Resistance Isn’t Always Loud: How to Spot—and Navigate—Hidden Pushback

In consulting and culture work, one of the most dangerous assumptions you can make is that silence means agreement.

Resistance doesn’t always look like someone sitting across from you with their arms folded and saying “no.” In fact, it rarely does.

More often, it’s polite. Professional. Passive-aggressive. Disguised as questions. Masked as confusion. And if you’re not trained to see it—you’ll miss it. You’ll keep pushing forward, and wonder later why your change initiative flopped.

Thankfully, Peter Block cracked this code decades ago in Flawless Consulting, identifying the subtle ways resistance shows up—and how to respond without making it worse.

Here’s a breakdown of resistance in the wild and what to do about it.

Common Forms of Resistance (and What They Really Mean)

These are some of Block’s most recognizable resistance behaviors:

🌀 Asking “How does this apply to me?”
➡️ Translation: “I’m not bought in yet.”
➡️ What to do: Acknowledge the concern. Invite them into the process. Give specific relevance to their role.

🌀 Repetition of “I don’t understand”
➡️ Translation: “I understand fine, but I’m not aligned or ready.”
➡️ What to do: Stop explaining. Ask what’s behind the confusion. You’re likely facing emotional, not intellectual resistance.

🌀 Time deflection: “We’re too busy right now.”
➡️ Translation: “We don’t see this as urgent or valuable.”
➡️ What to do: Explore priorities. Ask what is urgent, and whether the current state is sustainable.

🌀 Overly detailed questions early on
➡️ Translation: “If I keep you in the weeds, we never have to commit.”
➡️ What to do: Zoom out. Remind them of the broader goal before drilling into logistics.

🌀 Blaming others: “Leadership won’t support this” or “That’s HR’s job”
➡️ Translation: “Don’t hold me accountable.”
➡️ What to do: Recenter the conversation on what they can influence.

🌀 Not showing up (literally or figuratively)
➡️ Translation: “If I ignore this, maybe it’ll go away.”
➡️ What to do: Name the pattern. Offer a reset. Ask directly what’s driving their disengagement.

What Works: Responding with Curiosity, Not Control

Block makes it clear: resistance is natural. And if someone is resisting, it means they’re engaged. They care enough to put up a fight—even if it’s passive.

The goal isn’t to overcome resistance with brute force—it’s to surface the underlying fear or concern so that it can be addressed honestly.

Here’s the playbook:

✔️ Stay curious. Treat resistance as data, not defiance.
✔️ Name the pattern. “I’ve noticed we’re going in circles on this—can we talk about what’s behind that?”
✔️ Go slow to go fast. Surface the real concerns before you try to solve them.
✔️ Keep your ego out of it. It’s not about you. It’s about the tension between fear and change.

Final Thought: Resistance Is the Beginning of Real Work

If you’re not encountering resistance, you might not be challenging the status quo hard enough. The work of transformation isn’t smooth—it’s messy, emotional, and deeply human.

By learning to recognize subtle resistance and respond with skill, you stop pushing your ideas onto people and start building momentum with them.

👉 Want support spotting the hidden resistance in your culture work or consulting practice? I help teams make the implicit visible—so they can finally move forward. Let’s talk.