Why Employees Resist Change and How Leaders Should Respond | Rebecca Dhrimaj

How do you lead a team through change without losing trust, engagement, or your best people? In this episode of The Empathy Edge, Maria Ross speaks with Rebecca Dhrimaj, Chief Empathy Officer of The Empathy Collective, about how leaders can guide teams through organizational change with empathy, honest communication, and better coaching. Many leaders are promoted because they excel at strategy, operations, or delivering results — but few are actually taught how to manage the human side of change. Rebecca explains why fear, resistance, uncertainty, and emotion can derail even the strongest change management strategy, and what leaders can do differently. She shares her Three Phases of Change Readiness Model and explains how managers can use better one-on-one conversations, meaningful feedback, and an understanding of their team's strengths to increase employee engagement and change readiness. Rebecca also shares a real-world case study where leadership development with a large customer excellence team translated into measurable improvements in employee engagement and readiness for change. In this episode, you'll learn: • How to lead employees through organizational change • Why people resist change — and how leaders should respond • Rebecca's Three Phases of Change Readiness Model • How empathy can improve change management and employee engagement • Why leaders need more than technical and strategic expertise • How to give honest feedback without damaging trust • How to make one-on-one meetings more meaningful • Why proactive career conversations matter during periods of change • How understanding your team's strengths can reduce resistance • Why leaders need to do their own inner work before effectively leading others • How empathetic leadership can turn disruption into momentum instead of burnout About Rebecca Dhrimaj Rebecca Dhrimaj is the Chief Empathy Officer of The Empathy Collective. Her mission is to redefine leadership by helping executives and managers coach people through change, one conversation at a time. After leading change management during an organizational restructuring, Rebecca recognized that many leaders lacked practical tools for dealing with the human side of transformation — including fear, resistance, uncertainty, and emotion. Her work helps leaders combine empathy, coaching, feedback, and change management practices to build stronger, more resilient teams. Connect with Rebecca: The Empathy Collective & Resilient Change Leader™: http://www.theempathycollective.com/ LinkedIn:   / rebeccadhrimaj   Return on Empathy Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Rebecca's Action Learning Coaching Guide: https://bit.ly/4rG0LPm Connect with Maria Ross: Get Maria's books: http://red-slice.com/books Hire Maria to speak: http://red-slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross LinkedIn:   / mariajross   Instagram:   / redslicemaria   Facebook:   / redslice   Explore more episodes of The Empathy Edge for practical conversations about empathetic leadership, change management, employee engagement, workplace culture, and building high-performing teams. #ChangeManagement #Leadership #EmpatheticLeadership