How Leaders Move People Into Motion

Editorial Note
This essay is part of the Cultivated canon — a body of work exploring how change actually happens in organisations. It reflects a core belief of this library: that progress comes not from force or mandate, but from clarity, momentum, and voluntary action.

How Leaders Move People Into Motion

One of the most important skills a leader can develop is learning how to move people into motion.

Motion is action. It is energy directed toward something meaningful. And it rarely happens simply because a strategy was announced or a decision was made.

If you are leading change — toward a clearer future, a new strategy, or a better way of working — you are not just managing tasks. You are trying to create movement.

That is harder than it sounds.

Moving people into motion begins with direction. You do not need a perfect map, but you do need a sense of where you are heading. Without a clear destination, effort dissipates and enthusiasm fades. People cannot move toward what they cannot see.

Just as important, leaders must be visibly moving themselves. Momentum does not come from instructions alone. It comes from example. When people can see you walking the path — learning, adjusting, and committing energy — it becomes easier for them to follow.

But motion is rarely blocked by laziness or resistance alone.

More often, people are stuck because something in the system is holding them in place. Unclear roles. Conflicting goals. Broken processes. Incentives that reward the old way of working while leaders talk about the new.

Trying to pull change forward without addressing these constraints is like pulling a car while the brakes are still on.

I sometimes use a simple metaphor when explaining this. Imagine trying to pull a car forward. A few people are at the front pulling hard. Some are unknowingly pulling in the opposite direction, not out of malice, but out of uncertainty or fear. Most people are sitting inside the car, adding weight rather than momentum.

Your job as a leader is not to shout louder.

It is to get people out of the car and pulling in the same direction.

That only happens when people feel something.

Motion and emotion are closely linked. You cannot force emotion, but you can create the conditions for it by communicating clearly, honestly, and repeatedly.

People need to understand where you are going, why it matters, and how they fit. Some will need a high-level sense of direction. Others will want detail and next steps. The journey must be broken down into something people can recognise themselves within.

A powerful question sits at the centre of all of this:

Why should someone choose to move?

If the only answer is “because it’s your job,” you are relying on compliance, not commitment. Commitment comes when people can see meaning, contribution, and possibility.

Leaders also have leverage over the system itself. Rules, processes, goals, and incentives can either support motion or quietly suppress it. Removing unnecessary friction — simplifying decision-making, fixing broken workflows, eliminating pointless rules — often creates more momentum than any motivational speech ever could.

And finally, people need support.

Change asks something of them. New skills. New behaviours. New ways of thinking. Too often, leaders roll out plans without a parallel plan for developing the people expected to deliver them. Coaching, teaching, and role modelling matter here. So does storytelling — because stories travel where facts cannot.

When enough people are pulling together, something shifts.

Momentum builds. Problem-solving accelerates. Resistance weakens, not because it was crushed, but because it was outweighed by forward motion.

This is what good leaders do, quietly and consistently.

They do not drag organisations into the future.
They create the conditions for people to move there themselves.

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Editor’s note: This essay grows from an earlier exploration in another medium. The thinking remains central, even as the format has changed.