This blog is from Ildar Iliazov, Head of Projects and Marketing at the Light Group of Schools, Kenya 

Every school leader has experienced it.

You introduce a new initiative.  It makes sense.  It is well intentioned.  You may even believe it is necessary.  And yet, instead of enthusiasm, you are met with silence, or resistance.

The instinctive response is to see this as a problem of attitude: a lack of motivation, or even quiet sabotage.  But in most cases, what you are seeing is something else entirely.

Change doesn't fail because of strategy

In schools, we tend to talk about change in terms of systems: new programmes, frameworks, expectations.  But change rarely fails because of poor strategy alone.  It fails because of how people experience it.

I remember introducing structured peer observation.  From a leadership perspective, the idea was straightforward: open classrooms, shared practice, professional learning.

From a teachers' perspective, however, the initial reaction was very different:

"Is this an evaluation?" "What if the lesson doesn't go well?"

The intention was collaboration.  The experience, at least at the start, felt like exposure.

We saw something similar when teamwork became part of performance reviews.  What leaders saw as a recognition of collaboration, some teachers initially experienced as uncertainty:

"How will this be measured?" "Will individual effort still matter?"

In both cases, the initiative itself was not the issue.  The experience of it was.

The four stages teachers go through

In practice, teachers tend to move through a fairly predictable pattern when faced with imposed change, often following a trajectory adapted from the Kübler-Ross grief cycle.

1. Denial: "This doesn't concern me"

At first, the change is acknowledged but not internalised.

There is a quiet assumption that it will pass:

"We've seen this before." "They'll change their minds."

When we introduced cross-department collaboration meetings, attendance was high, but engagement was low.  Teachers listened, but continued working within familiar routines.

2. Resistance: "Why do I need this?"

Then comes the realisation: this is not going away.  This is the most emotional phase.

"I don't have time for this." "This won't work in my subject."

During early work on redesigning classroom observations, some colleagues questioned the relevance, not because they rejected collaboration, but because they could not yet see how it connected to their daily practice.

This is also the stage where confidence dips.  The change feels imposed rather than owned.

3. Exploration: "Alright...show me how"

If the change survives resistance, something shifts.  Not acceptance yet, but curiosity.

"Can I see an example?" "How are others doing this?"

This is where small, practical wins matter.

When a science teacher observed an English colleague's questioning techniques and adapted them successfully, that moment travelled faster than any policy document.  Others followed, not because they were told to, but because they saw it working.

4. Integrations: "I've adapted it, and it works"

Eventually, if the conditions are right the change becomes part of practice.  Not exactly as designed, but reshaped by teachers.

One colleague reduced peer observation to 10-minute focused visits with a single takeaway.  Another embedded it into mentoring conversations.  Over time, the model became lighter, more flexible, and more sustainable.

And this is the moment leaders often miss.  Because once something becomes routine, it feels as though it has always been there.

The mistake leaders keep making

The biggest mistake is not misunderstanding resistance, it is misinterpreting it.

Emotional responses to change are often treated as problems to manage. In reality, they are signals to understand.

If you recognise the stage a teacher is in, your role shifts:

• In denial to clarify purpose
• In resistance to reduce pressure and listen
• In exploration and provide examples
• In integration to step back and allow ownership

Push too early, and you create resistance.  Support at the right moment, and you create movement.

We saw this clearly when shifting from individuals to collaborative performance models. Progress did not come from tightening accountability, but from creating space for professional dialogue to grow.

What schools could do differently

Across schools that manage change well, one pattern is consistent:

They focus less on pushing initiatives, and more on strengthening professional relationships.  

In practice, this looks like: 

• teachers visiting each other's lessons without fear
• committees where staff genuinely influence decisions
• professional development that happens through dialogue

We have seen this through initiatives such as structured committees, peer observation, and collaborative performance models where improvement emerged not from targets, but from interaction.

We saw this also clearly in our social capital evaluation: when professional conversations improve, schools improve.

We often ask: Why do teachers resist change? But a better question might be: How do teachers experience it?

The real work of leadership is not designing better initiatives.  It is understanding how those initiatives are lived, felt and adapted by teachers.  Because change is not implemented through systems.  It moves through people.