Encouraging Open Dialogue During Transitions

I’ve found myself navigating meetings when a colleague or team member is emotionally overwhelmed. One person came to me like a fireball, angry and frustrated. A peer had triggered them deeply. After recognizing that I needed to shift modes, I took a breath and said, “Okay, tell me what's happening.” I realized they didn’t want a solution. I thought to myself: They must still be figuring out how to respond and needed time to process. They are trusting me to help. I need to listen. In these moments, people often don’t need solutions; they need presence. There are times when people are too flooded with feelings to answer their own questions. This can feel counterintuitive in the workplace, where our instincts are tuned to solve, fix, and move forward. But leadership isn’t just about execution; it’s also about emotional regulation and providing psychological safety. When someone approaches you visibly upset, your job isn’t to immediately analyze or correct. Instead, your role is to listen, ground the space, and ensure they feel heard. This doesn't mean abandoning accountability or ownership; quite the opposite. When people feel safe, they’re more likely to engage openly in dialogue. The challenging part is balancing reassurance without minimizing the issue, lowering standards, or compromising team expectations. There’s also a potential trap: eventually, you'll need to shift from emotional containment to clear, kind feedback. But that transition should come only after the person feels genuinely heard, not before. Timing matters. Trust matters. If someone is spinning emotionally, be the steady presence. Be the one who notices. Allow them to guide the pace. Then, after the storm passes, and only then, you can invite reflection and growth. This is how you build a high-trust, high-performance culture: one conversation, one moment of grounded leadership at a time.

Change is never just strategic—it’s deeply psychological. During transformation, the biggest risk isn’t resistance. It’s silence. Silence means people don’t feel safe to speak up. And without psychological safety, ❌ Ideas disappear. ❌ Mistakes go unreported. ❌ Trust quietly erodes. That’s why high-trust cultures don’t happen by accident. They’re intentionally built—especially during change. Here’s a framework I use to help organizations foster psychological safety during transitions: 🔹 S — Speak Up Create a culture where people can share concerns or ideas without fear of being shut down. 🔹 A — Acknowledge Emotion Validate that change brings uncertainty. Don’t power through discomfort—address it. 🔹 F — Follow Through Keep your word. Psychological safety collapses when promises aren’t kept. 🔹 E — Encourage Learning Reward experimentation. Normalize failure as part of growth—especially during change. Leaders set the tone. If you want your people to lean in, not check out—start with SAFE. If you're navigating transformations and want to build a culture of trust that lasts, DM me “TRANSFORM”. Let's transform the way your organization leads through change.

Leaders with high emotional intelligence know this: 🚫 You can’t push people through change. ✅ You meet them, then walk with them. Here’s how they make it happen: 1. Start with the heart. Ask how people feel before you tell them what to do. 2. Tune into silence. What’s not being said often matters most. 3. Don’t rush buy-in. Create space for people to catch up emotionally. 4. Model vulnerability. Share your own discomfort—it builds trust. 5. Celebrate small wins. It boosts emotional momentum and hope. 6. Check in personally. A quick 1:1 can do more than an all-hands update. 7. Stay steady. Your calm presence is more contagious than your urgency. 8. Repeat the “why.” People don’t remember what you said. They remember how it made them feel. 9. Listen without fixing. Not every emotion needs a solution, sometimes it just needs space. 10. Be human first. People follow people, not policies. Change isn’t just logical. It’s deeply emotional. And EQ is the leadership skill that bridges the gap between strategy and adoption. So, change management without EQ? That’s just a plan, with no heart behind it.