Resistance to change: why middle management is the key

On Monday the board chooses a new course. On Tuesday the team leader explains it to her team, but she has doubts herself: why, actually? On Wednesday there is grumbling on the shop floor, and the team leader nods along. On Friday the word resistance comes up in the management team. The conclusion: employees do not want it. But what if the problem is not on the shop floor, but in middle management?

The gap is between the middle and the top

Deepler works with a collective intelligence model: how does an organisation think and decide together, from passive to active and from individual to collective? If you plot your employees, middle management and board on that model, we see the same pattern again and again in practice. Employees and middle management are close together. The board is further away.

The team leader in the story above is not against the course. She is simply closer to her team than to the board. And nobody took her along in the why.

Why middle management sides with the shop floor

It is not unwillingness. There are four explanations, and they reinforce each other:

1. They come from the floor. Many team leaders have grown out of their team. They know the work and the people. The language of the board is newer to them.
2. They feel connected. Team and department leaders like to go the extra mile for their people.
3. They hear too little from above. Team managers feel insufficiently seen and heard, and want better information from the layers above them.
4. They keep switching roles. One moment the boss, the next a subordinate. That switching costs energy and makes people cautious.

And the top? In organisations undergoing major change, 1 in 3 top managers does not fully support the strategy themselves. If you want to take the middle along, you first need to be clear yourself.

What really helps middle management?

Not every measure is equally well supported. Sorted by strength of evidence:

• Leadership development, spaced and with practice. A meta-analysis of 335 samples shows better learning, different behaviour at work and better results. Best with practice, feedback and sessions spread over months (Lacerenza et al., 2017).
• 360 feedback for development. On average a small improvement, larger when used for development with a goal and a conversation with the team. If it is tied to an appraisal, the effect is about three times smaller (Smither et al., 2005). Read how to prepare 360 degree feedback.
• Support for work and private life. Specific support from the manager reduces work-family conflict, for team leaders themselves too (Kossek et al., 2011).
• From practice: the board and middle management discussing the course together, a clear role and peer consultation with other team leaders.

Ask, see, act, measure

Let team leaders help write the approach. An approach for the middle, made without the middle, widens exactly the gap you want to close. Read how a healthcare organisation developed its team leaders in a targeted way in the case on 360 feedback for team leaders.

And you as an HR leader?

You are in the middle yourself too. Convincing the board today, reassuring a team tomorrow. Loyal to two sides, and sometimes understood by neither. What you wish for your team leaders, you should allow yourself too: a fixed place to spar and an honest limit to what you solve for others.

Get started

The Team leadership module in Deepler Research measures, among other things, shared strategy, communication and role clarity, per layer and anonymously. With Deepler 360 you develop managers based on their competency profile.

Sources

• Integron (2025). Employee Experience in Nederland 2025. Poll among 5,000 working people.
• Lacerenza, C. et al. (2017). Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: a meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(12), 1686-1718.
• Smither, J., London, M. and Reilly, R. (2005). Does performance improve following multisource feedback? Personnel Psychology, 58(1), 33-66.
• Kossek, E. et al. (2011). Workplace social support and work-family conflict: a meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 64(2), 289-313.
• Anicich, E. and Hirsh, J. (2017). The psychology of middle power. Academy of Management Review, 42(4).