How to motivate team to adopt change?

Based on what I have seen in my career, motivating engineers to adopt change—especially when you don’t have direct authority—starts with understanding their pain points. Take the time to listen and learn about their current challenges, then frame the new tools or processes as solutions to those problems. When engineers see a direct benefit, they’re much more likely to embrace the change. Leading by example is equally important. Demonstrate how the change improves your own workflow and share small wins, so they can see the value in it firsthand.

Making the transition easy is crucial. Provide clear documentation, training, or quick walkthroughs, and be available to offer support. Engineers will be more motivated to adopt a new process if it integrates smoothly into their existing workflows. Another key approach is fostering ownership. Involve engineers early on by gathering feedback, asking for their input, or having them champion the change for the team. When they feel like they have a stake in the change, they’re more likely to take ownership and advocate for it themselves.

Finally, clear communication about the “why” behind the change is essential. Share how the new tools or processes align with broader team or company goals. When engineers understand the vision and see the long-term benefits, they’ll be more inclined to support the shift. Celebrating early adopters and quick wins helps maintain momentum and encourages others to give it a try. By combining these strategies, you can achieve quicker wins while building the trust and rapport needed to foster a culture of continuous improvement.

In my experience with migrating internal tools or upgrading processes, there can be a resistance to change from engineers because they can be used to the old way of doing things.

I'm going to assume the new way is faster, better in some way. They might not know how the new tool or process works, and they need to see that it's actually easier/faster and that's it's worth putting the effort in to learn the new way. From their POV, they are trying to implement some solution, and the last thing they want is some roadblock.

If you can create a very short documentation page showing the differences in the old vs. new way along with a video, that should make it easier for engineers to adopt the new way of doing things.

Play the long game and build trust.

There are many ways to do this, but the most powerful way is to mentor engineers directly. Since you're a Staff Engineer, you should be more senior than 90%+ of the team (unless you're on an infra team), making you able to mentor most people. Once you're at Staff and beyond, you have to build some sort of empire around you, filled with people who you've raised to resonate with your world view. That's what I did at Instagram Ads, and I used that social capital to completely revamp the oncall system (Staff project). You can watch the case study here: [Case Study] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project

Here's a good video on earning trust in general outside of direct mentorship: [Masterclass] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech

I recommend this thread too: "How do I lead without authority?"

The trust is the most important factor, but the actual execution matters a lot as well. If you want to change culture, tooling, or process, you need to be especially on-point making a case:

• Paint a clear delta between what your team/organization has now and where it could be
• Create a beautiful slide deck with nice visualizations and diagrams, which will be especially helpful for the executive crowd to understand (big team changes usually require senior EM/director buy-in)
• Include metrics where possible

What is the benefit of adopting the new tools or processes you mentioned? One way to look at this is purely from the utility standpoint -- how will my life improve if I use the new tool or workflow?

If it's very clear that what you're advocating for is better, there should be no need for rapport, right? They'll make the change out of selfish motives.

There are cases where you need a whole group to adopt something, or you need to introduce something that makes life more difficult but is better for the overall company. In these cases:

• Lead by example, and show how and why you're using the new toolchain.
• Communicate clearly about your plans, and have 1:1 conversations with influential people on the team to get their buy-in.
• Get support from the leadership team, e.g. your manager or director, to reinforce the importance of this initiative.

Here's a very good related discussion about How to manage a team towards high performance?