Your team isn't resisting....
Instead, you may have built anxiety or compliance into the system
When a change initiative does not seem to be working and everyone starts saying its due to resistance, they miss some nuance, mainly in the fact that the word hides two completely different problems that need opposite solutions.
Look at the matrix I quickly made...
It's based on two questions:
1) Do they believe they can do it? (Self-Efficacy) 2) Do they see why it matters? (Meaning)
When both are high, you get high performance, however...when one is missing, you get patterns that look like resistance but aren't
Let's look at the Anxiety Pattern... which comes when you get high meaning and low self- efficacy: here, people in the org have bought the vision but don't have the conditions in place for them to learn safely.
An example of this could be getting high engagement in kickoff meetings, but then seeing low engagement in execution... people ask for approval on decisions they used to make on their own....again, this is not resistance to the change, instead this is a system that punished early mistakes and now everyone is pretty much paralyzed.
The fix should be to stop communicating the vision, because people already know it... and instead wtart building psychological safety!
Now, let's move to the compliance pattern.. where high self-efficacy pairs with low meaning... this is where people in the org can execute the new process really well but they don't see why it matters.
What this may look like: forms are completed perfectly, however... zero improvement in outcomes. Basically, the metrics you're tracking go up but the outcomes you care about stay flat... again, this isn't resistance either - this is a system that built skill without building purpose.
The fix isn't more training, we know they can do it... instead, make sure you connect it to something that already frustrates them, use their language for the problem not yours, if the change benefits the organization but costs them time acknowledge that directly.
Here is a diagnostic question to use:
If leadership stopped tracking this next week, would the behavior continue? If no, you built compliance - regardless of what people say in meetings... why, because high performance only shows up when "I want to" meets "I can" because the organization made both possible