Why People Believe 'People Don’t Change'

They Can. But Not Without a System That Supports the Intention.

Year One: The Initial Assessment

In our first year, we conducted a comprehensive 360-degree feedback process with the CEO of a mid-sized firm in Asia. This was not just a questionnaire; it involved in-depth interviews across the senior team. His people shared their thoughts candidly.

The feedback was unequivocal: decisions were made in isolation, communication was minimal, and the leadership style left the team guessing rather than contributing. The firm had just endured a challenging year. To his credit, the CEO listened. He acknowledged the feedback and changed his behavior. There was more transparency and responsiveness. Gradually, the team began to trust that this time would be different.

Year Two: Patterns Emerge

In the second year, we repeated the process. This time, deeper patterns emerged, particularly among the more senior, tenured members of the leadership team. They were committed to change and agreed to be transparent about their development plans. Progress felt tangible.

However, as the market improved, performance pressure eased. With this shift, the CEO's motivation to remain open diminished. Old patterns resurfaced. The team found themselves operating in a vacuum once more. Communication dwindled, and responsiveness faded.

The culture ended up worse than it had been in Year One. This decline was not due to the CEO being a poor leader. Rather, it stemmed from the fact that hope followed by regression is more demoralizing than never trying at all. The team had glimpsed what was possible, only to watch it slip away.

Nobody spoke up.

The Proposal They Didn’t Want: A New Approach

After two rounds of qualitative feedback, I realized I could not run the same process a third time. The team had exhausted their willingness to share. Worse, they had learned that being completely honest was not worth the risk. Why stick their necks out again if nothing changes? Why express dissatisfaction if it yields no benefit?

I proposed something different: a Leadership Growth Profile. This 360 diagnostic was designed to identify which reactive leadership behaviors were most prevalent across the entire team, benchmarked against a global database of 70,000 leadership surveys. It was not another round of interviews but a tool to reveal the patterns of fast, stress-driven thinking undermining the organization's ability to achieve sustainable performance and continuous learning.

They hesitated.

“We already know what the problem is with each person. We don’t need a diagnostic.”

That single sentence revealed everything. This was an organization where accountability was discussed, deemed important, and then quietly avoided. The diagnostic was not rejected because it was unnecessary; it was rejected because it would make the truth impossible to ignore.

They didn’t want the truth. They wanted plausible deniability.

Commitment Is Not a Leadership Behavior Change Strategy

Many organizations misunderstand leadership development. They treat behavior change as an individual willpower issue.

A leader receives feedback and commits to change. For a time, things improve. Then, real life intervenes. Stress, urgency, or even a successful quarter can diminish the urgency to grow. The old patterns return because they were never replaced by a system; they were merely replaced by intention.

Intention without infrastructure is like a New Year’s resolution. It works until it doesn’t.

The critical question is not whether a leader is willing to change. Most are, especially under pressure. The real question is whether the organization has built a framework to sustain that change when the pressure lifts.

Behavior Change Architecture: Role Modeling, Rituals, and Rewards

After two decades of working with leadership teams across Asia-Pacific, we have found that sustainable behavior change requires three interlocking systems. We call it behavior change architecture. Without all three, reversion is not a risk; it is a certainty.

1. Role Modeling

Culture is not dictated by one individual. It is shaped by every culture carrier within the organization. If the CEO becomes more transparent but the rest of the senior team continues their old ways, the culture will not shift. People observe the entire leadership team, not just the person at the top.

2. Rituals

You manage what you measure. Yet, in most organizations, leadership behavior is the one aspect that often goes unmeasured in real time.

An annual engagement survey acts as a balance sheet. It provides a snapshot of a moment in time, revealing where you were, not where you are. It does not serve as a tool to track ongoing leadership performance. In startups, we emphasize running experiments and failing fast. Why don’t we apply the same principles to leadership development?

Rituals create that necessary cadence. Biweekly pulse check-ins with a single, direct question: “Is this leader demonstrating the behavior they committed to?”

The principle is straightforward: perception is reality. If the team perceives that a leader is changing, then we have progress. If they do not, either the leader isn’t changing, or the change isn’t noticeable. Both scenarios are problems worth addressing. Both require a different response. And both become impossible to ignore when visibility replaces silence.

3. Rewards

What behaviors are recognized, promoted, and rewarded? This is a question most organizations hesitate to answer honestly.

If a leader achieves results through intimidation and still earns a promotion, the organization has communicated its true values. If someone who avoids difficult conversations is celebrated as "easy to work with," the message is equally clear. Stated values may say one thing, but the reward system conveys another. People will always follow the rewards.

Aligning rewards means ensuring that stated values and actual reinforcement point in the same direction. Without this alignment, you risk creating organizational silence: leaders mistaking “no complaints” for “no problems.” The team has simply learned that speaking up changes nothing.

What This Looks Like in Practice

When we engage with a leadership team, the process does not begin with a workshop. It starts with a diagnostic. We need to understand which reactive behaviors are prevalent across the team, what patterns of fast, defensive thinking are being modeled, and what those patterns are costing the business before we can design an intervention that will stick.

From there, each leader makes public commitments to specific responsive behaviors: transparent, growth-oriented, relational. These are not vague aspirations but observable actions that their team can see and measure.

Then the rituals commence. Biweekly pulse check-ins. A scoreboard that tracks whether the team perceives real change. Coaching support for leaders who are struggling. The system does the work that willpower cannot.

This is not about catching people out. It is about creating the conditions where better leadership becomes the path of least resistance.

If this resonates with you, let’s talk. Not about workshops, but about building a system where behavior change truly sticks.

Book a conversation with Mac

Mac Ling is a Master Executive Coach and founder of Coaching Collective. He works with leadership teams across Asia-Pacific to build cultures where performance and care coexist. He is Teaching Faculty at HARTHILL and publishes The Collective Brief.