You just got word of a reorg. Or a return-to-office mandate. Or layoffs. Your team is looking at you for answers and you barely have any yourself. The instinct is to stay quiet until you know more, but silence is not neutral. It gets filled with fear, rumors, and quiet quitting. The real problem is not the change itself. It is the missing system for communicating through it. This page, and the episodes linked below, will give you a concrete way to lead through chaos, keep your team’s trust intact, and come out the other side with a stronger culture than you started with.
Why change always feels harder than it should
Most leaders go into a period of change with good intentions and no playbook. They wait until they have all the answers before saying anything. They assume the team will just adapt. They treat the uncertainty as a temporary inconvenience instead of a real leadership moment. The result is a trust gap. Your team does not need you to have every answer. They need to know you are in it with them and that you have a way of thinking through what comes next. That is the system that is missing: a repeatable communication approach for moments when the ground is shifting.
The biggest mistake leaders make during a reorg or layoff
Silence. Full stop. When leaders go dark during a reorg, RTO announcement, or round of layoffs, the team fills the void with the worst possible interpretation. People start updating their resumes. High performers, who always have options, are the first to leave. The fix is not a single all-hands where you say everything is going to be fine. It is a cadence. Regular, honest touchpoints through The Sit Down framework where you name what you know, name what you do not know, and give your team a clear picture of what the next 30 days look like. Uncertainty is tolerable when people feel seen and informed. It becomes unbearable when they feel invisible.
How to lead when you are also navigating the uncertainty yourself
Here is the thing nobody tells new and mid-level managers: you are almost never going to have the full picture before your team needs to hear from you. Leadership through change is not about having answers. It is about being a steady presence. That means modeling calm without pretending everything is fine. It means saying out loud, “I do not have all the details yet, and here is what I am doing to get them.” It means protecting your team’s focus on what they can control while you handle what they cannot. The Unstoppable Team approach is built on exactly this: creating a team culture strong enough to absorb external turbulence because the internal foundation is solid.
Navigating specific change scenarios: RTO, layoffs, and transitions
Not all change is the same, and a one-size-fits-all communication approach will fall flat. A return-to-office mandate needs a different conversation than a surprise reorg. A team member losing their role needs a different kind of support than a team absorbing new responsibilities after a restructure. The episodes in this cluster dig into specific scenarios so you are not left guessing. What they all share is the same locked thesis: the team is not broken, you are not broken, the missing piece is a system for navigating the specific type of change in front of you.
What your team actually needs from you right now
They need honesty over polish. They need consistency over grand gestures. They need to know the rules of engagement have not secretly changed. When you show up with a clear process for how you will communicate, how decisions will get made, and how their work and roles fit into whatever is shifting, you stop being a source of stress and start being a source of stability. That is what separates a leader who loses their best people during a hard season from one who comes out the other side with a team that is more loyal than before. The system is what makes the difference.
All episodes on this topic
- 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 201: What most leaders get wrong when talking about change (and how to fix it). Most leaders either go silent or commiserate with their team during change, and both approaches deepen anxiety and disengagement. The fix is a two-part move: acknowledge the frustration honestly, then share what you know or how you plan to find out. This episode is most useful for founders, executives, and managers navigating reorgs, priority shifts, or any moment when the ground is moving under their team.
- 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.
- Ep 54: What to solve for before you start the RTO conversation. Return to office does not fix broken team culture, unclear expectations, or poor onboarding. Lia lays out the three real problems companies are trying to solve through RTO and shows how to address each one first, before deciding when or how often to bring people together. This episode is most useful for corporate managers and founders wrestling with hybrid or in-office mandates.
- Ep 42: How to lead with intention when everything at work keeps changing. Leading well right now means showing up with transparency, authenticity, and genuine participation, not just having the right answers. Farah Bernier shares her TAP framework (Transparency, Authenticity, Participate) as a practical tool for rebuilding trust and morale when teams are stretched thin. This episode is especially useful for mid-level and senior leaders navigating reorgs, hybrid work, and disengaged teams.
- Ep 18: How asking thoughtful questions makes your team stronger with Albert Shum. Asking thoughtful questions is one of the most powerful leadership tools available, signaling trust, building buy-in, and drawing out the best thinking on your team. Albert Shum, former Corporate Vice President of Design at Microsoft, shares a practical framework for communicating change that moves from listening to reflecting to re-recruiting your team around a shared direction. This episode is especially useful for leaders navigating organizational change, building cross-functional alignment, or trying to shift from telling to empowering.
- Ep 12: How to turn unlucky situations as a manager into opportunities. Unlucky situations on your team, inheriting a low performer, losing headcount, or watching a star player walk out the door, are not bad luck. They are a perspective, and Lia walks through a concrete reframe for each one: shift from asking “why me” to asking “what’s possible.” This episode is most useful for managers and founders who feel stuck after an unexpected setback.
- Ep 9: How to lead your team through reorgs and layoffs without losing their trust. When reorgs and layoffs hit, the fastest way to keep your team together is to stop over-explaining the business rationale and start answering the one question every person actually has: what does this mean for me? Jenn Liu, former SVP of Product and Senior Director at Google, shares a two-part framework: lead with clarity on the individual level, then shift the team toward a sense of progress and contribution. This episode is essential for any leader navigating uncertainty who is unsure how much to say, when to say it, and how to keep people engaged when the ground is moving.
Also relevant
- Ep 205: Your team is watching how you react. Here is why it matters.. When leaders visibly vent frustration, teams lose morale and disengage before the work even begins. Lia walks through the self-management moves that keep your team steady, including how to acknowledge a hard situation, celebrate effort, and get ahead of setbacks before they knock everyone off course. Most useful for founders, executives, and team leads who set the emotional tone for their people.
- Ep 97: How to roll out changes on your team without the fizzle. Changes fail not because the idea is wrong but because of how they get rolled out. Lia’s three-part framework covers setting expectations as a bought-in leader, giving air cover to whoever is implementing the change, and enlisting internal champions who can advocate peer-to-peer. This episode is essential for any owner or team lead who keeps watching good process improvements die on the vine.
- Ep 19: What to say when your team asks questions you cannot answer. When your team asks questions you cannot answer, going silent is the worst move. Lia shares a simple three-part framework: acknowledge what you do not know, model what you are doing, and demonstrate how you will support your team through the uncertainty. This episode is especially useful for leaders navigating layoff fears, return-to-office confusion, or any moment when the answers are still being figured out.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.