Why Your Brain Needs HEART to Navigate Change

"Have you noticed how even well-planned organizational changes can leave teams feeling scattered, resistant, or quietly overwhelmed? Our research with more than 1,000 workplaces has found that 'poor change management' is consistently the most frequent cause of burnout in workplaces right now. The problem isn't a lack of project plans. Organizations have those in abundance. The gap is neurological. Too much focus on timelines and deliverables while overlooking what uncertainty does to people's brains."

"Based on our work with thousands of teams, we've identified five neurological necessities for navigating change successfully. We call them HEART: Honor feelings, Engage purposefully, Appreciate strengths, Reach out, and Take tiny steps. The impact is measurable. Teams with high collective HEART capabilities achieve 71% change success rates compared to 56% for teams with low HEART capabilities. When teams use these approaches, on average teams report a 17% reduction in how frequently they experience 'poor change management', lowering the risks of burnout."

"Honor Feelings. People often spend enormous energy trying to keep their feelings about change under wraps. Fear about job security. Anger about what's being taken away. Overwhelm about the pace. But when we don't make space for these emotions, people's brains interpret the need to silence themselves as a threat signal, thinking slows down, creativity shuts down, and trust dries up. But when we make space to acknowledge difficult emotions, you can create the psychological safety people need to embrace complex changes together."

Poor change management is a primary cause of burnout, arising not from lack of project plans but from neglecting how uncertainty affects people's brains. Excess focus on timelines and deliverables triggers threat responses that slow thinking and reduce creativity. The HEART framework identifies five neurological necessities: Honor feelings, Engage purposefully, Appreciate strengths, Reach out, and Take tiny steps. Teams with strong HEART capabilities show 71% change success versus 56% for others, and report a 17% reduction in frequency of poor change management. Honoring feelings builds psychological safety by acknowledging fear, anger, and overwhelm so teams can navigate complex changes together.

Read at Psychology Today