Many employers are struggling to build leadership capability for major change, with HR leaders reporting low confidence that managers can anticipate disruption and guide teams through it, new research suggests.
The data suggests the challenge is most acute at senior level, where executives were least likely to demonstrate strong change leadership in assessed scenarios, despite being responsible for setting direction and maintaining performance.
It reveals a decline in perceived preparedness over time, raising questions for HR teams about whether current leadership development approaches are keeping pace with shifting business demands.
Executive change leadership rated weakest
The analysis was published by DDI, a leadership development company, drawing on survey responses from its Global Leadership Forecast and simulation assessment data from more than 100,000 leaders.
The study found that 13% of HR leaders believed their organisation’s leaders were very capable of anticipating and reacting to change. It also found that 18% of leaders said they felt very prepared to do so, with the number of leaders who felt prepared declining from 25% to 13% over the past five years.
The data suggests a significant gap between leadership levels. It found that only 8% of executives demonstrated strong change leadership, compared with 30% of mid-level leaders and 15% of emerging and frontline leaders.
Tacy M. Byham, chief executive officer of DDI, said organisations needed to treat change as a standard part of business operations. “The global, technological and competitive landscape over the past decade has translated into a transformation agenda for companies. This cascades into change at all levels,” she said. “To keep pace, organizations must view change as standard-operating-procedure.”
Empathy, influence and engagement ‘key weaknesses’
The analysis suggests leaders are struggling less with authority to drive change and more with the behaviours that helped people follow through on it, including emotional engagement, empathy and influence.
Among executives, DDI reported that only 1% were strong at “rewarding change”, which it described as visibly reinforcing desired behaviours. It also found that 4% were strong at “stretching boundaries”, 11% were strong at “addressing change resistance” and 10% of mid-level leaders were strong at “asking questions”.
The findings indicate that in many organisations, change programmes may be undermined by the way change is communicated and reinforced day to day, particularly if leaders assume alignment will follow once direction is set.
They also point to a risk that resistance is not being surfaced early enough, either because employees do not feel safe raising concerns or because senior leaders are insulated from dissent until problems escalate.
HR development linked to change readiness
The breakdown also reveals that some groups feel more prepared to manage rapid change, including younger leaders and those working in smaller organisations.
Generation Z leaders were 1.5 times more likely to feel prepared to anticipate and respond to rapid change. DDI said organisations with 100 or fewer employees were twice as likely as larger employers for HR to report their leaders were prepared, while women leaders reported slightly higher confidence in their effectiveness at managing change.
Rosey Rhyne, a senior research manager at DDI’s Center for Analytics and Behavioral Research, said there was a gap between the pace of change and leaders’ ability to mobilise teams. “There’s a stark disconnect between the accelerated change organizations are facing and leaders’ ability to mobilise teams in an uncertain world,” she said.
Rhyne said HR teams could help improve readiness by ensuring leaders had access to development support that built self-awareness and capability. “Yet, HR teams can help. When leaders have access to high-quality assessment and development programs to provide them with self-insight and growth, they are 5.6 times more likely to effectively anticipate and react to change,” she said.
The findings are likely to sharpen focus on whether leadership development is targeted at the behaviours that make change stick, including how leaders respond to uncertainty, handle resistance and reinforce new ways of working.
The data also indicate that organisations may need to rethink assumptions about senior leadership capability, particularly if executives are expected to sponsor transformation while also setting the tone for psychological safety, trust and engagement during periods of disruption.
