When organisations go through significant change, such as rapid growth, a merger, redundancies or a strategic reset, the instinct for many leaders is to default to process. When change hits, it’s a natural response: If you can control the structure, you feel like you can control the outcome. The organisations I’ve seen navigate change most effectively didn’t win on process, they won because their leaders stayed close to their people, communicated with clarity and never lost sight of the human side of what everyone was experiencing.
So, what does good leadership look like when your organisation is going through something difficult? Before anything else, gather your leadership team in a room together for a proper working session. This isn’t a catch-up or an away day, it must be focused. This is the moment to align on three things: where you are going, what your collective commitments are to getting there and what success looks like, for the organisation and for each individual leader in the room.
You can’t align a leadership team to a destination that hasn’t been agreed
It’s the place to surface assumptions, close gaps in understanding and agree on the strategic priorities and KPIs that will guide the months ahead. It’s also the moment to ask honestly which teams, departments or relationships might represent a blind spot or blocker, and to name those before they become problems.
If there are senior leaders in that room who aren’t clear on the annual strategic objectives, that clarity needs to come first. You can’t align a leadership team to a destination that hasn’t been agreed.
Begin a regular coaching cycle with your people
Once your leadership team is aligned, the next step is to create a structured rhythm of support for the people who report to you. I recommend a flexible coaching cycle which involves regular one-to-ones that go beyond project updates to include how someone is feeling. That means checking in on motivation, on where confidence might be wavering and whether patterns of thinking are starting to affect someone’s performance or wellbeing.
Simon Sinek makes the point that senior leadership requires a fundamental shift in focus, away from the work and towards the people doing it. Nowhere is that more important than during change. What I’ve seen repeatedly is that uncertainty surfaces patterns in people that wouldn’t otherwise show up.
Someone who thrives on precision and getting things right can, under the pressure of a restructure or a new strategic direction, tip from high performance into fear of failure. That fear, if it goes unnoticed, can quietly derail both the individual and the team around them. Staying close enough to your people to notice those shifts is not a soft skill. It’s one of the most strategically important things a leader can do.
It also means giving feedback that genuinely develops and motivates people. A useful framework is ‘A.I.D’:
- Action – what you observed
- Impact – the effect on the business, team or individual
- Do or Discover – offers a clear next step or a coaching question to help unlock what’s going on for the individuals within the team
Be specific about what you observed, share the impact on the team or the business, and then either offer a clear next step or instigate an open conversation where you ‘seek to understand’. You can use coaching questions such as:
- What went wrong?
- What would you do differently?
- Can you help me understand the thinking here?
- What would you encourage us to try next time?
Feedback without an actionable next step doesn’t go anywhere.
Hold a midpoint reflection
Around the three-month mark, step back for an informal progress review. Not a formal appraisal, it must be a genuine opportunity to ask: What’s working? What isn’t working? What themes are emerging that the senior team needs to hear?
Good information flow in both directions is what allows course corrections to happen before small problems become significant ones. What is your team telling you? Are you still heading in the right direction? If yes, what needs to be reinforced? If not, what needs to change?
This is also the moment to look at how leadership behaviours are landing across the organisation. There’s often a gap between what leaders intend and what their people actually experience. Closing that gap, between intent and impact, is essential during a period of change.
After the midpoint reflection, re-enter the coaching cycle with greater focus. You now have information you didn’t have at the start and it’s important to use it. This is the phase for deepening goal development, addressing the behavioural patterns that have shown up and building real momentum towards the objectives you agreed at the beginning.
Consolidate and measure
At the end of the coaching cycle, it’s essential to create a proper review moment. What did you set out to achieve? What did you achieve? What worked, what didn’t and what does the organisation now know about itself that it didn’t before?
This isn’t the end of the process; it’s the beginning of the next one. Change, done well, becomes a continuous cycle of connection, clarity and collaboration. Each iteration builds something: more resilience, more capability and a leadership team that is better equipped for whatever comes next. That’s not just how organisations survive change. It’s how they learn to grow through it.
Karl Green is a Learning & Organisational Development Consultant and Coach at Wishfish Coaching & Development
This article first appeared on CSW's sister publication Training Journal, the online magazine for learning and development professionals and all those who have an interest and responsibility for learning and performance at work.
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