When your company mandates a return to office, your job as a leader is to get your team on board, even if you have mixed feelings yourself. Lia walks through the one pitfall to avoid (naysaying the policy alongside your team), how to make in-person time actually worthwhile, and how to prepare for the wave of exceptions that will follow. This episode is most useful for leaders navigating a hybrid or full return-to-office rollout right now.
This episode is part of the Leading Through Change & Uncertainty series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“When you show that your team member has nobody telling them it’s gonna be okay, and that’s detrimental. That’s the thing that’s fueling the disengagement.”
“Empathize. I understand this is frustrating. I’m disappointed. I know we had put a lot of work in empathize, but don’t commiserate.”
“They are looking for a solid foundation. They’re looking for someone just to say like, it’s not the end of the world. I’ve got a plan for you. I’m looking out for you.”
“…there’s a lot of change right now. A lot of things outside of our control, but what we can control is how we respond.”
Episode highlights
The commiserating trap most leaders fall into
When change hits, authentic leadership can tip into something destructive. Lia names the pattern clearly: a manager who says “what is leadership thinking, I hate this new direction” might feel like a team ally in the moment. But when you commiserate, you leave your team with no one steering the ship. If you are not creating a stable foundation, nobody is. That is what turns a frustrating day into full disillusionment.
Why silence and false reassurance both backfire
Two common escapes make things worse. Staying silent lets anxiety fill the vacuum. Empty reassurance (“don’t worry, everything’s fine”) breaks trust the moment reality contradicts it. Neither gives your team what they are actually looking for, which is a signal that someone has a plan, even a partial one.
The two-part framework: empathize, then action-plan
The right way to talk about change is straightforward. Acknowledge first: “I know this is frustrating. I know we lost momentum. I’m disappointed too.” Then pivot to forward motion: “Here is what I know. Here is what I’m doing to find out. Here is how your role fits into the new direction.” Lia is direct that you do not need all the answers. Sharing how you are going to find them is enough to create safety.
The career-progression piece no one addresses
The change conversation gets hardest when team members worry their promotion, bonus, or visibility is at risk because a project got canceled or shifted. Lia frames this as the manager’s job: actively work behind the scenes to make sure that effort is leveraged, documented, and surfaced. One example from her time at Google, where a team member built a framework for representing shifted work in performance reviews, shows this does not have to be a months-long effort.
This takes less time than you think
One of the most common objections Lia hears is “I don’t have time to figure this out.” Her counter is precise: ten seconds to empathize, twenty more to say how you will get answers, then one hour (maybe a day for a large team) to actually map it out. If an hour is not enough, bring in a peer, a coach, or your own manager. The cost of not doing it is losing people entirely.
What your team is actually watching for
Team members mirror their leader’s response to change. When you show up as “yeah, this is frustrating, and here is what we are doing,” they follow that lead. The goal is not to perform optimism. It is to demonstrate that someone is holding the wheel. That signal, even delivered imperfectly, is what separates a team that recovers from one that quietly checks out.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 209: Why your team still feels lost even when you are communicating. When your team feels unsettled despite your updates, the problem is usually a perception gap, not a missing fact. Lia breaks down a two-domain framework for separating what people perceive from what they actually experience, and explains why addressing perception first gets you 80 percent of the way there without changing a thing. This episode is especially useful for founders, executives, and leaders managing managers through ongoing change and uncertainty.
- Ep 200: How to lead through fear and uncertainty without losing your team. When fear takes over, managers default to micromanaging, martyrdom, and reactive decisions that drive away the exact people they need most. Lia and leadership expert Megan Karsh lay out why gritty, honest hope outperforms false reassurance every time. This episode is essential for owners, founders, and managers who are stuck in the middle of pressure from above and anxiety from below.
- Ep 180: How to lead through uncertainty without losing your best people. When everything feels chaotic, the leaders who keep their best people are the ones who manage themselves first. Lia lays out three concrete moves: check your own clarity on expectations, proactively re-enlist your team, and watch for the confirmation bias that turns frustration into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This episode is especially useful for owners and corporate leaders who sense a gap between how hard they think their team is working and how hard their team thinks they are working.
- Ep 165: Return to office is coming: how to set your team up for success. When your company mandates a return to office, your job as a leader is to get your team on board, even if you have mixed feelings yourself. Lia walks through the one pitfall to avoid (naysaying the policy alongside your team), how to make in-person time actually worthwhile, and how to prepare for the wave of exceptions that will follow. This episode is most useful for leaders navigating a hybrid or full return-to-office rollout right now.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.
Full transcript (click to expand)
When it comes to navigating change, there is a wrong way to talk about it and a right way to talk about it as a leader, and there’s a really good chance you’re talking about it in a way that is actually sabotaging your team from feeling onboard, invested, and aligned with any change happening. I’m Lia Garvin and this is The New Manager Playbook, and I am on a mission to make managing your team the easiest part of your job.
And one of the things that is so hard right now is navigating all the change going on. Between figuring out how to integrate AI and automations into your workflow, doing more with less, which essentially just means working extra hours with fewer people. There’s talk of this 9, 9, 6, schedule 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM six days a week. Like this is being kind of celebrated in Silicon Valley and in some kinds of industries all around the world.
That’s pretty scary. People are feeling more frustrated than ever. Employee engagement is at an all time low, 21%, so four out of five people. They don’t wanna be there. This is a really hard situation and as a leader it feels like everything’s changing and so it is completely natural to get a little bit stuck in that, to feel like, well, I’m not gonna act like everything’s fine. This is a time that’s really kind of bad right now it’s kind of crappy.
I don’t, I don’t wanna act like everything’s fine or I’m happy with all of it. And so in trying to show up as an authentic leader, you might say, yeah, this is, this is really terrible right now. Or, I don’t know what’s going on. Or it might feel frustrating. That the higher ups in the company keep changing priorities. If you’re a business owner, it might be really frustrating that your investors or your board or your clients are getting on your nerves.
And it might be easy to say like, oh God, like, hey, it’s outta my hands. This stuff is happening. It’s coming down on us. What are we gonna do? And sometimes to show our team members that we we’re aligned with them, we know how they feel, we get it. We actually overly empathize with them. And we’re real. We’re in the change. There’s been a, there’s been a reorg and we as managers are empathizing with our team members and saying, gosh, what is leadership thinking?
I hate this new direction. We were focused, we were so close to the finish line. How are they pulling the rug out from under us? And in that moment, your team members might feel like, God, thank God my manager really gets it. And they’re frustrated with us and they’re not kind of living on a cloud saying everything’s fine. But what happens when we share this frustration and we over empathize and we commiserate with the frustration around change?
All that does is creates more frustration and uncertainty. Because if you are not creating that solid foundation and showing people, Hey, there is a bigger plan, there is something here that’s, that’s moving in the right direction. If you’re not doing that, then nobody’s doing it. Right. If you are not doing it, who is doing it? Your team is looking to you. If you’re a business owner, there’s literally nobody else up there, right? So you’ve gotta be showing up this way.
And if you’re a middle manager and you, all of these things are out of your control, you’ve still gotta be showing up this way because your team is relying on you in the very same way. So like we just covered the wrong way to talk about change and uncertainty and priority shifts and reorgs, even when you are frustrated about them, even when they changed everything that you were excited about, even when your project got canceled, your team got restructured, your role has been changed.
All of the work your team has been doing for the last three years, you are so close to the finish line. Shipping this product, launching this thing gets changed and everybody’s freaking out. Even if you get your backfills taken away, even if you can’t hire, you know the new resources that you were promised. Even in that situation, when you get sucked in to the spiral of complaining and you show your team like, gosh, like yeah, what the hell is going on in this company?
I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. When you show that your team member has nobody telling them it’s gonna be okay, and that’s detrimental. That’s the thing that’s fueling the disengagement. That’s the thing that makes any reorg so much harder than it already is. That’s what makes the priority shift feel like, well, how are we gonna recover from this? And I don’t just know this because of kind of reading about it. I know this because I’ve been there working in big tech for about a decade.
Hey, listen, that is the, you know, the hotbed for reorgs division changes, projects being canceled. Things being spun up. I think, you know, I’ve been on teams where once a month, every other month, the product direction was changing and that is extremely disillusioning to a team. But the only way to survive that is when the managers starting at the middle, managers and all the way up, set the tone for the team that, Hey, I know this is frustrating.
I know this is, things are changing. Hey, I know we lost like a lot of momentum here, but. And here’s how we’re moving forward, right? Acknowledge and then moving forward. That’s the right way to talk about it. Spoiler, that’s what, that’s your answer. That’s the right way to talk about it. And I wanna give some examples because again, it’s human nature. Wanna be like, get us sucked up in that spiral, they, oh my God, what’s happening?
This is so unfair. Totally human nature. But that is the thing that tips the scale into like a frustration for a day in a reaction. To actually feeling completely disillusioned, to losing your team completely. So if you wanna recover, if you wanna move forward, that’s the messaging you’ve gotta use. Empathize. I understand this is frustrating. I’m disappointed. I know we had put a lot of work in empathize, but don’t commiserate. And here’s what I’m excited about.
Here’s some of the potential I see in the shift. Here’s one thing I’m hoping comes next. Okay. Plant a little seed of optimism. You did not make promises. Everything’s gonna be fine. You did not say, oh, don’t worry. You know nothing got canceled. Whatever you’ve shown people, Hey, I get it. I feel you. And as your leader, I am creating a solid foundation of stability. Now, this is especially important when people are worried that their career progressions at stake, because that’s what I saw working in big tech more than anything, was, yeah, okay, my project gets canceled, or we shift directions.
I’m okay with it, I guess, but not if my promotion’s on the line, not if I can’t get to the next level now. Now if I’m not gonna get my bonus because it says I didn’t ship something, I didn’t deliver on my work. This is where this really comes in. Talking to your team about what is the plan for them? A project gets canceled. How are you gonna leverage the learning and the work that’s happened to not have a setback in their career, not have that promotion come at stake.
What are you doing behind the scenes to help make sure that work is leveraged? How are you bringing visibility to the great work that was done even in the midst of a priority shift, let’s say You pivot completely on something to focus on. You know, you learn that a competitor’s doing something and you really gotta catch up to them, and so you really pivot and everybody’s role is changing. That’s where we get ahead of it. Again, I know that this is a big shift.
Here is what I’m doing to ensure every single one of you is clear on how your role fits into the new shift. And then you do it and you have the conversation. And if you don’t know the answer yet, here’s how I’m going to figure out how each of your roles fits into the new thing. So it’s the empathize and then the sharing what you know, or sharing a plan or how are you’re gonna find out that’s the right way to do it.
And it sounds simple, but it is so transformational. Because this is what your team members are looking for. They are looking for a solid foundation. They’re looking for someone just to say like, it’s not the end of the world. I’ve got a plan for you. I’m looking out for you. This is what our team members are looking to us as managers to tell us, I got you. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not gonna be able to tell you everything today, but I’ve got you Create safety, you create trust, you create, whew.
Reduce some of that nervous, nervous system. It’s a firing and, and freaking out. I’ve got you. And when that is how we show up. Even when we are scared, even when there are unknowns and we do the things, okay, the trust isn’t there. If I say, I’ve got you, and then I never show up with any information, and you do the things, you ask your higher ups, you do some digging, you map out all your team members on a whiteboard and you figure out, okay, how can I plug people in?
Actually, you bring in a coach to help you figure it out. You bring in a consultant to to look at, okay, where are the right places to put my team members? You talk to a peer, right? You, you do the work to actually get it done and figure out, okay, what is the plan? And then you go back to your team members and you communicate that. That goes so much further than, than that initial spiraling. Oh God, the boss sucks.
The, the, the direction sucks. I can’t believe our investors did this. I can’t believe the VC did this. I can’t believe, you know, our, our clients are making us do this, this, this whole spiral thing of commiserating. All that does is gets your team members to feel like, well, nobody’s got the, nobody’s steering the ship. Then you start losing people. Your engagement goes from 21% to zero and you are done. Okay. It’s not good. I don’t even know what happens at that point.
So the wrong way, the complaining spiral, the commiserating the right way. Empathize, and action planning. I know it’s frustrating. I know we lost some steam. I know this. Here’s what I’m doing to find out, here’s how you fit in the picture. Here’s how we’re gonna leverage that work. And then you go and figure that out. If you are stuck with that third piece, I guess, right? Empathizing is one. You know, communicating something is two, and then the three is actually figuring that out.
If you’re stuck on that third part again, that’s where it can be helpful to bring in some outside support or ask your own manager or check in with your HR team or whoever you know, like to say, Hey, I don’t actually know how to figure out how to leverage some of this. Maybe there’s another team in your company that went through a similar reorg that’s figured this out and they have something, they have something mapped out.
I know when I was at Google, there was a team member who had a whole workflow of how to represent work that had been shifted in a performance review. And he shared this broadly because there were a lot of shifts and changes. And by having a sense of, okay, here’s how I talk about learnings and how to leverage work that maybe didn’t move forward, but actually fuel discoveries in the next project. This allowed folks to get promoted even if a project shifted or got canceled.
And so that’s what I’m talking about is you don’t have to figure it out alone, right? That was an internal team member who built this. Other folks consult with a coach. Other folks bring in a, you know, a consultant or a management expert like someone like myself to kind of help them figure out, well, what is next? That is the piece, right? That that is the job of a manager to not just be talking, but to figuring it out.
But I will say this, for that example, the of the person that mapped out how to repurpose learnings in future projects or talk about them in a performance review, that didn’t take months and years to figure out. So I think sometimes we’re worried like, well. I don’t even have time to figure this out. We’re supposed to move so fast, like saying to someone, one, I empathize with the situation. That’s 10 seconds, right? Here’s how I’m gonna figure something out.
20 more seconds. And then like taking an hour. We’re talking about an hour, maybe a day. If you have a big team and you gotta really figure out, two, figure it out. That is it. I’m not saying months. Okay. So none of the things, literally none of the things I talk about in this show. And it’s a diary take a long time. Please, please do not get in a spiral of, I don’t even have time to figure this out, and therefore I’m not going to give my team member information because then they are going to quit.
Okay? That’s why would I be in a team where everything’s falling off the rails, right? No. Right. So take an hour. If you can’t figure it out within an hour, then enlist some support. Ask a peer, ask a coach. Ask your manager. Right? That’s how we do it. We just take action. Okay. There’s a lot of change right now. A lot of things outside of our control, but what we can control is how we respond, right?
Always can control that. And your team members, they are looking to see how you are gonna respond. And when you act like, okay, yeah, I’m frustrated, but here’s what we’re doing. We’re moving forward. They will mirror that and that’s how you all move forward. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
Why does commiserating with my team about changes at work backfire?
When you join your team in venting about a reorg, a canceled project, or a priority shift, you feel like you're being relatable. But what you're actually doing is leaving your team with no one steering the ship. If you are not creating a foundation of stability and showing people there is a plan, nobody is doing it. That spiral of commiserating is exactly what turns a bad day into full disengagement, and it is one of the biggest drivers of people quietly checking out or leaving altogether.
What is the right way to talk to my team about a frustrating change or reorg?
The formula is simple: empathize, then action-plan. Acknowledge that the change is hard, that momentum was lost, that it is disappointing. Then pivot to what you are doing about it. That might be sharing what you already know, laying out how each person's role fits into the new direction, or simply saying here is how I am going to find out. You do not have to have all the answers. You just have to show your team you have a plan and you are working on it.
How do I talk to my team about a project cancellation when I'm worried about their career growth?
Career impact is what makes project cancellations feel truly devastating to team members, not just the project itself. Your job as a leader is to get ahead of that fear directly. Explain how you plan to leverage the work and learning that already happened, how you are bringing visibility to what the team accomplished, and how you are making sure the cancellation does not become a setback in anyone's performance review or promotion timeline. Doing that work and communicating it is what actually protects your team.
What if I genuinely don't know the answers when my team asks about a change?
Not knowing the answers is fine. Saying nothing is not. Tell your team you do not have everything figured out yet, and then tell them specifically how you are going to find out. That commitment, followed by actually doing the work to get the information, is what builds trust. Ask your own leader, loop in HR, talk to a peer who navigated a similar shift, or bring in outside support if needed. The goal is to go back to your team with something concrete, and that usually does not take more than an hour or a day.
How do I stay positive about change as a leader without sounding fake or dismissive?
You do not have to pretend everything is fine. Acknowledging frustration and disappointment is honest and appropriate. The line to watch is between empathizing and commiserating. Saying 'I know this is hard and here is what I am doing about it' is authentic leadership. Saying 'I can't believe leadership is doing this to us' leaves your team with no foundation. Plant a small seed of optimism, share one thing you see potential in, and focus on moving forward. Your team will mirror the tone you set.