Driving Change Through Influence: How to Build Champions and Manage Resistance

By Erica North and Karrie CarlinAndersen Alumnus,CEO,Performance Impacts, LLC,& CEO,Empower Leadership Coaching, LLC

Change is hard. That’s a fact. As leaders, we often see it as hesitation, subtle resistance, and even outright pushback. But successful change doesn’t happen through the sheer will of the project team. It requires the contributions and commitment of people across the organization. It happens when people believe in the change, advocate for it, and lead others through it.

When you intentionally identify and effectively leverage change champions, you boost your change efforts, build trust across the organization, and increase change adoption. Let’s dive into the three steps needed to do this effectively.

Step 1: Identify the Right People

Change champions are promoters of transformation. They’re the influencers, collaborators, and trusted advisors who help others navigate the messy middle of change, aka the “valley of despair.” These individuals don’t necessarily have leadership titles or executive offices. More often than not, change champions are the people others trust, the co-worker known for getting things done and the colleagues sought out for advice.

Finding the right people is critical when building effective change champions. The key is to look for individuals who:

• Have Influence: These are the individuals others listen to and follow naturally. They may or may not have formal authority, but their influence is evident, regardless. These champions play a critical role during challenging moments. They serve as a voice for others, surfacing potential risks, and helping to ensure issues are addressed before they escalate. Are Trusted: Credibility is critical. Change champions need a track record of reliability and integrity.
• Are Resilient: Change can be tiring, and champions need the energy and mindset to stay positive and persistent throughout the ups and downs of it.
• Are Good Communicators: Change champions must be able to understand and effectively articulate the vision to others in order to help them navigate the change.

Pro Tip: Identifying your champions early allows you to engage them in the process sooner and prepare them for the role. Using tools like a Stakeholder Analysis can make this task more efficient (more on that below). Also, if they are newer to the change champion role, it allows you to have time to onboard them and for them to build credibility across the organization as the project commences.

Step 2: Build Their Capabilities

Once you have identified your change champions, there may be a tendency to just give them a PowerPoint and hope for the best. Don't do that. They need to be equipped with the skills and tools that will enable them to be successful.

• Educate Them: Help them understand the "what," "why," and "how" of the change. Share the vision for the change, the strategy and plan, as well as assessments of change readiness and potential risks.
• Engage Them Early: Change champions are most effective when they feel real ownership. Bring them into the early planning and design stages of the change so they are genuinely invested in it.
• Give Them Tools: Provide your champions with what they need to be truly effective in their role. This might include communication guides, FAQs, talking points and development workshops focused on building critical skills such as active listening, conflict resolution, and leading through uncertainty.
• Support Them: Schedule regular check-ins where champions can talk through challenges they are facing, share their feedback, and celebrate progress together. These moments keep energy up and remind your champions how valuable their efforts are. Sometimes, when we deploy new or less experienced change champions, we receive updates that suggest everything is on track when there may actually be underlying challenges that need attention. This is something we can dig into further, as it often requires connecting with key stakeholders and understanding the broader dynamics to get ahead of potential obstacles.

Step 3: Leverage Their Influence

Once your change champions are identified and equipped, it’s time to strategically leverage them.

• Start Small: Find quick wins and engage champions in those opportunities to build momentum.
• Encourage Conversations: Change champions will be most effective when they engage with their networks. Encourage them to discuss the change with their colleagues, share their personal insights, help others see how the change aligns with their work priorities, and highlight early successes and positive outcomes resulting from the change.
• Give Them Opportunities to Share: Provide platforms for champions to share their experiences, insights, and successes related to the change. This could be at team/department meetings, through newsletters, on intranet spotlights, during informal coffee chats, or lunch & learns.
• Track Impact and Adapt: Your champions’ influence can be measured through surveys, pulse checks, and participation data to track engagement and adoption. If you see that your champions are struggling to build momentum for change, you can provide additional resources and workshops designed to address the specific challenges that they are facing.

Managing Resistance

Even the best-equipped change champions will face resistance — and that’s where your role as a leader becomes even more critical. Resistance to change is inevitable. It’s a natural response when people feel uncertain, overwhelmed, or skeptical. The goal isn’t to eliminate resistance — it’s to understand and navigate it. Great change leaders know how to turn hesitation into engagement, resistance into support, and pushback into forward progress.

Spotting Resistance

Resistance to change isn’t always overt. Sometimes, it’s subtle – that’s why the key is knowing what to look for. Catching resistance early allows you to address concerns before they spread within your organization and become roadblocks.

Some common signs of resistance include:

• Silence and Avoidance – Employees disengage from discussions or ignore requests for input
• Delays – Deadlines keep getting pushed back and other tasks take priority
• Skepticism and Criticism – People question the need for change or bring up past failures
• Low Adoption – Employees hesitate to use new tools, skip training, or cling to old processes

Understanding the cause of resistance is just as important as recognizing the signs. People resist change for different reasons. Such as:

• Lack of Awareness – They don’t understand why the change is happening
• Fear of the Unknown – They feel uncertainty about their role, responsibilities, or job security
• Perceived Loss – They believe they will lose status, influence, or effectiveness
• Mistrust in Leadership – They have doubt in the leadership team’s ability to execute change well
• Overload and Fatigue – There are too many changes happening at once and that leads to burnout

Turning Resistance Into Engagement

Once you’ve spotted the signs and understood the root causes, it’s time to act:

1. Listen to Employees and Acknowledge Concerns: It’s important not to dismiss resistance but rather engage with it. Find opportunities for employees to be heard, such as holding meetings to share information and clear up misperceptions, conducting interviews to gather feedback, or setting up small-group discussions, or focus groups, where employees can share their concerns. Make it a point to build in time for walking through the buildings and have impromptu one-on-one discussions; people often open up more in an informal setting.

2. Clarify the ‘Why’: Employees are more likely to embrace change when they understand the big picture. Clearly articulate why the change is necessary, how it benefits employees, as well as what success looks like and their role in achieving it.

3. Engage the Right People Early: Involving the right employees at key times allows you to uncover and respond to concerns before they turn into major roadblocks. You can do this by assessing how ready employees are for change. When employees feel unprepared, uncertain, or unsupported, resistance will occur more often.

This is where our Change Readiness Assessment (from our Transformational Change Guide) can help. By proactively gathering insights, you can gauge how prepared employees are for the change, identify areas where additional support or communication is needed, and proactively address resistance before it escalates. This approach ensures employees are equipped, engaged, and ready to support the change. [Access the Change Readiness Assessment Here]

4. Empower Your Change Champions: Just as change champions play an important role in driving change forward (as we discussed in our previous blog post), they can also help mitigate resistance. Leverage your change champions to address skepticism among their peers, model the desired behaviors, and share success stories and early wins to build momentum. Also, continually identify opportunities to ensure the change champions are engaged and building strategic change capabilities.

5. Offer Support and Resources: Employees often resist change when they don’t feel confident in their ability to navigate the change. By providing training, job aids, coaching, and real-time support you can increase employees’ confidence and, ultimately, adapt to the change more quickly.

Consider providing the following support channels:

• Training sessions to address specific concerns
• Mentoring or peer groups for knowledge-sharing
• Feedback loops (surveys, pulse checks) to assess buy-in and support
• Clear documentation and job aids to explain and reinforce the new processes and expectations
• Leadership visibility and involvement to show their commitment to the change and reinforce the ‘why’ behind it

Converting Resistors Into Champions

While unresolved resistance can delay change, the good news is that resistance is not permanent. In the end, it’s possible that the biggest skeptics can become your biggest proponents of the change. Managing resistance means turning critics and resistors into change champions who help drive the change forward. Many times, it is important to outline a plan and communication strategies so that stakeholder engagement is planful and aligned to elevating engagement outcomes. To do this, consider the following:

1. Involve Resistors in the Process: People are less likely to resist what they help create. Give resistors a seat at the table by inviting them to planning discussions, pilot groups, or feedback sessions.

2. Communicate Often: Change communication should be transparent, ongoing, frequent, and multi-channeled (emails, town halls, one-on-ones). Remember to reiterate key messages and celebrate progress along the way. Revisit your Stakeholder Assessment and adapt your plans to make sure leaders and change champions are connecting with stakeholders in ways and through channels that resonate with them.

3. Celebrate Quick Wins: Showcase early successes to build momentum. Highlight small wins and success stories frequently.

4. Reinforce and Recognize: Publicly recognize employees who embrace the change. You can do this through formal recognition programs or simple shout-outs. Either way, positive reinforcement strengthens buy-in.

5. Adapt and Iterate: Just as resistance isn’t permanent, it also isn’t static. It can shift as the change progresses. It is important to regularly gather feedback and adjust as needed.

Equip Yourself to Lead Change

Effective change starts with understanding the people who make it happen. The following tools are designed to help you build strong champions and navigate resistance with clarity and confidence.

• Stakeholder Impact Tool – Identify key players and how to influence them.
• Stakeholder Commitment Tool – Assess current support levels and find your champion candidates. LINK
• Change Readiness Assessment (LINK) – Identify readiness gaps and design targeted strategies to build trust, momentum, and buy-in from the start.

These tools are part of our Transformational Change Guide, designed to help you plan, execute, and sustain meaningful change. If your organization is navigating transformation, check out Performance Impacts’ Transformational Change Guide (LINK) . It offers practical tools and strategies to boost adoption, reduce resistance, and increase the overall success of your change efforts.