The human energy of transformation 

CRJ’s advisory panel member Erik de Soir explores why successful change depends on trust, connection and the human energy needed to help people move forward.


Image by Magnific

Organisational transformation is often presented as an exercise in architecture: redesign the structure, introduce new technology, clarify accountabilities and align processes. Yet, organisations do not change because a diagram has changed. They change when people are able to reinterpret what is happening, trust the direction of travel and invest enough psychological and social energy to behave differently.

This is why transformation is fundamentally a human challenge. Every major change alters more than tasks; it affects identity, status, competence, belonging and predictability. A merger may threaten professional loyalties, while digitalisation can make experienced employees feel suddenly obsolete. So, what leaders describe as ‘resistance’ may therefore be less a refusal to progress than an attempt to protect continuity.

The Six Batteries of Change model developed by Peter De Prins, Geert Letens and Kurt Verweire offers a useful way to understand this. It distinguishes three rational batteries (clear strategic direction, powerful management infrastructure, and action planning and implementation) from three emotional batteries: an ambitious and cohesive top team, a healthy culture, and a strong connection with employees. 

A steady and good transformation needs all six. For instance, strategy without connection produces compliance at best and cynicism at worst, while engagement without governance creates enthusiasm that cannot be converted into results. The model’s central insight is that change consumes energy, and that organisations must generate enough energy across both their formal and informal systems to sustain it.

This becomes even more important when an organisation carries trauma. Organisational trauma is a collective process in which a shocking event, prolonged exposure or accumulated injuries rupture the organisation’s sense of safety and continuity. The trigger may be a fatal incident, terrorist attack, scandal, sudden restructuring, public inquiry, cyberattack or repeated exposure to suffering. Trauma may also arise slowly through chronic overload, moral injury, unresolved conflict or successive rounds of poorly managed change.

After such a rupture, the organisation may continue to operate, but not in the same psychological reality. Rumours spread faster, trust contracts and people rely more heavily on informal groups. Leaders may centralise decisions, silence dissent or project certainty they do not feel. Teams may become preoccupied with blame, reputation or self-protection. Groupthink, absenteeism, emotional exhaustion and structural confusion, then, can be defensive attempts to preserve identity when the old reference points have been damaged.

Trauma can also be the event that makes transformation unavoidable. A crisis exposes hidden weaknesses and can create a rare willingness to reconsider assumptions. But, urgency is not the same as readiness. When leaders accelerate structural reform while the organisation is still psychologically disoriented, they risk building the future on top of an unprocessed past. The result may be over-adaptation: emergency controls, rigid procedures or defensive habits remain in place long after the original threat has passed.

A trauma-informed approach to transformation begins by asking two questions at the same time: what must change, and what has happened to the people and relationships expected to carry that change? Before launching programmes, leaders should assess the charge in all six batteries and identify where trauma is draining energy. A clear strategy matters, but so does a credible account of why the change is necessary and what will remain recognisable. Management systems must create order without becoming instruments of fear. Implementation plans should include time for sense-making, feedback and adjustment, not only milestones and deliverables.

The emotional batteries require equally deliberate attention. The top team must show coherence without pretending unanimity. A healthy culture allows difficult facts, grief and disagreement to be spoken without punishment. Connection with employees depends on regular, honest communication and meaningful participation, especially from those closest to operational reality. Acknowledging losses, marking transitions and explaining decisions are not soft additions to the programme; they help restore continuity and reduce the need for defensive resistance.

Successful transformation, therefore, does not ask people simply to ‘embrace change’. It creates sufficient safety, meaning and agency for them to move. The organisations best prepared for disruption are not those with the most polished restructuring plans, but those capable of charging their rational and emotional batteries while recognising the invisible injuries that shape behaviour.  

Major (Ret) Dr Erik de Soir, PhD, is a Belgian clinical psychologist and psychotraumatologist specialising in crisis psychology, traumatic stress and the psychosocial support of military personnel, firefighters and emergency responders.