You've satisfactorily answered every question in the room, and somehow nobody feels satisfied.
A senior leader prepares to announce a significant change, knowing it's big, knowing people might be uncertain, so they come in ready. With big energy, optimism and genuine excitement about what's ahead.
The instinct makes sense: if people are going to be nervous, show them there's nothing to be nervous about, paint the picture of where we're going so vividly that they can't help but want to come along. It's a pep rally, and pep rallies work...or at least they're supposed to.
Then the questions start, and they're not the questions you expected. Instead of curiosity about the vision, you get logistics. Instead of enthusiasm, you get "what about..." The leader walks away, wondering why people can't see what they see.
The middle managers walk away with a list of concerns nobody addressed. Both sides feel like the other missed the point entirely.
This pattern has shown up in our data year after year, but this year it became impossible to ignore. The conversations we kept having with clients circled back to the same frustration: why isn't this change landing the way we expected it to?
What the data revealed.
We analyzed 139 SPARK Assessments conducted over the last year with senior leaders and middle managers across our client organizations. At first, we were just looking at general distributions, the kind of baseline data that helps us understand who we're working with. When we separated the results by level, the data confirmed what we'd been hearing in countless conversations.
65% of C-Suite respondents are dominant Builders, which means they're wired to be energized by change and novelty and forward motion, the kind of people for whom ambiguity isn't stressful but genuinely exciting, because their brains naturally fill in the blanks and they enjoy the process of figuring things out.
These are also, not coincidentally, the people closest to any given change, the ones who've been living with a decision for weeks or months before anyone else hears about it, who've already metabolized the uncertainty and come out the other side ready to move.
Meanwhile, 54% of middle managers are dominant Maintainers, people who orient toward clarity and stability and proven processes, who need to understand what's staying the same before they can meaningfully absorb what's changing.
This isn't resistance, and it isn't a lack of vision. It's a fundamentally different way of processing new information, one that requires the path to be visible before the destination feels real.
The theme and these conversations became so prominent this year that it felt important to share the findings more broadly. Our full 2025 Trends Report is coming next week, and this is one of the insights we're most eager to put in front of you.
The room is hearing two different messages.
The senior leader, who is likely a Builder and who has had months to sit with this change, designs a message that would land beautifully for someone like them: vision-forward, possibility-focused, light on operational details because the details feel premature and besides, figuring them out is part of the fun.
More than half the middle managers in that room are Maintainers hearing this for the first time, and their brains are generating entirely different questions. What does this mean for my priorities tomorrow? What stays the same? What does success actually look like in week one? How am I supposed to explain this to my team when I barely understand it myself?
Those questions don't get answered, not because anyone is deliberately withholding information, but because nobody in the room thought to ask them. The Builder brain doesn't generate those questions naturally, so it doesn't occur to anyone that they need answering.
The pep rally wasn't wrong; it just wasn't complete.
We've analyzed this specific pattern with dozens of executive teams through their S.P.A.R.K. Team Results over the past year, and the recognition is almost always immediate. What comes next is the harder and more interesting work: learning to communicate in a language that isn't innate to you.
Here's what we've found actually shifts the way change lands:
1. Anchor your message to what's staying the same. Before you talk about what's changing, name the foundation you're building on. Maintainers need to know what's stable before they can process what's shifting, and giving them that anchor first creates the safety they need to hear everything else.
2. Borrow Maintainer language. Builders gravitate toward phrases like "the way I see it," "in the grand scheme of things," and "the big picture." Maintainers respond to words like "consistent," "maintain," and "the way we have always."
We had one executive say, "I don't think I've ever used any of those Maintainer words before." The Maintainer at the table looked at him and said, "I know..."
3. Instill confidence in the how. Change becomes far less threatening when people know three things: that you have a plan to action it, that there's a timeline they can orient around, and how they'll be involved in making it real. Vision without process feels like a leap of faith, and not everyone is wired to leap.
4. Acknowledge the reality of change. It's not always going to be smooth, and pretending otherwise erodes trust faster than the change itself. Name the hard parts honestly, then show why the outcome will be worth wading through the mud together.
5. Design for the questions you wouldn't think to ask. Before you finalize any change communication, run it past a Maintainer you trust. The questions they raise are almost certainly the ones half your audience will be silently wondering about, and answering them upfront changes everything.
For the Maintainers navigating this.
If you're someone who orients toward clarity and stability, you've probably spent years feeling like change announcements weren't designed for you. You're right. They weren't, maybe not fully at least. Here's how to navigate that:
1. Ask your clarifying questions early and openly. The questions you're holding are legitimate, and voicing them helps both you and your leader get to solid ground faster. Sitting in uncertainty doesn't serve anyone, least of all you.
2. Identify what is staying the same. Even in significant change, something remains constant. Finding that anchor point gives you stable ground to process everything else from, and sometimes you have to look for it yourself.
3. Translate the vision into your own operational terms. If the message came in "big picture" language, take time to reframe it into what it actually means for your day-to-day work. This isn't a failure of the communication; it's just how your brain works best.
4. Give yourself permission to process before you respond. Builders often react to change with immediate energy. Your slower, more deliberate processing isn't resistance; it's thoroughness. Let yourself take the time you need.
5. Tell your leader what you need to hear. Most Builder-dominant leaders genuinely want to bring people along; they just don't instinctively know what Maintainers need to feel confident. When you name it clearly, you're helping them communicate better with everyone.
The real insight here.
This isn't ultimately about Builders versus Maintainers (because our assessment highlights this isn't a binary way of being), or senior leaders versus middle managers. It's about the gap between the person who has been living with a change for months and the person encountering it for the first time. That gap exists in every organization, and it's where change initiatives go to stall.
The leaders who close that gap aren't the ones with the most inspiring vision. They're the ones who remember what it felt like to hear about something for the first time, and build their communication for that moment rather than the one they're standing in.
Our full 2025 Trends Report drops next week to answer the two questions we've been receiving the most: What are you seeing out there right now? And where should we focus in 2026?
We've pulled together quantitative and qualitative insights from middle managers and the senior leaders who support them, covering where middle managers are feeling the most pressure, what executive teams are looking to align on, what people told us they actually need from leadership development, and what patterns are shaping the way organizations are heading into the new year.
This one just felt too important to wait.
Talk soon,
Kendra
Ps. If you have insights you'd like to add or questions about change management, reply directly to this email and we'll find some time to chat!
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