What does change do to the people around you? And to yourself?

Photo by Kylo

Change asks a lot of people. From those who live through it, but at least as much from those who lead it. What happens inside people when change lands, and how you as a leader are part of that, is what this piece is about.

Survive and Thrive — what happens inside people

Our bodies respond to change. Sometimes people experience it as danger, as risk, as something being lost. Sometimes as opportunity, as space, as something becoming possible. Both reactions can exist at the same moment in the same organization, or even in the same person. They're just there.

John Kotter calls this survive and thrive. In survive, someone experiences a situation as a threat and the body shifts into a kind of alert mode. In thrive, that same situation feels like possibility and energy opens up, room to learn and move together. These aren't personality traits, they're human responses to what's happening in that moment. And they can shift.

The leader as part of the system

Both responses ask something different of you as a leader. And here's what stands out: people read you before they hear what you say. How you show up, what you radiate, whether you yourself are in survive or thrive — that shapes how your message lands. You're not a bystander influencing the system from the outside. You're part of it.

That's why it starts with you. With curiosity about what's happening inside you when change lands. Survive and thrive can both be present, sometimes at the same time, and both carry information. The skill is feeling what's happening without immediately judging it. That awareness is what lets you act from a grounded place.

At one of our clients, two team leaders were asked to deliver a solution in ninety days to a problem the organization had been wrestling with for years. The pressure was palpable. Stress, worry, the feeling of falling short. Classic survive energy, fed by the relentless focus on a tangible result that just had to come.

At a certain point, they got a different picture of what was actually being asked of them. That realization gave them permission to shift their focus — away from the hard result and toward the journey the team was making together. Something changed. Energy came back. And what had seemed out of reach for years began slowly taking shape.

What this asks — the order of care

Once you recognize what's happening in yourself and in the people around you, the question shifts: what does this moment need?

For people in survive, recognition is often what matters most. Recognition that what they're feeling is real, and that there's space to let it be there.

For people whose thrive system is more activated, the movement is already there. The art is giving them a role, bringing them in, and making room for them to bring others with them.

Many people sit somewhere between the two. They feel the opportunity and the threat at the same time, and that creates a kind of quiet confusion you can learn to recognize as a leader. That's exactly where naming what you see and creating space to explore it makes a difference.

Change starts somewhere. And more often than you'd expect, it starts with you — with what you experience, project, and bring when things get hard. That's not a burden. That's your biggest lever.