Collaboration & Technology

Client:

Leading International Airline

Impact:

Leaders gained clarity on resistance, aligned across divisions, and left energized with practical strategies, deeper empathy, and renewed ownership for change.

Clearing the Runway for Change: An Interactive Workshop to Surface and Solve Barriers to a Major Airline Rollout

The Challenge

In the midst of a digital transformation, an international airline was preparing to roll out daily practices designed to strengthen how employees show appreciation and care for customers. Leaders recognized that success would require more than direction—it demanded clarity on the forces that make change difficult to sustain.

The Solution

To prepare for the rollout, the airline partnered with XPLANE at TiER1 to bring the Barriers to Change workshop, a facilitated experience, to its annual leadership event. The goal was to help leaders and people managers across the organization identify common challenges that prevent new behaviors from taking hold and collectively prepare their response to resistance.

The workshop began with a moment of reflection. Leaders revisited past change efforts and named where they encountered turbulence. Facilitators introduced the concept of the “activation abyss,” the gap that forms when teams move directly from planning to execution without preparing people for the transition.

Leaders worked in small groups to identify the top reasons people resist change at their organization using the Barriers to Change card deck. To deepen understanding, the barriers were mapped to the Activation Curve, a model that shows how people progress through three stages of change: hearing it, believing it, and living it.

Through structured dialogue, participants explored how emotions such as confusion, fear, or excitement shape reactions to change. They considered how their teams’ capacity for change influences how quickly or deeply new behaviors can take root. The conversation created a foundation for candid discussion about what stands in the way of transformation, and more importantly, it created shared accountability for driving the change forward.

The Results

The experience helped leaders gain insight into what drives resistance and how to address it before it becomes a barrier. Participants described the session as engaging, practical, and energizing. One leader reflected, “This was the best breakout I’ve ever attended. It was interesting to see how quickly my team synced up and continued the conversation afterward.”

The session created alignment among leaders across divisions and sparked new conversations about how to make the desired behaviors part of everyday culture. Leaders left with practical strategies, greater empathy for their teams’ experience of change, and a renewed sense of ownership for making the transformation real.

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