It seems counterintuitive. Surely the people who have driven the organisation's success are the ones best placed to lead it through transformation? In practice, high performers are often the most resistant to change, and understanding why is essential to any successful transformation strategy.
It seems counterintuitive. Surely the people who have driven the organisation's success are the ones best placed to lead it through transformation? In practice, high performers are often the most resistant to change, and understanding why is essential to any successful transformation strategy.
The Psychology of Success Identity
High performers typically have a strong, deeply internalised identity built around their competence. They know what excellence looks like in their domain, they have invested years developing their expertise, and their sense of self-worth is closely tied to their mastery.
Transformation disrupts this. New ways of working, new frameworks, new metrics, these don't just change the job; they temporarily undermine the very thing that makes high performers feel valuable. The resulting resistance is not stubbornness or lack of commitment. It is a psychologically understandable defensive response to a perceived threat to identity.
The Competence Trap
There is a related phenomenon we see frequently in transformation work: the competence trap. Individuals and teams who have achieved success by becoming exceptionally good at a particular way of doing things find it genuinely difficult to unlearn those patterns, even when the context has changed and new approaches are needed.
This is not a failure of intelligence or willingness. It is a feature of how expertise is encoded. Deep competence creates cognitive efficiency, the ability to perform complex tasks quickly and reliably, but this same efficiency makes it hard to step back and question the fundamental assumptions behind the task.
Working With High Performers Through Change
The most effective approach is to give high performers a meaningful role in designing the transformation, rather than positioning them purely as recipients of change. When people feel ownership over a new direction, the psychological threat diminishes significantly.
It also helps to be explicit about the transition period, to name clearly that proficiency will temporarily drop as new approaches are learned, and that this is expected, not a sign of failure. Normalising the learning curve reduces anxiety and keeps high performers engaged rather than defensive.
The Long-Term Payoff
When high performers do successfully navigate transformation, they typically become its most powerful advocates. Their credibility with peers is high, their influence is significant, and their genuine mastery of new ways of working carries enormous weight. The investment in bringing them along, carefully and thoughtfully, pays substantial dividends.
Matthew Bayfield