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Calm never comes: Why today’s leaders need a new playbook

With business disruption surging year over year, leaders need a different way to think about change—and themselves.

Leaders often talk about “getting through” change. A crisis, a restructuring, a market shift. In the past, many of us white-knuckled our way through such scenarios, picked up the pieces, and knew things would eventually level out.

Today, that’s not the case.

Accenture’s Pulse of Change Index shows the rate of business disruption surged 183% from 2019 to 20241. 90% of C-suite leaders say the pace of change has accelerated since January 2025. These percentages are based on a mix of business signals—everything from productivity and IT investments to shifts in talent, the economy, geopolitics, climate, and consumer behavior. The researchers use those indicators to gauge how turbulent the environment has become year over year, then layer in survey responses from thousands of C-suite leaders to understand how those forces are showing up inside organizations and how prepared leaders feel to handle them.

Workers walking down a hall.

Change has two layers: The event and the human reaction

To understand why calm never comes, you have to look at how change actually works inside organizations.

Every major shift—whether it’s a new strategy, a different system, or a redefined organization—begins as a structural event. These are the visible parts of change. They show up in communications, timelines, org charts, and project plans.

But structural change is only half the story.

There’s also a psychological layer. And that’s what leaders often overlook. It’s the internal process people go through as they make sense of what’s happening: the fear, the excitement, the pushback, the confusion, the hope, the doubt. 

“When we plan, we rarely ask, ‘How will this feel to people? How long will it take them to get on board?’” says Amalia Jansel, Senior Executive Consultant at Truist Leadership Institute. “We’re not educated to think that way. But every change carries an emotional load.”

Even when a change is positive or long planned, these psychological responses still appear. And this is where expectations begin to separate from reality.

Amalia Jansel

Amalia Jansel, Senior Executive Consultant

"When leaders map out a change, they tend to picture a steady, upward path,” Amalia says. “A challenge happens, people adapt, performance improves. On paper, the line moves smoothly from ‘challenge’ to ‘impact.’”

But in real organizations, people don’t move that neatly. Psychological responses create a natural dip, slowing performance before it rises again.

“Even with this reality, many leaders still plan for change as if it were linear,” Amalia says. “They define milestones and picture progress rising steadily from disruption to results. But real change never follows that arc. Every change effort includes a natural dip.”

To understand why that dip matters, you have to look at how people experience change depending on whether it’s happening to them or being led by them.

Change done to me vs. change done by me

Depending on where you stand, the dip—others’ denial, resistance, and collective doubt—looks different.  

When change happens to someone, people naturally move through four phases: denial, resistance, exploration, and finally commitment.

Phase 1 Denial

A protective pause. People cling to what is familiar, assuming the change is temporary or won’t affect them.
Phase 2 Resistance

Energy rises. People feel the disruption more personally, and frustrations, questions, or skepticism surface.
Phase 3 Exploration

Curiosity returns. People start testing the new direction, asking how it works, and imagining their place in it.
Phase 4 Commitment

Alignment forms. People rebuild confidence and begin working toward the new vision with clear goals.

But the stages don’t always happen in that order. People loop back between stages, revisit doubts, and try to make sense of what’s been handed to them.

Meanwhile, when change is done by you, another set of phases emerges.

Phase 1 Certainty

(Uninformed Optimism)
The launch energy. Leaders see the promise of the change and assume early momentum will carry the work.
Phase 2 Doubt

(Informed Pessimism)
Reality intrudes. Leaders start encountering resistance, resource limits, and slower-than-expected adoption.
Phase 3 Hope

(Hopeful Realism)
Patterns begin to emerge. Leaders understand the terrain more clearly and see which strategies are working.
Phase 4 Confidence

(Informed Optimism)
Leaders are grounded. They know what’s required, anticipate dips, and can guide others forward.

No matter where someone sits in the organization, change creates motion. People shift, adapt, resist, question, and eventually reengage. “The curve isn’t something that happens once,” Amalia says. “It happens with every change.”

The most effective leaders aren’t the ones who avoid the dip. They’re the ones who shorten it by anticipating emotional responses and adjusting how they communicate and support their teams.

Where do you live on the change curve?

Every leader has a relationship with change. Some thrive on it. They can easily adapt early to new technologies, new markets, or new roles. When something shifts, they feel a rush of energy. If there isn’t enough change, people with such personality types often create it.

Others prefer stability. They build systems, processes, and routines. They value predictability and see their job as protecting what works.

Neither style is “right.” Both carry strengths and risks.

“If you love change, you’re usually very agile,” Amalia says. “But that preference can lead you to create change where it isn’t needed. You can unintentionally create chaos.”

On the other end of the spectrum, leaders who value steadiness often excel at building scalable structures. These are the very systems that can help an organization anticipate future disruption. But when that preference is overused, leaders can miss windows where change is necessary.

“Once you understand your own preference, you see the tools you need to balance it,” Amalia says. “You can ask, ‘Who sees what I’m not seeing? Who can tell me when I’m creating unnecessary change or resisting change we need?’”

Leading through the dip: Validation and clear vision

Regardless of your style, one truth is universal: Ambiguity feels threatening to the brain. When the future is blurry, people tend to imagine the worst.

That’s where leaders need to bring validation.

“If I’m a resistor and my leader comes to me and says, ‘I know this is hard. Here’s why it feels that way. And here’s what happens if we don’t move,’ I’m more ready to engage,” Amalia says. “Validation doesn’t mean agreeing with every concern. It means acknowledging the reality of how people feel.”

From there, leaders can offer what people need most in change: clarity. Some questions to ask (or get answers to) are:

What’s changing? What isn’t?

Why does this 
matter now?

How will we make decisions along the way?

Where is there 
room for input?

Without answers to those questions, silence fills the gaps, allowing people to assume the worst. With answers, ambiguity turns into a challenge instead of a threat.

Resilience when calm doesn’t come

Resilience is simple to describe but deeply personal in practice. Ask 10 people what it means to them, and chances are you’ll get wildly different answers.

For Amalia, it’s not about ignoring difficulty or pushing through at all costs. “In a very stoic way, resilience is the ability to move through obstacles and see them as part of the journey,” she says. “They’re inherent to life. If you learn from them, they become opportunities for new skills and creative solutions.”

She’s also noticed that, depending on backgrounds and cultures, levels of resilience differ. “Many cultures or people who have their needs met don’t always build the same baseline resilience you see in places where people have to hustle more,” she says. “It’s not good or bad—it just means some of us start the journey with very different foundations.”

The encouraging part? Resilience can be developed.

Woman leading discussion.

Leading Culture, Change, and Engagement™, for example, invites leaders to cultivate resilience during periods of intense stress. Other programs, like Psychology of Change and Navigating Change Through Agility, offer practical models and tools for working with the change curve itself.

“When you can label what you’re feeling and understand your beliefs and preferences shape your decisions, the dip is still there,” Amalia says, “But it doesn’t own you.”

Calm, as we once knew it, may not be coming back. But a different kind of calm is possible in instability: leaders who know themselves, understand the curves people move through, and share a common language for what’s happening beneath the surface.

“The external pace may keep accelerating,” Amalia says. “But when leaders build awareness, resilience, and empathy, change stops being something that happens to them. It becomes something they can move through, and help others move through, on purpose.” Ultimately, that’s the new playbook: learning to lead well through disruption instead of waiting for calm that never comes.

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