Week 11 — Leading Change & Ambiguity
Week 11: communicate an organisational change to your team without lying, without parroting leadership, and without leaving them with the impression that you…
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- Week 11 of the 12-week program. Theme: Communicate change you didn't decide and aren't sure about.
- Change communication template — the ritual you install this week.
- 60 min pre-read + 90 min cohort + Friday homework with a falsifiable artefact.
- Reviewed by HR Director, line manager, and OB faculty lenses.
Every manager will spend large parts of their career communicating decisions they didn't make and don't fully agree with. How they do this determines whether their team trusts them through the change or learns to discount everything they say. The skill is honesty without disloyalty, clarity without false certainty, and acknowledgment without complaining.
What the evidence says
- Kotter (Leading Change, 8-step model): the most common failure point is under-communication — by a factor of 10 — of the change vision.
- Bridges (Transitions): change is situational; transition is psychological. The manager's job is to help the team through the transition (ending, neutral zone, new beginning), not just announce the change.
- Edmondson (psychological safety) during change: teams whose managers acknowledge uncertainty have measurably better adaptation outcomes than teams whose managers pretend certainty they don't have.
Pre-read (60 minutes)
- Read: Kotter's 8 steps — short version — 20 min.
- Read: Bridges' Transitions model — 20 min.
- Read: The middle manager's communication dilemma — 15 min.
- Reflect (10 min): a recent change you communicated. What did you say? What did you wish you'd said?
Live session (90 minutes)
- 1The three-part stance (20 min)Coach teaches: name what you know, name what you don't know, name what you're doing about it. This stance is honest, calm, and forfeits neither credibility nor authority.
- 2Disagree and commit, articulated (20 min)When you disagreed in the room and the decision went the other way. How to communicate the decision without sabotage and without false enthusiasm. Coach role-plays the conversation.
- 3Bridges transition support (20 min)What teams need at each phase: ending (acknowledgment of loss), neutral zone (structure and signals), new beginning (vision and small wins). Map an in-flight change to these phases.
- 4Live drafting (20 min)Each manager drafts a message they'll deliver in the coming weeks (a layoff comms, a re-org, a strategy shift, a tool change). Coach edits live.
- 5Commitments (10 min)Each manager commits to one change communication this week using the three-part stance.
The ritual you install this week
Adopt a standard template for any significant change comm: (1) what's changing, (2) why it's changing, (3) what we know, (4) what we don't yet know, (5) what we're doing next, (6) how to share concerns. Use it every time. Predictability of structure builds trust even when the content is hard.
Modern tools for this skill
| Category | Examples (2026) | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Comms platform | Loom for video, Slack canvas, Notion doc | Match medium to the moment |
| Pulse / sentiment | CultureAmp pulse, Officevibe, anon Slack form | Track team's response to change |
| AI message review | Claude/ChatGPT with team context | Pressure-test your draft for clarity and tone |
| Change frameworks | Kotter 8-step, Bridges Transitions, ADKAR — use one | Don't ad-hoc the change model |
I need to communicate this change to my team [paste change context]. Critique my draft message [paste draft] for: (1) false certainty I should soften, (2) unanswered questions the team will ask, (3) tone (defensive, cheerleading, honest), (4) what's missing from the three-part stance.
Friday homework — falsifiable artefacts
- One change comm delivered using the three-part stance.
- Pulse check held (formal or informal) 7 days after the comm — what did the team hear?
- Adjusted comm or held a follow-up if the team heard something different from what you meant.
- Identified the Bridges phase your team is in for any in-flight change; matched your behaviours to it.
- Submitted to coach: redacted comm + team response signals.
Success signal
By end of week 11, your team trusts what you say about change — even when the change is hard, and even when you don't fully agree with it. They come to you with concerns instead of speculating in side channels.
Reviewer notes
The fastest way to lose your team's trust is to over-promise during a change. The slowest way to rebuild it is to under-deliver after over-promising. The three-part stance ('here's what I know, here's what I don't, here's what I'm doing about it') is the only sustainable position over a long career.
I've led people through three layoffs, two acquisitions, and a CEO change. The teams that came through intact had managers who didn't pretend. Pretending you have certainty you don't have is the most expensive short-term comfort a manager can take.
Bridges' insight — that change is situational, transition is psychological — is more useful operationally than Kotter's 8 steps for first-time managers. The manager's job during change is largely transition support: acknowledging what's ending, holding the neutral zone, helping people picture the new beginning.
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