Dear Change Leader,
“I need to protect my team from all this chaos,” Priya told me during a recent coaching session. As CEO of a growing company, she’d been absorbing every shock from the organization’s turbulent environment — shielding her directors and managers from the worst of the uncertainty.
She meant well. But when I asked how her team was responding, she paused. “They seem… passive. Like they’re waiting for me to tell them what to do.”
Here’s what Priya hadn’t considered: in her effort to protect her people, she was also depriving them of something valuable — the chance to grow.
The Assumption Worth Questioning
When disruption hits, many of us default to a familiar leadership stance: step up, take charge, absorb the confusion, and translate it into clarity for our teams. It feels responsible. Protective. Necessary.
But this instinct carries a hidden cost. It assumes that the people on our teams are fragile — that they need to be shielded from complexity rather than equipped to navigate it.
What if that assumption is wrong?
The emerging leaders in your organization — your directors, your middle managers, your high-potential contributors — aren’t blank slates waiting for direction. They have perspective. They have insight into parts of the system you may not see clearly. And many of them have a deep willingness to step into bigger challenges, if given the opportunity.
Turbulence as a Development Ground
Here’s a reframe worth sitting with: the very disruptions keeping you up at night may be the most powerful leadership development opportunity available to you right now.
Formal training programs have their place. But real leadership capacity is built through navigating real challenges — making decisions with incomplete information, managing competing priorities, and leading people through ambiguity. Sound familiar? That’s your current reality. And it’s exactly the terrain where emerging leaders develop the instincts they’ll need for whatever comes next.
The question isn’t whether your people can handle complexity. It’s whether you’re creating the conditions for them to engage with it.
Three Ways to Turn Disruption into Development
- Share the Map, Not Just the Directions. Instead of translating complexity into simple instructions, invite emerging leaders into the complexity itself. Share the competing pressures you’re weighing. Walk them through your decision-making process — not to burden them, but to develop their capacity to think at a systems level.
This week: In your next leadership meeting, present a current challenge as a genuine thinking exercise rather than a solved problem. Ask: “Here’s what I’m weighing. What do you see that I might be missing?”
- Assign Real Problems, Not Practice Ones. Emerging leaders don’t develop by running hypothetical exercises. They develop by owning real outcomes. Identify a meaningful challenge — one where the stakes matter but where failure won’t be catastrophic — and hand it to a high-potential leader with clear boundaries and genuine authority.
This week: Choose one current disruption-related challenge and delegate it fully to an emerging leader. Offer yourself as a sounding board, not the decision-maker.
- Debrief the Experience, Not Just the Results. The richest learning from navigating disruption happens in reflection, not in the moment itself. Build regular debriefs into your team rhythm — not to evaluate performance, but to harvest learning. What did they notice? What surprised them? What would they do differently?
This week: After a recent decision or project, sit down with the people involved and ask: “What did you learn about leading through this — about yourself, about our organization, about what works?”
The Bigger Picture
When Priya shifted her approach — when she started bringing her directors into the messy reality of the organization’s challenges rather than filtering it for them — something unexpected happened. They didn’t crumble. They rose. One director identified a stakeholder risk she’d completely missed. Another proposed a creative partnership that opened new funding.
The capacity was already there. She just needed to create the space for it.
Your organization doesn’t just need you to navigate today’s disruptions. It needs a deeper bench of leaders who can navigate the disruptions that haven’t arrived yet. And the best time to build that bench is right now — in the middle of the mess.
Until next time,
P.S. Developing your emerging leaders isn’t just good succession planning — it’s a strategic response to today’s complexity. If you’re wondering how to create intentional development opportunities within the disruptions your organization is already facing, I’d welcome a conversation.
Recent Articles
Read other editions of this newsletter for further insights:
“What Leaders Fear to Say (But Teams Need to Hear)” explores how transparent communication builds the trust that emerging leaders need to step up.
“Finding Renewal in Disruption” examines how disruptions create the conditions for new growth at every level of your organization.
“The Leadership Trap That Creates Tomorrow’s Crises” makes the case for investing in future capacity — including your people — even when today feels all-consuming.
EFFECTIVE CHANGE RESULTS FROM INTENTIONAL LEADERSHIP
We’re a leadership and organization development consultancy. My team and I work with leaders like you to prepare for and lead successful change processes.
Here’s why our clients call us:
- Leadership Coaching: I support leaders as they navigate transitions into new roles or expanded responsibilities.
- Group Coaching and Learning Programs: Bringing groups of leaders together, I facilitate learning experiences and months-long programs that equip people to be effective change leaders.
- Effective Teams and Stronger Organizations: I work with leaders and their teams with tailored processes that increase their effectiveness, building layers of aligned teams that transform organizations.