The High-Dive Problem When Proposing a Change
Have you ever wondered what those fountains spraying water in the pool near where high-divers jump in?
They’re there for safety. From that height, still water can be hard to read, and that makes the entry more dangerous. The spray breaks up the surface so the diver can judge what they’re about to hit.
Bringing a meaningful change into a team is its own kind of high dive.
A new process. A shift in priorities. A tooling decision. A change to how work flows. The details vary, but the risk is the same: if nobody has context yet, your idea hits like a surprise.
And surprise is where good proposals go to die. People get defensive. Questions come out sideways. The conversation turns into protecting turf instead of solving the problem.
Your goal should always be to break the surface tension before you dive. Socialize the change early, make the surface visible, and give people a safe way to engage before they’re forced to react in public.
Suprise is Your Biggest Surface Tension
When someone sees a change for the first time in a group setting, you’ve put them in a tough spot. They have to understand it, assess what it means for their work, and respond in front of other people.
That “high-dive” move creates problems in a few predictable places.
It puts people on the spot.
Even confident leaders don’t love thinking out loud when the stakes are real. If they ask a basic question, they risk looking unprepared. If they stay quiet, they risk being seen as disengaged. So people default to safe behavior: silence, vague agreement, or a sharp question that sounds like resistance.
It turns the conversation into preservation instead of problem-solving.
Surprises trigger credibility management. People start optimizing for how they’ll look later if the change goes badly. The room shifts from “Is this a good idea?” to “How do I avoid being attached to the wrong decision?”
It creates hidden work and hidden risk.
Most meaningful changes move something: ownership, timelines, scope, staffing, operational burden. If people don’t have context, they can’t surface the real constraints early. You find out later, through delays, side conversations, and “by the way” concerns that show up after you thought the decision was made.
This is why the big reveal often disappoints. It’s not that your change is wrong. It’s that the landing is harder when the surface is still.
If you want a companion lens on how communication failures quietly compound into rework and mistrust, Four Skills Every Engineer Needs To Grow Their Career pairs well.
Where Surface Tension Shows Up
Surface tension at work isn’t mysterious. It shows up in a few predictable moments.
You feel it when the room is seeing the change for the first time.
People aren’t evaluating the idea yet. They’re orienting. What is this? Why now? What does it affect? In that moment, slowing down is the safest move the group has.
You feel it when the real constraints arrive late.
A decision gets a quick nod, and then the objections show up afterward in side conversations. Not because people are being difficult, but because they didn’t have enough time or safety to surface concerns in the meeting. The surface looked calm, but it wasn’t.
You feel it when nobody is sure what was decided.
The meeting ends, and people walk out with different interpretations. Some think it’s a committed change. Others think it’s a trial balloon. Work starts unevenly, and you spend the next two weeks re-litigating the same conversation in different places.
Breaking surface tension is what prevents all three.
You give the room time to orient before the meeting. You pressure-test the change in a way that allows people to be candid. And you make the decision moment explicit so everyone leaves with the same understanding.
If this “misalignment after a nod” pattern feels familiar, you’ll probably like To Get Better Feedback, Show Your Work. It’s the same idea: don’t force people to react live to something they haven’t had time to really see.
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How to Break Surface Tension Before the Meeting
Once you know what surface tension looks like, the fix is straightforward.
You don’t try to “win the room” in one shot. You make the change visible early, in smaller, lower-stakes moments, so the meeting isn’t the first time anyone has to react.
A few practices make this repeatable.
Share the idea while it’s still a draft.
A polished slide deck signals that the decision is basically made. A draft invites collaboration. A simple “Here’s what I’m thinking and what I’m unsure about” lowers the temperature and makes it easier for people to engage honestly.
This is also why short pre-reads work so well. Not because everyone loves reading, but because it gives people time to process privately and show up oriented. The research on effective meetings consistently points back to basics like goal clarity and focused communication.
If you want a lightweight structure for making your message land cleanly, How to “Land The Plane” When Communicating is a good pairing.
Start with the people who will feel it the most.
If the change will shift someone’s workload, roadmap, support burden, or ownership, talk to them before you talk to the full group.
There’s also real organizational research behind this. Participation and good communication are consistently associated with lower resistance to change because they reduce uncertainty and increase perceived fairness.
Give people a way to respond.
Most teams do their worst thinking live, under time pressure, in front of peers. A short write-up sent ahead of time lets people process privately and come back with clearer feedback. You’ll get better questions, and you’ll avoid turning the meeting into a high-stakes first impression.
If you do those three things, surface tension starts to disappear.
People walk into the meeting oriented. Constraints show up earlier. And instead of debating the idea’s existence, the room can spend its energy on the real work: tradeoffs and a decision.
How to Land a Change Cleanly
Once you start breaking surface tension, you need a simple way to do it consistently. Otherwise, it turns into random “drive-by conversations,” and you still end up with confusion in the room.
I like to think of it as moving the idea through three states.
Awareness: This is the early heads-up.
You’re not asking people to agree. You’re making the change visible and naming the problem it’s meant to solve: a quick note, a mention in a 1:1, a short message in the right channel. The goal is that nobody sees this for the first time at the final presentation.
If you want a practical example of sending context ahead of time to give the conversation traction, the same move shows up in How to Make the Most of Your Next 1:1.
Shaping: This is where you earn the right to bring it to the group.
You take a draft to the people who will be impacted, and you pressure-test it. What breaks? What am I missing? What will this cost to operate? You are trying to surface reality early, while you still have room to adjust.
If you’re looking for another way to think about “make the surface readable,” it’s the same principle behind writing for someone smart but new to your world: You Are Writing Documentation Wrong.
Decision: This is what the meeting is for.
By the time you’re in the room, the change should feel familiar. The discussion centers on trade-offs, sequencing, and ownership. And when you leave, it’s clear what was decided and what happens next.
This cadence keeps you from doing two common things teams regret: surprise reveals and endless socializing.
You build context early, you shape in the right places, and you use the meeting to land the change cleanly.
Every time you get ready to present a meaningful change, you’re climbing up to a high dive.
You’re asking other people to adjust how they work. You’re asking them to take on new constraints. Sometimes you’re asking them to take on a new risk. That’s not a small thing, even when the change is clearly worth it.
So, how do you pull off a high dive safely?
By breaking the surface tension before you dive. Don’t make the meeting the first time anyone sees the change. Build awareness early, shape the draft with the people who will carry the impact, and then use the meeting to make the decision and lock in next steps.
When you treat it this way, the room stays oriented, feedback shows up sooner, and ownership forms naturally because people had a chance to engage before it mattered in public.