Top 3 Change Leadership Trends 2025

At the end of 2023, we had predicted in our Top 5 Change Leadership Trends that in 2024 (1) the polycrisis would continue, (2) mental health would become more important, (3) the need for self-reflection among young leaders would increase, (4) internal communication will be better understood as a success factor for successful change at C-level and (5) more artificial intelligence systems will be used in change management. And we would say: viadoo’s Change Guides were right! For 2025, we have narrowed it down to Top 3 Change Leadership Trends that will make the new year a good one despite the multiple changes:

1. Better prevention of change fatigue

The international polycrisis, which we already described at the end of 2023, persists. Even a new German government after 23 February’s election will not be able to change much quickly. This means that managers and employees will continue to face multiple changes this year. Not only with many on the time line, but also with complex changes taking place in parallel. According to Gartner Research, employees experienced an average of ten changes in 2022. These ranged from restructuring to cultural change to a new IT system.

Empirically, we spend a lot of our cognitive, physical and emotional resources in these situations. However, at some point, these are depleted. Then change fatigue spreads throughout the organisation: motivation, performance and identification all take a nosedive. People withdraw and make their own plans. Highly skilled employees consider resigning or actually resign. As a manager, you can avoid change fatigue by taking the following measures, among others:

1. Pay empathetic attention to warning signs such as rumours and increased number of staff off due to illness.
2. Provide your teams with psychological safety (see below for more on this).
3. Prioritise several change initiatives based on clear criteria.
4. Plan each change project systematically, especially the communication.
5. Keep emphasising the benefits of change for those affected.

2. Stronger focus on mental health

Faced with the polycrisis, supervisory boards increasingly appear to be looking for executives who lead with a strong hand and are competent in the areas of restructuring, cash flow optimisation and profitability. This was reported, for example, by German magazine WirtschaftsWoche. And it is true. Because when it comes to the survival of a company, hard decisions have to be made. For quite a few people, this will also mean losing their jobs in 2025.

However, we at viadoo Change Guides firmly believe that modern managers must also show empathy for their employees, as well as being tough on them. And they need to show at least as much emotional as cognitive empathy. In addition, they must be able to put together functional teams and provide their (remaining) employees with psychological safety. Even today, the paths of countless autocratic leaders are paved with management failures that we attribute to underdeveloped soft skills.

This is one of the reasons why we expect mental health and, with it, psychological safety to become more important as a further change leadership trend by 2025. Because one thing is clear: in the end, every company can only be sustainable through innovative products and services. And innovation is not encouraged by harshness; it cannot be dictated. Rather, creativity requires a working atmosphere in which employees can express their opinions openly, admit mistakes and show vulnerability.

Find out more about this trend, for example

• in this recording of our ChangeTALK on YouTube
• in this blog article about psychological safety in change initiatives
• in this free white paper about psychological safety

3. Increased use of AI tools

This leads us to the third and final change leadership trend we see for 2025, the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) in change management. The corresponding tools can help to predict certain reactions, identify resistance, and gain insights into employee sentiment and their willingness to change.

The collected information can be used to:

1. make more decisions based on empirical data in an iterative change process.
2. measure and visualize progress in a change process based on predefined KPIs (technical and interdisciplinary).

To be honest, we had expected AI to be more widely used in change management by 2023. But so far, the use of ChatGPT and other text generators is rarely extended to broader applications. Specific tools for change management are only just being developed, as our colleagues from the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP Global) confirm (including Alexandra Hartman from Accenture).

This is not to downplay large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. After all, we at viadoo also use them. After an update last summer, ChatGPT is even able to predict emotions from a third-person perspective. This is one of the reasons why we expect further progress in this area in 2025.

We are encouraged by Amy Webb, who announces in her Annual Letter for 2025 that AI is only one of three breakthrough technologies. The other two are advanced sensors and biotechnology. Together, the three would form a ‘living intelligence’ that would drive an exponential innovation cycle, revolutionising industries and creating entirely new markets. Hopefully, this will also lead to attractive tools and opportunities for change management, which, of course, will always be at its core a deeply human matter.

Final thoughts

We hope that you as a leader will actually avoid change fatigue in your organisation in 2025, that you will be able to place a stronger focus on the mental health of your teams, and that AI tools will make it easier for you to manage change processes. May the board and management go along with it!

Perhaps the following encouragement from John Kotter will help:

“Let’s invest in equipping ourselves and our teams with the skills to navigate and lead through change.”

In the upcoming weeks, we at viadoo will be exploring selected aspects of our three Change Leadership Trends 2025 for you. So feel free to check our LinkedIn page, this blog, our Change Management Knowledge Base or our social media channels regularly. The best thing to do is to subscribe to all of them so you’re always automatically up to date.