#150 Transforming conversations for change with Jeff Wetherhold

"The way we talk about change is more important than how we plan it.."

88% of organizational change efforts fail to produce lasting results. What if the solution isn’t a new framework, but a new conversation?

This episode challenges leaders to reconsider why change efforts fail, pointing to a surprising culprit: a lack of listening and communication. Jeff and I explore how shifting our approach to conversations can transform outcomes and build stronger, more adaptive organisations.

We literally change the conversation, digging into the fact that individuals are often ambivalent about change, possessing both reasons to accept it and reasons to hesitate. This ambivalence is not fixed but fluid, and can be navigated intentionally

Motivational interviewing (MI), originally developed in clinical psychology, provides a framework for guiding individuals toward change they cannot be compelled to make. Motivational Interviewing teaches us to listen for “change talk” and “sustain talk” — people’s own reasons for and against change.

This deep listening reveals the raw ingredients for productive dialogue, moving beyond fixed attitudes to address underlying concerns. It’s about meeting people where they are, acknowledging their ambivalence, and helping them clarify their own path forward. This approach doesn’t dismiss models; it feeds them the human insights they need to succeed.

How do you differentiate between true resistance and genuine hesitation in your teams?

The main insights you'll get from this episode are :

1. Conversations about change need to be front and centre in organisations – organisational change requires communication, commitment and engagement, making it easy to find excuses not to undertake it.
2. Failed organisational change comes at enormous cost, making successful organisational change essential for the bottom line - everyone is ambivalent about change, but leaders often interpret hesitation as resistance.
3. Change management has unhelpfully popularised the word ‘resistance’, yet attitudes towards change are not fixed - the many reasons why people are for or against change fluctuate; tweaking this balance can move the needle towards change.
4. ‘Resistance’ attributes intention without discretion or discernment, whereas it might be due to a lack of understanding or training - calling people resistant is self-fulfilling; likewise silence does not always signify defiance.
5. Motivational interviewing (MI) for organisational change can be defined as a set of conversational tools and skills for helping people move towards change that you can’t make for them – this makes it relatable and teachable.
6. Understanding how to listen differently, speak differently, and help build belief in different modes of communication means that small steps can be interleaved with immediate effect (MI-inspired microskills).
7. Learning to listen for change talk (someone’s own language of change) and sustain talk (someone’s own language against change) brings to light the ‘raw ingredients’ for a different kind of conversation.
8. Frameworks and models (i.e. planning) for organisational change don’t work, are unsustainably expensive and alienate staff; ‘all models are wrong, some are useful’ is true if they are used consistently.
9. Overinvestment in models makes it difficult to undo and reveals the gap in change management: clients have expectations of a certain model but generally only half the tools required for successful organisational change.
10. Change is constant, which makes a relational infrastructure essential - change fatigue is real and driven by the low success rate; transformation is necessary to remain competitive but it can be stressful to revisit it all the time.
11. The cycle of change is a relational activity to build the social tissue of an organisation, not a process flow, roadmap, etc. – a different approach positions the relational piece as a solution to the problem.
12. AI is transforming multiple aspects quickly but is not immune to the laws of change adoption (like the Internet before it) – the issue is to get people to adopt it, which is a highly relational pursuit.
13. AI will not eradicate the problem of talking and helping others to change – it makes people worse at communicating, therefore exacerbating the problem – and is still a long way from being able to help us solve these problems.
14. Interaction with AI is by default transactional rather than involving empathy and human connection, but the way we speak to each other about change matters, and requires skills that most leaders have never been taught.

Find out more about Jeff and his work here :

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wetherhold/

https://www.jeffwetherhold.com

https://www.miforhealth.com