Only 17% of Leaders Feel Ready for Change, and Culture Is Absorbing the Cost

Most organizations no longer run one change at a time. A restructuring overlaps with a new HR system, which overlaps with an AI rollout, a leadership reshuffle and a return-to-office policy. Two new pieces of research released this month suggest the people expected to steer all of it do not feel equipped to, and that the strain is landing on something leaders rarely measure until it breaks: the culture itself.

The Confidence Number That Will Not Move

DDI's Global Leadership Forecast 2027, released October 14 and drawn from 11,395 leaders and 2,519 HR professionals across more than 1,900 organizations in over 50 countries, found that only 17% of leaders feel confident anticipating and reacting to change. DDI says the figure has barely moved since 2025. That stagnation matters because the leaders who lack that confidence are a third as likely to stay productive during setbacks, which is exactly when an organization needs them most.

The study frames this as a performance risk, not a morale issue. Organizations with effective change leadership are 2.4 times more likely to meet or exceed their financial targets. Yet the leaders being asked to deliver that change are running low. DDI found 19% of leaders frequently feel "used up," even though few are leaving their roles, and only 9% are fully engaged, with half sitting in what DDI calls a "lukewarm middle." Fully engaged leaders are 8.8 times more likely to consistently bring out the best in their teams.

"The pressures on leaders are compounding," said Rosey Rhyne, who manages DDI's Center for Analytics and Behavioral Research. Some of that pressure is personal. DDI found 87% of leaders have some concern that their skills are becoming obsolete, and leaders with that concern are 5.1 times more likely to report a definite intention to leave. An organization that keeps stacking changes on a leadership bench that already doubts its own relevance is building retention risk into every new initiative.

Where the Strain Shows Up: Trust and Culture

The people on the receiving end of all this change are not convinced either. Among individual contributors in the DDI study, only 21% trust senior leaders and 25% trust their immediate manager. Trust is not a soft extra here. Leaders who trust senior leadership are 5.9 times more likely to say leadership decisions translate into action, which means low trust slows down the very changes it is meant to support.

McLean & Company's new Guide to Stabilizing Culture Amid Disruption, published October 22, puts a number on the cultural cost. In its 2026 HR Trends Survey, organizations that cited too many simultaneous changes as a top challenge were 24% less likely to rate their culture-building ability highly than those that did not. The firm lists the kinds of internal upheaval it has in mind: executive shifts, restructuring, technology changes, rapid expansion, legal challenges and reputational problems. As HR Dive reported, the guide urges HR to treat upheaval as both a cultural and an operational issue.

"Disruption is unavoidable. What matters is how deliberately an organization responds and recovers," said Erin Shepherd, manager of HR research and advisory services at McLean. She added that "recovery is incomplete when the cultural impacts the disruption creates are left unaddressed." In practice, that means a reorganization is not finished when the new org chart is published. It is finished when employees understand what changed, what did not, and whether the norms they relied on still hold.

The Communication Gap Underneath It All

Part of the problem is structural. Gallagher's 2026 Employee Communications Report, based on more than 1,300 communications and HR professionals in 40 countries, found that 61% of companies have no formal approach to change communication, even though respondents ranked it their most pressing need. Another 83% said information overload is a growing problem, and 69% of firms have fewer than six people in a communications role. When every change arrives through the same crowded channels with the same urgency, employees cannot tell a permanent shift from a temporary one, and that uncertainty is what erodes culture.

McLean's guide offers a simple sequence for breaking that cycle, which it calls Triage, Protect and Reset. Triage means assessing where culture has been affected and separating short-term reactions from lasting effects. Protect means reinforcing existing strengths while disruption is underway and preparing leaders to respond deliberately rather than reactively. Reset means running an after-action review once things settle, so the next disruption is handled better. The firm stresses that the stages are not linear, and that HR can read the signals in employee questions, pulse survey comments, manager observations and turnover concerns.

A Playbook for Leading Change Without Losing the Culture

• Count your concurrent changes. List every restructuring, system rollout, policy shift and leadership move currently in flight, and sequence or pause the ones that are competing for the same managers' attention, since too many simultaneous changes is what McLean ties to weaker culture.
• Equip the front line first. DDI's data shows confidence and trust are lowest closest to the work, so give first-line and newly promoted managers coaching on how to explain change before they are asked to deliver it.
• Formalize change communication. With 61% of companies lacking a formal approach, a simple standard for who announces what, through which channel, and how questions get answered puts most organizations ahead of their peers.
• Say what is not changing. Help employees distinguish temporary disruption from permanent change, and name the norms and commitments that stay constant, which is the core of McLean's triage step.
• Measure trust, not just adoption. Track trust in senior leaders and immediate managers alongside project milestones, since DDI links trust directly to whether leadership decisions turn into action.
• Run an after-action review. Once a major change settles, document what worked, where culture was strained, and what the next change team should do differently before the next one starts.

"Organizations can't slow the pace of change, but they can make sure leaders have the support and capabilities to meet it," said DDI CEO Tacy Byham. The research this month suggests most have not yet done that. With only 17% of leaders confident about change and culture weakening wherever changes pile up, the organizations that come through the next reorganization intact will be the ones that treated leading change as a skill to build, not a task to assign.