Build change capability across every leadership by combining mindset shifts, practical training and coaching. Melanie Franklin explains why people development professionals must make change management explicit, scalable and aspirational, helping managers respond confidently to uncertainty, support their teams and turn constant disruption into a source of organisational strength and progress.
With every business under constant pressure to adapt to technological, environmental, and social shifts, change has become a permanent part of working life. Yet while 61% of organisations recognise change management as critical, most still rely on small specialist teams, often 20 people or fewer, that focus on major transformation projects rather than the everyday changes happening across the business.
Line managers and local leaders shoulder most of the responsibility for adapting to shifts that are impacting everyday operations
The Capability for Change Report highlights a widening gap between the scale of change organisations face and the resources assigned to manage it, leaving line managers and local leaders to shoulder most of the responsibility for adapting to shifts that are impacting everyday operations. People development professionals can help strengthen their teams’ ability to navigate constant transformation to set organisations up for success.
Why change management skills are so crucial
Anyone leading a team today is a part-time leader of change and transformation, whether or not they asked for that responsibility. Our research demonstrates this shift. 95% of leaders believe the ability to change is very important, if not critical, to organisational success, and 39% argue it’s a skill every senior manager must have.
I see this reflected in job descriptions too, albeit often not explicitly. Recently, I reviewed adverts for line management roles across finance, operations, sales and marketing. These roles assume individuals will lead continuous improvement, modernisation and innovation, all of which are forms of change. Yet in almost every case, change management capability was absent from the role requirements.
There are exceptions. One advert, for a head of secretarial services, was explicit about balancing delivery with changing how work gets done. This level of clarity should be the norm, not the exception. We now expect leaders to navigate change as a matter of course, and we rely on them to make it work. But many organisations still fail to name it, hire for it or develop it deliberately.
Forward-thinking organisations must recognise that real leadership lies in navigating ongoing uncertainty, not just delivering individual changes. People development professionals have an integral role to play in this. If change capability is implicit in leadership roles, it must also be explicit within learning, development and succession planning strategies.
Building the development of these skills into the training and culture of your organisation will also benefit future leaders, who will need to be able to operate confidently in constant instability in order to progress. Change management is no longer optional, it’s a core leadership capability.
The advantages of a workforce skilled in change management
When organisations invest in change capability, the impact is significant. The most obvious shift is becoming proactive, rather than reactive. Rather than responding to changes imposed by markets or technology, organisations become more confident in seeking out potentially beneficial change themselves.
Organisations continually evolve, and leaders need confidence in their ability to adapt. When people have this, they become more willing to suggest ideas, experiment and stay flexible, all of which are crucial to success and staying ahead in competitive markets.
Why some people are still nervous of change
Despite this, many people are still hesitant to engage with change. Most line managers earned their roles by mastering the current way of working, so their confidence and status are tied to that expertise. Change threatens to reset that balance. Someone highly competent can suddenly feel they are back at zero, needing to rebuild skills, credibility and confidence.
There is also fear of failure, and the perceived potential humiliation should this happen. Tied to this is concern about losing influence and the informal networks managers and leaders naturally build in the organisation during the course of a successful career. These reactions are human and acknowledging them is essential for designing learning that genuinely addresses these concerns.
The solution
Clearly, people development professionals have an important role to play in developing changing capability and articulating the value of this to teams. This starts with addressing how change is perceived. As I’ve already discussed, many managers did not sign up to be “change managers”, yet the ability to lead change is now fundamental to future success.
Staff must buy into this if they are to prioritise upskilling in this area. This means it’s critical that change capability is positioned as a strategic, aspirational skillset. Afterall, as all people development professionals know, the biggest competitor to learning is not other training, but the other demands on people’s time. And no one is going to sacrifice other work for something they don’t truly see the value in.
Once teams are bought into the merits of change capability, the upskilling process must start with a mindset shift. Whilst change can feel intimidating, we all already manage change every day, at work and in life. Development should be positioned as building on that experience, rather than starting from a blank slate. Once this groundwork has been laid and some initial confidence built, people development professionals can equip leaders with practical techniques to navigate change with greater confidence and effectiveness.
In my experience, a blend of training and coaching works best. Training creates a shared language, while coaching helps leaders apply change principles to real situations, like communicating difficult decisions or supporting teams through uncertainty. Flexible options such as microlearning and virtual group coaching make this manageable even in busy environments.
Tips for building change capability at scale
Here are a few practical starting points:
- Deepen your own understanding of change management. You simply can’t make informed decisions about the most appropriate routes for upskilling others if you don’t understand the discipline yourself
- Begin with reflection so leaders can learn from past change experiences, helping to build confidence by recognising what has already worked in practice
- Balance training with coaching so leaders gain both knowledge and application
- Scale capability beyond specialist teams to all leadership levels. The ability to adapt to change needs to cascade throughout the organisation, not sit with a small group of experts
Change management is no longer an additional leadership skill; it’s foundational.
Melanie Franklin is CEO of Capability for Change
