You Can’t Lead Change Alone. Here’s Who Needs to Be on Stage
You might be able to spark change, but the truth is, you cannot lead change alone. Change takes a team. Well…actually, it takes two teams.
Just like any great performance, there is an opening act and a main event. The same is true in transformation. Your project team is the opener. They set the tone, shape the experience, and translate the vision into action. But the main event is the people impacted by the change. They are the ones who ultimately decide whether it sticks.
Too often, leaders focus on one group and overlook the other. When that happens, things start to break down. Execution may look solid on paper, but if the people who have to live with the change are not brought along, adoption stalls. Momentum fades. Resistance grows quietly.
Sustainable change only happens when both teams are aligned. The team building the future and the team living it each have a role to play. When people understand how their role connects to the vision, to one another, and to the broader system, they stop working in isolation and start moving in harmony.
In this three-part series, we will focus on aligning the people who make change possible. Part one focuses in on the opening act, your project team.
So how do you assemble the right opening act?
The theme is simple, but not easy: intentionally identifying and empowering the project team. Here are three notes that matter more than most leaders realize.
Build a team with both skill and chemistry.
Strong resumes are table stakes. Transformation demands more than individual expertise. You need complementary skills and collaboration styles that can withstand ambiguity, pressure, and competing priorities.
Most project teams are doing this work alongside their day jobs. Stress is inevitable. What matters is how the team handles it together.
Tools like DiSC profiles can help anticipate working styles, but chemistry shows up in behavior. Can the team engage in healthy conflict without turning meetings into emotional drain? Some tension is necessary. Chronic friction is not.
The project team’s energy will spill over to impacted teams whether you intend it or not. Cynicism, alignment, urgency, or optimism are all contagious.
Signs your team has real chemistry:
People engage across the full team, not just within their functional lanes
Questions are asked, and answers are genuinely listened to
Humor and shared laughter exist, even under pressure
Differences of opinion are explored, not shut down
Conflict is addressed rather than avoided
When trust, respect, and psychological safety are present, people take risks, share ideas, and move faster together.
Define clear roles and ownership to reduce overlap and confusion.
Many leaders hesitate to clarify roles because they want to avoid micromanagement. The result is often the opposite of empowerment.
When ownership is unclear, work is duplicated, decisions are delayed, and accountability becomes fuzzy. People spend more energy navigating ambiguity than delivering outcomes.
Clear roles create focus. They also create confidence.
Ownership is not just about deliverables. It includes responsibility for engaging the right stakeholders, escalating risks early, and preventing siloed decision-making.
Ways to test whether roles are clear to the team:
Ask directly in one-on-one conversations: “Where do you see overlap or confusion right now?”
Observe language in meetings. Casual jokes like “Who’s on first?” often signal real frustration.
Watch decision moments. Do people hesitate because they are unsure who has the final call?
Clarity does not reduce autonomy. It creates the conditions for it.
Empower the team to shape how the vision comes to life.
A project team that only executes tasks will never build momentum.
Empowerment means giving the team room to problem-solve, adapt, and influence how the vision is realized through their work. When people feel trusted to make decisions and contribute their perspective, they take ownership of outcomes, not just activities.
This is where the vision stops being abstract and starts becoming real. The work becomes personal. The team moves from compliance to commitment.
Signs your project team feels truly empowered:
They do not check in on every decision asking for the solution. Instead, they bring options, trade-offs, and recommendations if they need help.
Questions shift from “What do you want us to do?” to “Here’s what we’re seeing, does this align with the intent?”
Decisions are made at the lowest responsible level, without constant escalation.
Team members proactively engage stakeholders rather than waiting for direction.
Accountability shows up as ownership of outcomes, not just completion of tasks.
If your team is still seeking approval on every move, it may feel safe, but it is not scalable. Empowerment is not the absence of alignment. It is clarity of intent paired with trust to act.
Get the opening act right, and you create the conditions for the main event to succeed.
In part two, we will shift focus to the impacted team and explore what it really takes to bring people along, not just inform them.
