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Picture this: You speak at a conference, and two weeks later the organizer sends you the evaluations. A hundred and twenty-three say some version of "Amazing, best keynote ever."
One says, "I didn't see how this applied. I didn't really care for it."
Which one do you focus on?
You can probably guess which one I did. The negative one. It rolled around in my head for the next two days, quietly convincing me that I was terrible at my job. The 123 people who enjoyed it barely registered. I'd love to tell you I've outgrown this, but as a lifelong approval seeker, I know that the one bad evaluation will win my attention almost every time. (Yes, I'm aware this is not the healthiest way to process feedback. I'm working on it.)
I bring this up because I see leaders do something very similar when they roll out a change.
(Note: this is one of the many topics I go in depth into in my appearance on Jodi Grinwald’s Today is the Day Changemakers Podcast. You can listen to the full episode here.
The squeaky wheel gets the meeting
Almost any significant change, whether it's a new system, a reorganization, AI, or a new regulation, will produce one or two people who are vocally upset about it. They speak up in meetings, push back in the hallway, and send long emails. So leaders do what anyone would do. They focus on them. They schedule extra conversations, refine the messaging, and try to win them over.
That's understandable. Resistance is loud and visible, and dealing with a resister is a giant pain. And sometimes the resisters have a legitimate point worth hearing. But if you picture your organization as a bell curve, the vocal resisters are a small group at one end. The much bigger opportunity is the large group in the middle. They aren't fighting the change, but they aren't contributing to it either. They show up, do what's required, and keep their energy, ideas, and initiative to themselves.
Resistance at least tells you where people stand. Apathy is much harder to spot because it doesn't make any noise.
Quiet isn't the same as checked out
Before going further, I want to be careful, because I'm a little biased toward quiet people.
When I was a high school senior, I went to the awards night not expecting anything. They were giving out a small scholarship, a couple hundred bucks, and the principal explained that when the teachers discussed who should get it, they described this person as a "quiet doer," someone who quietly did their work. Then they called my name. I had no idea I'd even been nominated. (I'm not sure it counts as a humblebrag when the brag is from high school, but I'm counting it.)
That memory came back to me recently because I think most employees are quiet doers. Most people are professional, and pretty much everyone would prefer not to get fired, so they keep their heads down and do their work. Leaders don't notice that. They notice the buzzwords instead: quiet quitting, doing the bare minimum, the Gen Z stare.
But quiet, productive, hesitant, disengaged, and apathetic are not the same thing. Some of your quietest people are among your most committed. Others are simply going through the motions. From the outside, they can look identical, which is exactly why leaders who only respond to noise end up missing the difference.
How people learn to stop caring
Apathy rarely shows up overnight. People usually learn it.
I once had a guest on my podcast who works at Google. He told me he'd been through 14 organizational changes in two years. Whenever someone above him in the food chain shifted jobs, there was another reorg. I'd imagine by the third one you get numb, and by the seventh you've stopped caring whether the latest initiative succeeds.
You don't have to work at a giant tech company to recognize the pattern. A typical rollout goes something like this: Leadership goes off and brainstorms on its own. They build a great PowerPoint presentation. They hold a kickoff meeting with pizza and juice. And as the slides go up, everyone in the room is thinking, "Oh my God, another change."
When change is something that repeatedly happens to people, with their input arriving after the decisions are already made, not caring starts to look like a pretty reasonable way to conserve energy.
Ask before you announce
The biggest shift leaders can make is moving from dictating a change to involving people in it. In my YES AND framework, the "D" stands for Dig Deeper, and a big part of that is asking real questions before you have everything figured out. Questions like:
- What do you think we should do?
- How do you think we should navigate this change?
- What would make your life better after this change, rather than worse?
These questions only work if you're willing to hear the answers. In improv, the best performers make an offer and then let go of where they assumed the scene was going, so they can build on what their partner brings. Leaders can do the same thing. That doesn't mean you have to implement whatever anyone suggests. It means that in the early conversation, you explore their ideas instead of steering everyone back to yours.
It also helps to lower your expectations in a good way. You're not going to turn a checked-out employee into an enthusiastic change champion in one meeting. Moving someone from apathy to hesitation, or from hesitation to acceptance, is real progress. Start small. Ask one team for input before the next decision gets made. Follow up on one suggestion so people can see their input actually went somewhere.
And as a side benefit, asking is how you find out who is quietly doing great work and who has quietly checked out. You can't tell the difference by watching. You can when you start a conversation.
Who are you leaving out of the conversation?
None of this means ignoring the one negative evaluation, or the one vocal resister. Sometimes there's something useful in what they're saying. But it shouldn't consume all your attention while the rest of the room goes unheard.
The resisters will always make sure you hear from them. The people in the middle usually won't, unless you ask.
P.S. If you're leading a change and you're spending most of your energy on the loudest objections while the rest of your team quietly goes through the motions, that's exactly the kind of challenge I help organizations work through. My interactive keynotes and training programs help leaders reengage their people, involve them in change, and turn hesitation into initiative. If that sounds useful for your team, let's talk.
P.P.S. This article is based on things I spoke with Jodi Grinwald about one her podcast, Today is the Day Changemakers. You can listen to the full conversation between me and her (and her guest co-host Fred Wasiak, here).