How to lead a team of professional employees who are resistant to supervision, control and to change?

In majority of cases, senior employees who are self motivated and have history of delivering quality results, don't need supervision.

Most of employees require control of some sort and output of each employee gets merged in entire performance of the company. A manager can be controlled by his General Manger who in turn by his director/managing director/Chairman and ultimately by shareholders of the company.  So control feature has to be there.

Same way, none can afford to resist change. However, it depends on the change manager on method of implementing change. He needs to make sure, that prior to introducing change, it must be properly explained to the concerned teams in terms of current status, required status, gap analysis and reason for bringing in changes. Any change just for the sake of change will not work. Also the process of change needs to be effectively controlled, reviewed and corrective actins taken simultaneously.

To lead an employee who is resistant to change and supervision, one needs to first analyse the performance and value being added by him/her. IF that is unquantifiable, the professional must be left to work in isolation since replacing him/her would mean a bad blow on the quality deliverables he was producing and the replacement cost. 

But if an employee isnt adding value to the company and can be easily replaced then trainings, mentoring and one-on-one feedback sessions should be provided to bring behavioural change, if they have no impact then such employees should be asked to resign.

A true professional should not be resistant to change at all.  I am a leader.  Good leaders lead by example.  If the professional is resistant to change.  Find out why.  Then proceed to retrain.

I actually liked the answers and all of them have merits, going by my own experience, i would actually sit with the team individually and try to see why they are averse to it and how i can retrain them or i can convince them to continue with the change. After all,

The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work

Aga Hasan Abedi

In this case the best method to do is Division of Labor. Divide the group task and assign one work phase to one employee, second task to the second employee and so on. Of course each employee that was given sub task has to deliver otherwise the employee will be terminated.

Every leader is also a member of his/her team, that's how teamwork works! the leader should always be initiative and takes the first step in every project, there's no need for control in a team work as long as every team member knows exactly his/her role. Also motivation is a very good practice to push your team towards proficiency using the strength points of every team member. Finally, a good relationship between team members and their leader is the secret of success; it opens up the way for both parts to discuss their performance and goals to take the right step for the change if needed.

Measure and analysis is the main concept of all process to create a good team.

Need to create all the work in process oriented, it will not affect eventhough if senior or known person not availability.

Create multi skill structure/person to avoid last moment surprise or unplanned absentism 

We need to be clear at our end that what kind of culture we want to create for ourself / our teams and organisation. Is it something where each and every decision / situation need to be seen us by in detail or is it something where each one of our team members have some space for individual creativity / decisions/ accountabilty etc  or a mix of both. Once we do that, we must share our approach with team members and seek their inputs - its a kind of expectation setting from both ends. Some people may like supervision and control, some may not, so we need to understand and treat each member as per need. Focus need to be on delivering  the results for business within organisation acceptable standards and guidelines without personal egos and biases.1:1 sessions with employee to give feedback and strengths & opportunity areas will be helpful to engage them in a right direction. Resistance to change is a natural phenomina for which it is important to create the right environment and engage people  to understand their concerns and build their capability to be with change for success.

Bring togehter, get a team buy-in and come up with an agreement is the best solution for handling the various challenges while adopting the change.  

Often professional employees understand the benefit of change and therefore do not require supervision.

The best way to lead this change, is to ensure everyone is informed and is aware of the change, they are able to ask as many questions as they need too, and that they really feel part of the change.