Here’s what nobody tells you when you start a job: at some point, change is going to land on you from above. Not change you asked for. Not change you designed. Change that arrived in an email, or a town hall, or a hallway conversation with your manager, and now you have to figure out what to do with it.
We spend a lot of time in our work talking about how leaders should drive change, how organizations should roll it out, how teams should be brought along. All of that matters. But most people aren’t the ones calling the change – they’re the ones living it. And nobody hands you a manual for that.
This is that manual.
First: Your Reaction Is Normal. Don’t Skip It.
When change lands, most of us react. And then most of us immediately try to shut that reaction down – either because we’re at work and we’re supposed to be professional, or because we’re a leader and we’re supposed to model positivity, or because we’ve been here before and we’re tired of caring.
Here’s the problem with that: the reaction doesn’t go away when you suppress it. It just goes underground. And underground is where it quietly drains your energy, your focus, and eventually your willingness to engage at all.
We are creatures of habit. Even small changes – a new process, a new tool, a new reporting structure – register as disruption. That’s not weakness. That’s biology. The goal isn’t to stop reacting. The goal is to let yourself react, understand what you’re actually reacting to, and then decide what you’re going to do with it.
So before you do anything else: give yourself five minutes. Name what’s actually bothering you. Is it the change itself? Is it the way it was communicated? Is it that nobody asked for your input? Is it that you’re not sure what it means for your role? The specifics matter. Vague dread is exhausting. A specific concern is something you can actually work with.
Find Your Island of Stability
In coaching, we talk about “islands of stability” – the things that keep you grounded when everything around you is shifting. Your island isn’t a framework or a productivity hack. It’s the specific thing that returns you to yourself when you’ve gone into full duck-on-the-water mode, legs spinning like crazy underneath while you try to look calm on the surface.
For some people it’s a walk. For some it’s journaling – getting everything swirling in their head onto paper so it stops circling. For some it’s coffee with a person they trust, or a conversation where they can say “I need five minutes to vent” without it turning into a strategy session. For some it’s something as simple as changing their environment – getting out of the space where everything feels overwhelming and finding somewhere they can think.
The point isn’t what it is. The point is knowing what it is for you, before you need it. Because when you’re in the middle of the storm, you don’t have the bandwidth to figure out what would help. You need to already know.
Ask yourself right now: what is the thing that brings me back to steady? That’s your surfboard. Keep it close.
Apply the 80-20 Rule to What You Can Control
One of the most practical things you can do in the middle of organizational change is get clear about what you can actually influence – and stop spending energy on the 80% you can’t.
The decision has probably already been made. The direction has been set. You didn’t call it, and at this stage you’re unlikely to reverse it. That’s the 80%. Pouring your energy into resisting, criticizing, or waiting for it to fail is expensive and it costs you far more than it costs the change.
The 20% is where you actually have leverage. How do you show up during the transition? What relationships do you invest in? What questions do you ask? What part of the change can you shape from where you sit? What skills can you build in the process that you didn’t have before?
That last one is worth sitting with. Change – even change you didn’t choose – is an experience you can add to your resume. Every time an organization goes through a significant transition and you navigate it professionally, you’re building something. The people who come out the other side of change ready to lead the next one are the ones who chose to engage with the 20% instead of exhausting themselves fighting the 80%.
Assume Positive Intent – Then Ask the Question
Most organizational change is not malicious. It doesn’t feel that way when it lands on you without context or explanation, but the reality is that leaders are usually scrambling to hit targets, respond to market pressures, or solve problems that are genuinely visible from where they sit and genuinely invisible from where you sit. That’s not an excuse for poor communication – it’s just context.
Assuming positive intent doesn’t mean agreeing with the decision. It means starting from “there’s probably a reason for this” rather than “they’re doing this to us.” That starting point changes your entire posture in the conversation.
And then ask the question. You are allowed to seek understanding. Not as resistance – as a legitimate human need. What problem is this solving? What does success look like in six months? What does this mean for my team’s day-to-day work? Leaders who are doing change well will welcome these questions. Leaders who aren’t will reveal that too, and that’s information worth having.
One caveat: if you have a genuine concern, say it once, clearly, to the right person – the one who can actually do something about it. Not in the hallway. Not to your team. To the decision-maker, directly. After that, you’ve done your part. You can engage in good faith knowing you said what needed to be said.
Learn to Surf. Don’t Try to Stop the Wave.
There’s a version of self-protection that looks like disengagement. You’ve seen it – and you may have been there yourself. It’s the “this too shall pass” posture, the mailing-it-in approach, the decision to wait out the change rather than move through it. It feels safe. It isn’t. It just means you drift further from the current, lose visibility, and end up less connected to your work and your team than you were before.
Surfing is different. Surfing means you’re moving with the change – not fighting it, not drowning in it, but staying upright and present while it moves around you. The moment you start freaking out, that’s when you go under. The moment you go rigid, same result. What keeps you on the board is staying loose, staying curious, and keeping your eyes on the horizon instead of on the wave that’s about to hit you.
Practically, that looks like: dealing with the change incrementally rather than catastrophizing the whole thing at once. Breaking it down into what it actually means for you, today, this week – not what it might mean in six months if fifteen other things also go sideways. Most of the time, when you strip away the noise, a lot of what’s being asked of you doesn’t change your world as dramatically as it initially felt. And the parts that do? You can handle those one step at a time.
Find Your People
Nobody survives change well alone. Not leaders. Not teams. Not individuals who are privately holding it together while publicly keeping it professional.
Find the person you can text and say “I need five minutes.” It might be a colleague. It might be a friend outside the organization. It might be a coach or a mentor. The specific role doesn’t matter. What matters is that the conversation is honest, it doesn’t spiral into collective catastrophizing, and it ends with you feeling steadier than when it started.
A burden shared is genuinely a burden halved. Not because talking fixes the change, but because it reminds you that you’re not alone in it, and that you’re more capable of handling it than the inside of your own head is currently suggesting.
Be thoughtful about who that person is. Spending your processing time with someone whose primary contribution is confirming that everything is terrible will leave you worse off than before. Find the person who can hold the complexity with you – who takes your concern seriously without turning it into a verdict on the whole situation.
The Bottom Line
Change is not going to slow down. The pace of disruption, the volume of decisions, the knock-on effects of every organizational shift – this is the environment we’re all operating in, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make it easier to navigate.
What makes it navigable is having the skills to stay grounded when things are moving. Knowing your island. Working your 20%. Assuming positive intent until you have clear evidence otherwise. Surfing instead of sinking. Talking to your people.
You can’t always choose the change. You can always choose how you show up for it. And the people who consistently show up well during change – who stay professional, stay curious, and stay constructive even when it’s hard – are exactly the people who get asked to lead the next one.
Your surfboard is waiting. Get on it.