1When our company merged with its largest competitor, nobody in the department knew whether they would still have a job by Christmas.
2Rumors spread faster than facts, and within a week two of our most experienced engineers had resigned for safer positions elsewhere.
3As team leader, I decided that pretending everything was fine would only destroy whatever trust my colleagues still had in management.
4Instead, I held an open meeting where people could voice their fears, and I promised to share every piece of news the moment I received it.
5I admitted honestly that I could not guarantee anyone's position, but I could guarantee that nobody would hear important decisions through gossip.
6We agreed to focus on the work we could control, which turned out to be a surprisingly effective way of calming everyone's nerves.
7Over the following months, I arranged individual conversations with each person about their career, their concerns, and their hopes for the future.
8Two employees eventually chose to leave, but they departed on good terms and thanked me for treating them like adults.
9The rest of the team survived the merger intact, and productivity actually rose once the uncertainty finally began to fade away.
10Leadership, I learned, is less about having all the answers and more about being honest when the answers do not yet exist.