The 8 Willingness Gaps

AWL Partners - Our Methodology

The 8 Willingness Gaps

When people don't execute, don't change, or don't engage, it's rarely a skill problem. These are the invisible barriers that block progress.
Trust Deficits

People go through the motions without real buy-in. They're skeptical, holding back effort and ideas because they don't believe leadership will follow through.

Fear

Hesitation, over-analysis, and risk avoidance. People protect themselves from the perceived threat of failure, judgment, or loss of relevance.

Identity Threat

Your strongest people resist most. Change threatens who they are: their competence, their value, their belonging. "If this is the future, where do I fit?"

Change Fatigue

Exhaustion. Apathy. "Not another initiative." People who used to be engaged are now checked out, too much, too fast, for too long.

Misalignment

Quiet resistance from talented people whose values or vision don't match where the organization is heading. They comply, but they don't commit.

Emotional Baggage

Unacknowledged loss of role, status, control, "the way things were." It goes underground and surfaces as resistance, reactivity, or sabotage.

Learned Helplessness

"We've tried that before." Past failures create a belief that nothing will change. Cynicism poisons culture and kills new initiatives before they start.

Loss of Agency

Change is being done to people, not with them. They comply mechanically but never take ownership because they had no voice in the how.

These gaps are human, not rational. You can't logic someone out of fear or process-engineer past broken trust. Addressing them is the foundation that makes everything else possible.