The Bridges transition model

In plain terms

A reorganization takes effect on a date. People do not adjust on that date. The Bridges model is built on that gap.

The creator's own definitions put it simply: "Change is the external event or situation that takes place," while transition is "the inner psychological process" people go through as they take it in (William Bridges Associates, n.d.-a). A leader can schedule a change. A transition has to be worked through by the people in it.

The three stages

William Bridges Associates describes three stages (n.d.-a):

1. Ending what currently is. In the creator's words, this "begins when people identify what they are losing and learn how to manage these losses." The model starts with what is ending, not with what is new.
2. The neutral zone. People go through an "in-between time when the old is gone but the new isn't fully operational." Old routines have stopped working and new ones are not settled yet.
3. The new beginning. The new way of working takes hold, and with it, in the creator's description, new understandings, values and attitudes.

Bridges puts the ending first, where a plan built around a future state would start with the new beginning.

Where it came from

William Bridges (1933 to 2013) was a professor of American literature at Mills College in California in the 1960s before turning to transitions, according to the biography published by his firm (William Bridges Associates, n.d.-b). The firm says his own experience of significant transitions in his life was the catalyst for the work.

He set out the personal version in Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, published by Addison-Wesley in 1980 (Bridges, 1980; Open Library, n.d.-a). He applied it to organizations in Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, published by Addison-Wesley in 1991 (Bridges, 1991; Open Library, n.d.-b). An obituary from the Association for Talent Development reports that he died on February 17, 2013, at 79 (ATD, 2013).

The firm describes the model as "used by leaders and management consultants for more than thirty years" (William Bridges Associates, n.d.-a). That is a statement about use, not evidence that it works.

What the research says

The search for this page found very little direct research on the Bridges model, and what it found is applied rather than a test of the stages.

The one direct study found. Nesmith (2025) integrated the Bridges framework into a foster agency's program for young people about to leave care, and assessed 35 of them 18 months after the training. Participants reported moderate to high social support, and school enrollment after discharge was higher than in state-level foster care data. The design was exploratory, without a control group, and the author recommends assessing the framework with a larger sample. It concerns young people leaving care, not employees in a reorganization.

Do people really move through stages? The closest workplace evidence comes from research on how managers interpret change over time. Isabella (1990) built a stage model from interviews with 40 managers about key organizational events. Brotheridge (2005) tested it. When managers looked back on a change, their accounts gave some support to distinct stages. When they described a change while it was still happening, their interpretations did not follow the stage pattern: they were assessing, attending to rumors and fitting in new information all at once. In Brotheridge's words, managers looking back "attempt to create order where, possibly, none exists." That is a caution for any stage model, Bridges' included: the stages may describe how people tell the story afterwards better than what they live through at the time.

Is there a dip in the middle? Elrod and Tippett (2002) compared models of the human response to change from several disciplines. Most shared two features: they followed Lewin's three-phase model of change, and they described a degradation of capabilities in the intermediate stages. Bridges' neutral zone fits that family. The review found that most of the models share these two features, which is not the same as showing they are right; the authors also report one organizational case.

Emotion in ongoing change. Kiefer (2005) found that ongoing change was associated with negative emotions, which in turn predicted lower trust and more withdrawal one month later. That supports taking the emotional side of change seriously. It does not test Bridges' three stages.

Where the evidence is thin

No controlled study reviewed here compares an organization that manages endings and the neutral zone deliberately with one that does not. No study reviewed here measures whether employees pass through the three stages in order. The model's central distinction, between an event and the adjustment to it, is widely used, but none of the studies reviewed here tests it.

Bridges compared with other models

For a side-by-side of seven models with their evidence levels, see change management models compared.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

Bridges' first stage lines up with Part 2 of the Unfrozen Loop, make sense together, top included, which asks the people above to say out loud what the change costs. Naming what is ending is a way of doing exactly that.

The neutral zone is where Part 4, review on a rhythm, then hold the pace, is meant to help. The idea is that short, regular reviews that each end in one fix give people something solid while old routines stop working, and that holding off new work keeps the in-between time from being stretched by the next change. The hold-the-pace rule has no trial yet and stays labeled as judgment.

Brotheridge's finding argues for Part 1, surface both ways. If people's interpretations are mixed and shifting while a change is happening, the way to know where a team is, is to ask, often.

Common misreadings

"Everyone goes through the three stages in order." The creator's description names the stages in order but does not set out a timetable, and the stage research suggests real-time experience is messier than retrospective accounts.

"The neutral zone is wasted time to get through quickly." The model treats it as part of the transition. Whether shortening it helps or harms has not been tested.

"Bridges is the same as the change curve." Bridges built his model for transitions and applied it to organizations himself. The change curve is a later workplace adaptation of stages Kübler-Ross observed in dying patients (Holdsworth & Bridgman, 2025). See the change curve.

Using it well

Start with endings. Before the next change announcement, write down what will end for each affected group: a routine, a role, a reporting line, a way of being good at the job. Say it out loud in the announcement.

Plan for the in-between. Decide what people should do while the old process has stopped and the new one is not reliable, and who to ask when they are stuck.

Ask instead of placing. Do not tell people which stage they are in. Ask what has ended for them, what is still unclear, and what would help.