Why People Don’t Change (And What Great Leaders Do Instead)
Lori is deep in prep for her session at AIFD Symposium — the empathy-and-leadership talk she's been asked to give at conventions ever since she debuted it at Next Gen three years ago (Vonda, her self-described boss, kept saying "you are saving this, girl"). The research rabbit hole she fell down this week starts with an uncomfortable truth for every leader: knowing better doesn't mean doing better. We all know exercise extends our lives, that smoking kills, that we should eat better — and we still don't act on it. So why do we expect an employee to change the moment we tell them what they're doing wrong? The answer, from a dense psychology article Lori has been mining for notes, is that it's the way our brains work — and understanding it changes how you lead.
Change happens in stages (and advice at the wrong stage backfires)
Behavior change moves through stages: pre-contemplation ("I don't have a problem"), contemplation ("maybe I should do something"), preparation, action, and maintenance. The trap for leaders is offering action-oriented advice to someone still in pre-contemplation. Lori's example is her husband cheerfully asking, every day, whether she wants to come to the gym. Since she's firmly in "I don't need the gym" mode, the invitation "does nothing but piss me off" — it triggers defensiveness and rebellion, not movement. The same mechanics apply to the employee you keep telling to upsell, double-check, or care more. It also explains the cruel irony both hosts have noticed about leadership sessions: the people who most need them don't show up, because they're in pre-contemplation — they don't think they have a problem. Communication can't force change. But, as the research puts it, communication can create the conditions where change becomes possible. That's where a framework called BRIDGE comes in — a model Lori walks through with flower shop scenarios for every letter, from building safety through establishing ongoing dialogue.
Safety first: brains shut down when people feel judged
It starts with building psychological safety — the absence of fear that speaking up will get you punished, shamed, or humiliated. This isn't a nice-to-have; it's a neurological precondition. When people feel judged or at risk, the reflective part of the brain literally goes offline, and what remains is defense: perform, comply, get out of the room. Vonda saw a live example at a recent Flower Clique Shop Talk: after a member's key employees left, her remaining part-timers suddenly opened up with information they'd never have shared with the others present — they finally felt safe, and she got a flood of insight she didn't know she was missing. Lori's shop scenario: a misspelled ribbon on a funeral piece, caught at delivery. "You need to pay more attention" slams the brain's doors shut. "Let's walk through the process together and figure out where this happened so it doesn't happen again" keeps them open — assuming it's a first mistake, not a tenth, which both hosts agree is a different conversation. Closely related is recognizing cognitive load: what looks like resistance is often overwhelm. Working memory has limits, and when they're exceeded the brain simply can't hold more — something Lori learned firsthand helping her son, whose learning differences she once mistook for laziness. It's why Prep School 2.0 was reorganized into days instead of a binge ("do a little and apply"), and why holiday-week instructions work better as one laminated list than ten verbal reminders. One clear thing genuinely understood beats ten accurate things you hope they grasped.
Collaboration, intent versus impact, and keeping the dialogue going
Next: invite collaboration. Arrive with a fully formed plan and you're only asking for compliance — "here's how Mother's Day is going to go, I just need everybody to say yes ma'am." If the shop is struggling with order accuracy, hold a short team meeting, set parameters, and ask for input; the new process becomes everyone's solution instead of the manager's mandate. Then, distinguish impact from intent: we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior. Lori's test case — a designer "helpfully" rearranging a coworker's piece before delivery — sparks the best debate of the episode, because Vonda immediately complicates it: what if the fixer is the quality-control person, protecting the shop's reputation on a deadline? The hosts land on the same place from different directions: it's a communication problem either way. Set the expectation up front that quality control may adjust designs, have the follow-up conversation right away ("here's what I had to change and why — let's look at your next piece together"), and keep both versions as a teaching tool. Lori compares it to her own workflow: she drafts graphics, Ellie redoes them — and because she knows that's the process, it never feels mean. Finally, establish ongoing dialogue — weekly meetings, weekly teachable moments — because most people cycle through the stages several times before change sticks. And Lori closes with a distinction worth writing on the cooler door: there's a difference between accountability and surveillance. Accountability asks "how are you doing with it?"; surveillance waits for the next mistake. Employees can feel which one you're doing — and surveillance quietly demolishes the psychological safety you built in step one.
Key takeaways
- Knowing better doesn't produce doing better — people move through stages of change, and advice aimed at the wrong stage breeds defensiveness.
- Psychological safety is a brain-level precondition: judged people defend; safe people reflect, share, and improve.
- Overwhelm masquerades as resistance — cut cognitive load with one clear priority instead of an information dump.
- Invite input on new processes so the solution belongs to the team, and address mistakes by separating intent from impact.
- Check in weekly with accountability ("how's it going?"), never surveillance ("caught you") — one builds change, the other kills it.