t seem to pull their weight, or when I feel like I’m doing too much of the work. In those moments, it’s easy to let frustration overshadow empathy.
But part of being a change manager is recognizing our own humanity. We are imperfect. We stumble. Emotions will show up in ways we might not want them to. And that’s okay. The key is to give our stakeholders, our impacted groups, and yourself a bit of grace.
Choosing the Path of Most Resistance
What ties all of this together is the idea that a great change manager doesn’t always choose the easy path — but a great change manager consistently chooses the harder one.
Because here’s the truth: it’s easy to avoid empathy. It’s easy to stick with the ideas that come naturally to you instead of staying open to new ones. It’s easy to dismiss resistance without asking why someone might feel that way.
It’s also easy to disregard people’s feelings, fall back on what’s familiar, and rely on the approaches you’ve always used. That’s the path of least resistance. And as humans, that’s the path we’re hardwired to choose.
But great change managers fight that natural tendency. They choose the harder path. They choose empathy, even when it slows them down. They choose curiosity, even when it means questioning their own assumptions. They choose openness, even when it forces them to admit they don’t have all the answers.
That’s what the path of most resistance looks like in practice — resisting your own instincts long enough to lead in a way that puts people first.
And that’s why the best change managers aren’t just experts in tools and frameworks. They’re leaders who choose the harder path, again and again, because it’s the only way to build trust, drive adoption, and create lasting change.
We’ll be unpacking this idea further in our upcoming webinar. Join us to explore how leaders can learn to lead through the path of most resistance.
