Your strongest resistor in your change is often your most influential stakeholder — and your biggest adoption risk.
How can you manage them so they don’t sabotage everything?
The tactic isn’t more comms.
Treat them like a key stakeholder with power, drivers, and needs.
Here are a few things that work for me when I meet one of this kind…
1) Diagnose before you try to win
Don’t start with persuasion. Start with curiosity.
Meet 1:1 and ask questions that make it safe to tell the truth:
What worries they have?
What would make this workable for them?
What is missing for them?
What is that they see, that other don’t see?
Why do they think it will fail?
You might hear these answers
Fear of loss – status, control, expertise, identity
Workload reality – no time, no capacity, no backfill
Scar tissue – last transformation burned them
Distrust – of leaders, intent, or follow-through
Different risk assessment – this will break operations
2) Map their influence (not just their attitude)
Not all resistance is equal.
Ask yourself:
Do others follow their cues?
If yes – this is not a difficult person problem.
This is stakeholder strategy.
Because informal leaders can create adoption… or kill it quietly.
3) Choose the right lever (don’t improvise)
Education and communication (but tailored)
Not more slides.
Make the rationale relevant to their world – customers, risk, quality, team stability.
Have them participating in design and involve them in key activities.
If they feel change is a done deal, they’ll fight it.
Shift them from recipient to co-designer
Provide facilitation and support
Sometimes resistance is a capability fear in disguise.
Offer negotiation and agreement
If they genuinely lose something, stop pretending they don’t.
Name the trade-offs (role, decision influence, sequencing, recognition).
Trust goes up when reality is spoken out loud.
Include them into change ambassadors network.
They get influenced by their peers.
4) Convert opposition into ownership with boundaries
Give them a meaningful role — but keep it bounded.
And with specific rules.
What’s your experience: have you ever turned a strong resistor into a partner?
What was the one move that shifted them?