Earlier this month, Nick Anderson gave a name to a pattern many of us in higher education have experienced: Inherited Resistance™ — the resistance employees carry into today’s change efforts, formed by every change that came before them, wherever it happened, and whoever led it. If you have not read that piece, I encourage you to begin there. This reflection builds on that idea.
The concept raises an immediate and understandable question: if faculty and staff come into a change initiative carrying experiences from another administration, another institution, or another period in the college’s history, what is the current leader supposed to do about it?
That question can quickly lead us somewhere dangerous. If I did not create the mistrust, perhaps it is not mine to address. If the disappointment occurred before I arrived, perhaps I should not be held responsible for it.
As leaders, we cannot allow ourselves to settle there.
We may not have created the experiences that shaped the resistance, but we inherited the institution in which those experiences now live. We inherited its strengths, its challenges, its relationships, and its institutional memory. We also inherited the responsibility to decide what happens next.
Higher education has a long memory. Faculty and staff remember initiatives that were announced with enthusiasm and quietly abandoned. They remember committees whose recommendations went nowhere. They remember promises of transparency that ended when the decisions became difficult. They remember budget reductions described as temporary, reorganisations presented as final, and strategic plans that gathered more dust than momentum.
Those experiences do not disappear simply because a new president, provost, dean, or vice president arrives.
Our employees are not only asking whether we were personally responsible for what happened before. They are watching to see whether we will lead differently. If we avoid that question, become defensive, or dismiss their concerns as resistance to change, we may unintentionally become one more piece of evidence supporting what they already believe.
So, what actually reduces Inherited Resistance™? Let me begin with what does not.
When leaders sense resistance, our first instinct is often to communicate more. We schedule another campus forum, prepare another set of frequently asked questions, hold another cabinet discussion, and send another message from the president’s office, carefully written to explain the decision more clearly. Communication matters. But communication by itself is not the same as trust.
We cannot out-communicate poor experiences. A better email cannot erase a broken commitment. A polished presentation cannot substitute for meaningful involvement. Another town hall cannot rebuild trust if people believe the important decisions were made before they entered the room. Inherited Resistance™ is rarely just an information problem.
What reduces Inherited Resistance™ is relational work. That phrase can sound soft, particularly in an environment that expects measurable outcomes, balanced budgets, enrollment growth, improved completion rates, and demonstrated accountability. In practice, relational leadership is anything but soft. It is demanding, time-consuming, and sometimes uncomfortable.
It means engaging people before a decision becomes final, not simply explaining the decision afterward. It means recognising that shared governance is more than a procedural requirement. It is a commitment to include the experience and expertise of the people who will live with the consequences of institutional decisions.
It means asking faculty, staff, supervisors, and administrators what they expect from leadership. It also means clearly communicating what leadership expects from them. When those expectations do not align, we must be willing to identify the gaps rather than allowing frustration and assumptions to fill them.
It means creating room for people to tell us where a previous initiative failed, where trust was damaged, or where they felt unheard. Their experience may have occurred under another president or even at another institution, but it still influences how they hear us today.
For me, the most important shift was learning to stop treating resistance as a message that needed to be countered and start treating it as testimony that needed to be heard.
That does not mean every concern is correct or every objection should determine the outcome. It means resistance often contains information. It may reveal a gap in expectations, a lack of clarity about accountability, an earlier experience that was never resolved, or a concern that employees do not yet feel safe enough to state directly. The role of leadership is not to defeat that resistance. It is to understand what it is telling us and decide how we will respond.
This also requires us to reconsider the sequence of change. Too often, leaders decide, announce, and then seek commitment. A more sustainable sequence begins with relationships and trust. We engage people early, clarify expectations, identify concerns, make the decision, explain the reasoning, and then follow through consistently. Trust is built before we ask people to take the next step with us.
Inherited Resistance™ can be reduced, but not from a podium. It is reduced through relationships, consistency, accountability, and promises kept over time.
Trust that was diminished through experience must be rebuilt through experience. That happens one conversation, one decision, and one kept promise at a time. The progress may feel incremental, but its destination can still be transformational.
The institutional memory is real. Leaders may not have created all of it, but we contribute to it every day. The question is whether our leadership will reinforce the story people already carry — or give them a reason to begin writing a different one.