You can't lead people through something you're pretending you've finished

Senior leaders are expected to look settled about changes that are happening to them, perhaps their own role has been redrawn, their remit has moved or the team or business they built last year is being taken apart. All of this can be happening around them and they’re still expected to stand in front of people and sound confident and ‘finished’.

Most leaders do, but it’s the wrong call and here’s why; this performance costs more credibility than it buys.

People don't assess what you say in isolation, they assemble the pieces and read your words against what else they can see. They will notice the pause before you answer, the meetings that got moved, the question you didn't take, and when your words say settled and everything around you says unsettled, they don't conclude that all is well. This mechanism isn't complicated, they simply conclude they can't read you then they fill in the gap themselves, and what they invent is almost always worse than what's true.

There's a second cost to pretence amidst change, and that’s ‘certainty ends the conversation’. Nobody brings a problem to a leader who has announced there isn't one, so when you effectively shut people out you lose the thing you need the most to continue your journey – the information you'd need to make the next call well, often at the point you need it most. That’s not to say the answer is to broadcast uncertainty from the top as this simply hands anxiety to people who can sdo nothing with it, but the answer is accuracy with honesty.

Be precise about what is decided, what is genuinely still open, when you expect to know more, and what you have chosen to do whilst the resolution is found. That last part is the one most leaders skip, yet it's the one that carries the most authority. 'I don't have the full picture and here is what we're doing whilst we build it’ is a stronger position than false completion. It's also true, which makes it repeatable.

The next time you feel like pretending you’ve finished something you’re in the middle of, try sharing your reality about which part of the change you're leading, what you have decided, and silently ask ‘which part are you performing’ and see if you can be open about that, then watch as the reaction to you opens up in return.