Organisational change is consistently identified as a common source of job-related stress. Whether it’s poor communication, ambiguous timelines, or the threat of job insecurity – there’s plenty to be concerned about.
Received wisdom is to hunker down and push through it. To ‘keep calm and carry on’. But that can lead to a sense of internal inconsistency and confusion when we notice our worries and concerns. When we spot how concern about our future is impacting our work. When we realise that we’re not feeling that calm, and that carrying on seems like a big ask.
I argue that the challenges that come with navigating organisational change are the perfect time to lean into an alternative to hard-headed persistence: self-compassion.
What is self-compassion?
Self-compassion gets misread a lot. It is not about being soft, lowering your standards, or giving up. If anything, it takes real effort and a fair amount of strength to bring compassion to bear on yourself, especially at work.
In practice, self-compassion has three parts. You meet your difficulties with mindful awareness, noticing them without suppressing them and without being swallowed by them. You remember common humanity, that you are not the only person struggling with this, that others have been here too. And you offer yourself kindness in practical, real terms, the way you would treat someone you love who was going through the same thing.
That means moving away from harsh self-judgement, from blaming yourself for everything, and from the unsustainable habit of just working harder and digging deeper. Organisational change is one of the contexts where this capacity earns its keep.
Why change is hard to navigate
Most of us are not the ones instigating organisational change, so it can land as a surprise, and it can feel like a threat to stability, to plans, to things we are holding onto. Even change that is handled well involves ambiguity. Nobody can promise exactly how people will think and feel at every stage, and each person’s adjustment is never as tidy as the project plan makes it look. There is often no clear end point either. The project might wrap up and be marked complete on paper, while people are still adapting.
Comparing ourselves with others during a change process rarely helps. It is easy to look around and think everyone else seems more positive, more motivated, less worried, and to wonder what is wrong with us. On top of that, change usually means more effort: learning new processes, working with a new team, navigating the day job while doing something unfamiliar at the same time. And most of us are not just dealing with one change in isolation. We are often juggling several at once, waiting for something, anything, to settle down.
None of this requires the change to be handled badly. It is simply what change tends to involve, even at its best.
What we tend to do instead
When change feels threatening or frustrating, a common response is to withdraw, on the assumption that it will blow over, or to resist it outright. (Incidentally, resistance gets framed as something bad – but it often comes from a good place, from pride in something familiar, or from genuine concern rather than simple awkwardness).
We can also turn on ourselves. We judge our own reactions, especially if we have been comparing ourselves with others, or if we bought into messaging that promised the change would be smoother than it turned out to be. Or if we are only measuring progress against the calendar. The project timeline says the change is finished, so why do I still feel unsettled?
All of this can push us towards coping strategies that feel useful in the moment but work against us over time: total withdrawal, using something to numb the discomfort, or simply working longer and harder in the hope that effort alone will resolve the unease. These responses tend to erode wellbeing rather than protect it, and they can disconnect us from one of the most useful resources available during change, which is other people.
How self-compassion helps
The mindful awareness piece lets us acknowledge what we are actually feeling about the change, honestly, rather than trying to suppress or override it with an unsustainable coping strategy. There is a fine line here worth naming: venting with colleagues can tip into a spiral of shared negativity, especially when it moves from the office into the pub. Acknowledging discomfort is not the same as feeding it.
Common humanity shifts us away from unhelpful comparisons and towards the more accurate, more useful thought that other people have been through change before, that struggling with it is not a personal failing, and that we are not alone in how we feel about it.
And self-kindness is what turns awareness into action. It might mean seeking out information or support rather than withdrawing. It might mean protecting basic self-care while things are unsettled. Or it might simply mean choosing coping strategies that support your wellbeing rather than quietly working against it.
We cannot control the change itself, but we do have some say over how we respond to it.
A note on optimism
Martin Seligman’s work on explanatory style is useful here too. Pessimism tends to frame setbacks as the three P’s: personal (this is my fault), permanent (it will always feel this way), and pervasive (it is ruining everything).
Genuine optimism is not denial or positive thinking. It is a clear-eyed view of the real setbacks ahead, paired with a realistic belief that you can meet them, even without knowing exactly how. It is also contextual: you can feel confident about hitting a sales target and pessimistic about your health at the same time. The common thread with self-compassion is the same honest pairing: this is genuinely difficult, and here is what I am going to do about it.
For those leading through change
Building self-compassion also strengthens our capacity to demonstrate compassion for others. This matters for anyone leading a team through change, since role modelling is one of the biggest factors in how well change lands. That means less judgement of how people are coping, fewer comparisons that turn into unhelpful labels like troublesome or difficult, and less toxic positivity.
This is the kind of response that tries to offset a genuine concern with a small positive, without ever actually acknowledging it. “I am worried about job security” is not addressed by mentioning Friday’s team lunch. One does not cancel out the other.
In short
Organisational change is something almost everyone in working life goes through, more than once. Leaning into self-compassion will not make the change itself easier, but it can make navigating it more sustainable, for the people going through it and for the people leading them through it.
To find out even more about self-compassion, check out Episode 218 of ‘My Pocket Psych’ which is available wherever you get your podcasts, or you can simply stream it from our website here, where you’ll also find all the show notes and links to the various references mentioned during the recording.
