photo via canva.com
STEADY LEADERSHIP WHEN YOUR OWN GROUND IS SHAKING.
How do you lead others when your own anxiety is at a seven, you're wondering if you should be job hunting, and the world feels like it's coming apart at the seams…yet you're still supposed to run your standup meetings like everything’s normal?
If you’re trying to lead through the uncertainty, while being worried about your own future. That’s…a lot.
And when you and your colleagues are spread across different locations, it adds another layer of complexity. How do you speak into the silence when there are no hallway run-ins or water cooler chats to ease the tension or offer reassurance?
The truth is, you might be feeling many of the same things that your team is feeling. And that's actually useful information. Because if you're filling the silence with worst-case scenarios, imagine what they're doing. The difference is: you have the ability to interrupt that spiral for them, and in doing so you can help ground yourself as well.
Why speaking up matters even more through a screen
When you're leading a distributed team, your teammates can't always see you in the hallway embodying calmness. They can't overhear senior leaders in a meeting sounding confident. They can't read anyone else’s body language walking past their desk. All they have is what you choose to say, or what you choose not to say.
And what happens in that vacuum is that people fill it with their worst assumptions. That Slack message you didn't send? They assume you're hiding something. That all-hands you postponed? They're convinced layoffs are coming. Your attempt to "stay positive" by avoiding hard topics? They interpret it as you being out of touch or, worse, not caring.
Remote and hybrid leaders don't have the luxury of passive reassurance. You can't lead by proximity anymore. You have to be willing to name what everyone's already thinking. Your people are reading the same headlines. And they're at their laptops waiting for you to say something that acknowledges reality.
Your silence won't protect them from anxiety. It will only make them feel more alone with it. But your willingness to speak into the uncertainty, even when you don't have all the answers, reminds them they're not managing this by themselves. In turn, you won't be carrying it alone either. When you name what's hard, you make space for your team to be honest about their questions, capacity, and limits. And that honesty can go a long way in preventing people from quietly disengaging or checking out altogether.
Here are three scripts for the conversations to break the silence with your team. Borrow these, adapt them to your own voice, and pull them out when the moment calls for it:
When you need to acknowledge the dread:
"Some of you are worried about your jobs. Some are worried about your rights. Some are worried about your families. All of that is real and rational. I wish I could fix it. What I can do is be as transparent as possible and protect your time to deal with what you need to deal with. If you need to step away or work at half-speed today, I get it. We'll figure out the work."When the team asks about layoffs:
"I understand the anxiety and I’m reading the same headlines. I can't promise what I don't know. But what I can tell you is: here's where we stand [honest assessment], here's what would have to happen for me to be worried [specific triggers], and here's what I'm watching for. What I can control is making sure your work is visible, your impact to this organization is well documented, and you're positioned as well as possible whatever happens."When you're trying to maintain focus despite everything:
"I'm going to be honest….it feels absurd to be talking about [mundane work thing] right now. We're not going to process every news cycle in our team meetings. Not because it doesn't matter, but because I want to preserve some space for us to keep what we need to afloat and the essential things moving. But, if you need to talk about [whatever is making things feel unstable] with me, I'm here for it and welcome it.”
Our words can’t fix everything, but they can offer calm in the storm and relief to our nervous systems’. And that’s no small thing.