When her organization went through its third restructure in two years, this VP made one decision that changed everything for her team.
She came to me after her team's third restructure in twenty-four months. Morale was low. Turnover was creeping up. And she was exhausted from trying to hold everything together while also managing her own uncertainty about what came next.
The first thing we worked on wasn't a strategy. It was her relationship with not knowing.
Leaders in high-change environments often feel pressure to project certainty they don't have. The thinking goes: if I show doubt, my team will panic. But the opposite is usually true. When leaders pretend to have answers they don't have, teams sense the gap — and fill it with anxiety.
This VP started doing something simple: she began her weekly team meetings with what she called a 'known and unknown' update. Here's what I know. Here's what I don't know yet. Here's what I'm doing to find out.
Within a month, the tone of her team shifted. Not because the uncertainty went away — it didn't — but because people stopped spending energy trying to read between the lines. They trusted that she would tell them what she knew when she knew it.
Stability in a changing organization doesn't come from having all the answers. It comes from being a leader people can count on to be honest about the ones they don't have.
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