When people are not openly pushing back against a change, it is easy to assume that they have accepted it. They attend the meetings, use the new process and do not complain. In a nutshell, the change appears to be going well.

But silence can mean several different things, although from the outside they might look the same: someone has accepted the change and is doing what is required, while someone else may have stopped believing that speaking up will make any difference.
In the previous article, I wrote about three parts of a response to change: what we think, what we feel and what we do. These do not always point in the same direction. A second idea from the research review* looks more closely at the last of these: what people do.

Until recently, most attention went to whether people's behaviour was positive or negative towards a change. Positive responses tended to be treated as support and negative responses as resistance. This misses another distinction that may be just as useful: whether the person is active or passive in their response.

So, rather than placing people on one familiar line:

Resistance <-> Support, we can ask two questions:

1. Is the person's behaviour broadly positive or negative towards the change?

2. Are they active or passive in their response?

Put the two together and four broad responses appear:

Researchers Shaul Oreg and colleagues call this the change response circumplex. The model separates whether someone's behaviour is broadly positive or negative towards the change from how actively they respond to it. Here, positive and negative describe direction, not whether the behaviour is good or bad, and the model does not assume that acceptance is better than resistance.

Proactivity and resistance are very different in direction, but both are active. Acceptance and disengagement can be much harder to distinguish because both may be silent.

These are not four kinds of people. They are possible behavioural responses to a particular change, at a particular point in time. The same person may move between them or respond differently to different parts of the same change.

Acceptance: positive and passive
Someone showing acceptance goes along with the change and does what is required, but does not do much to advance it.

They may learn the new system, follow the revised process and take on the role assigned to them. They are not obstructing anything, but neither are they looking for ways to improve the implementation or helping others make sense of it.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Not every change needs everyone to champion it, and if reliable compliance is enough, acceptance may be exactly what is needed. The problem begins when leaders interpret it as commitment, initiative or confidence. A polite "fine" tells you very little about what someone will do when the new process becomes difficult or when it competes with other priorities.

Proactivity: positive and active
Someone showing proactivity does more than comply with the plan.

They experiment with the new system, solve implementation problems, suggest improvements or help colleagues who are struggling. In doing so, they contribute to what the change becomes in practice.
This is often the response organisations hope for, but it cannot simply be requested. People need enough information, room to act and some reason to believe that their contribution will be taken seriously. Asking for initiative while tightly controlling how the change is implemented leaves little room for it.
It is also worth asking how much proactivity is genuinely needed. Expecting everyone to become an enthusiastic advocate for every organisational change is unrealistic and can consume energy that people need for their actual work.

Resistance: negative and active
Someone showing resistance actively challenges, opposes or tries to alter the changes or part of it.

They may question the decision, challenge assumptions, bring counterexamples, argue for a different approach or refuse to carry out a particular action. Because this is the most visible negative response, it often receives the most managerial attention.
It is tempting to treat the behaviour itself as the problem, and sometimes that is justified. Resistance can protect status, habit or self-interest; it can delay necessary decisions, exhaust colleagues or become obstructive. At the same time, it can carry information that the change process needs.

Imagine someone saying:
"This handover process is losing customer information. Here are three cases from this week."
The person may be difficult to listen to, but they may also be pointing to a real fault. The review reports that active resistance was associated with providing feedback about the change, while passive acceptance was not. This does not mean that resistance is always constructive or correct, but it gives us enough reason not to manage, coach or communicate it away before finding out what it reveals.

Disengagement: negative and passive
Someone showing disengagement withdraws effort and involvement rather than openly opposing the change.

They may stop offering ideas, do the minimum, withdraw from discussion or continue using old ways of working. From the outside, they can still appear compliant, even as they become less psychologically present.

Disengagement has received less attention than the other responses, possibly because it is the least visible. Yet, like other forms of silence, it may matter both for the success of the change and for the person's well-being.

Disengagement is not simply resistance without the complaints. It may signal that someone sees no point in speaking, no possibility of influencing what happens or no future for themselves in the new situation. It may also reflect overload rather than opposition, which is why a person who has stopped contributing needs to be understood before their silence can be interpreted.

A practical guide: what a leader can do
The label "my team is resistant" collapses several different responses into one. A more useful starting point is: What are people actually doing?

1. Do not infer acceptance from the absence of objections. Look at what people do when difficulties arise, what they have stopped doing and where they are investing less energy than before. Silence alone tells you very little.

2. Decide what this part of the change actually requires. Dependable adoption may be enough in some parts of a change; in others, you may need people to experiment, solve implementation problems and help others adapt. Acceptance and proactivity are both positive responses, but they are not interchangeable.

3. Separate the behaviour from the information it carries. "The way this is being raised is making the discussion difficult" and "the problem you are pointing to may be real" can both be true. The way resistance is expressed may need to be addressed without dismissing what the person is trying to tell you.

4. Look for the people who have become silent. Notice who has stopped asking questions, suggesting improvements or raising concerns. The loudest response may not be the greatest problem, because someone who is still arguing is, at least, still involved.

5. Look again over time. An early objection may become active support once a design flaw is fixed, while early acceptance may become disengagement after repeated implementation failures.

This is a map of a response, not a permanent position. The colleague who challenges the change may be giving you information you can work with, while the colleague who has gone silent may already have given up on making it work.

*Oreg, S., & Sverdlik, N. (2026). Responses to organizational change: Evolution of the concept, established findings, and future directions. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 13, 387-413.