Navigating Change: Strategies for Leaders to Guide Teams Through Uncertainty
Change is inevitable. Markets shift. Tech moves faster than your IT team can say “mandatory update.” Leadership reshuffles. Some consultant somewhere declares the next big thing and suddenly everyone has to drop what they’re doing to “get aligned.”
The companies that survive are the ones that adapt. Change is good!
I mean. It actually kind of sucks, but you can make it not suck.
Let’s be real, change is HARD. It’s chaotic, it’s disorienting, it’s frustrating as hell, and wow is it traumatic to deal with. It’s not the change itself that necessarily grinds people down, it’s the uncertainty and the lack of leadership. It’s the dreaded school group project rearing its ugly head.
When things feel shaky, people cling to what they know, even if what they know was terrible. They start whisper campaigns in Slack channels, inventing worst-case scenarios to fill the information vacuum. And if leadership stays silent, morale craters.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your job as a leader isn’t just to announce change. Your job is to shepherd people through it without breaking the team in the process. Lead your flock.
Why Change Feels BAD (most of the time)
Brains LOVE routine. Routine conserves energy and keeps your brain running at peak efficiency. When you know what to expect, your brain doesn’t have to burn extra glucose making decisions or scanning for threats. It just coasts along.
Then BANG! CHANGE! Suddenly the smooth, well-paved, beautifully maintained highway of your neurons becomes a construction zone. Your brain has to light up the parts responsible for decision-making, threat detection, and emotional regulation all at once. That’s a lot for your brain to take on and deal with.
So when leaders roll out change and expect instant enthusiasm, they’re fighting basic neurobiology. People aren’t resisting you or the change you’re making, their brains are just wired to cling to the familiar.
This is why clarity, communication, and psychological safety matter so much. When leaders fill in the gaps with stability, when they explain the “why,” and when they give people a voice in the process, the brain relaxes. The change still has to happen, but it’s a lot less scary when there’s confident leadership at the helm.
The Greatest Hits of Leadership Fails During Change
Silence. Leaders who think radio silence equals “calm.” Spoiler: it doesn’t. It just makes employees invent scarier stories than the truth.
Fake certainty. Saying “everything’s fine” when it’s obviously not. People aren’t stupid. They’ll see right through you.
Speed running change. Or dragging it out so long everyone’s exhausted before anything even happens. Either way: bad idea.
So What Actually Works?
Tell people the truth, even if the truth is “I don’t know yet.” That sentence builds more trust than a hundred slides of made-up certainty.
Anchor people in what isn’t changing. Values. Customers. The actual work that still matters. Even a shred of stability can keep a team steady in turbulence.
Invite your employees into the process. Let them co-create, give feedback, own pieces of the change. When people help build the future, they stop fighting it.
And for the love of all that is holy, celebrate progress. Change isn’t one big finish line—it’s a thousand tiny checkpoints. If you wait to recognize people until the very end, they’ll burn out or leave before you get there.
Threadsmith’s Approach
At The Threadsmith Group, we help leaders stop making change harder than it needs to be. We work with teams to turn chaos into clarity, to build trust when it’s easiest to lose it, and to keep momentum alive even when the road is bumpy.
Change isn’t the enemy, bad leadership during change is. Don’t be that leader. Your people deserve better.