You know the feeling: the rare, golden state of a truly high-performing peer group. You move fast. You anticipate market shifts. Your team is a fortress of psychological safety and radical transparency. When you deal with complex, internal customers, this isn’t a luxury; it’s a fundamental requirement for success.

But what happens when the necessary, high-level organizational changes don’t quite go as planned?

Recently, our team navigated a leadership transition that, while essential for the business, introduced some communication gaps and unintended confusion. A planned shift, intended to be smooth, was instead characterized by long periods of silence, leading to some unsettling ambiguity for the team. This kind of uncertainty --- [1] where information is delayed or unclear --- can unfortunately cause a dip in confidence and psychological safety, even when the final outcome or the new leadership (like our great new boss) is positive.

It’s completely understandable to feel a sense of loss or a “bad taste” when a change process undermines the high-trust environment you worked so hard to build. The challenge now is to execute a strategic Trust Reset. This focuses our energy on agency and rebuilding the stability of our high-performing core.

1. Define the Challenge, Protect the Core

You can’t move forward without acknowledging the impact of the past. The first step is to define the difficulty while isolating its source.

• Acknowledge the Impact: Recognize that the transition process created a challenge related to transparency and timely communication. This is a process failure, not a reflection of the team’s work ethic or value.
• Decouple the Leader from the Function: The confusion was rooted in organizational implementation. Your function --- the high-quality work and complex problem-solving --- remains vital. Your team’s performance process is the operating system you must protect.

2. Double Down on Internal Team Commitments

When stability feels shaky at a higher level, you must aggressively invest in the internal trust of your peer group. This is where your greatest control lies.

• Prioritize Team Transparency: Meet as a peer group frequently. Share everything you know about priorities, customer needs, and any new organizational updates. If the flow of information to you is inconsistent, your team must ensure it is hyper-transparent among yourselves.
• Actively Restore Psychological Safety: The team needs a safe space to process the change and share frustrations, but the focus must quickly pivot to productive action. Protecting your team’s comfort level should be a top priority, as it is the fuel for your performance.
• Establish Communication Expectations: Articulate among yourselves and to your new manager the minimum level of reliable communication and support you require to maintain your high-speed operating model. Frame this as a requirement for handling complex customer demands, not as a reaction to past events.

3. Build a New Partnership with the New Leader

A messy start doesn’t define the future. Since your new manager is already great, focus on creating a strong working partnership based on mutual respect and clarity.

• Focus on the Partnership: Approach the new boss relationship as a clean slate. While you might acknowledge the difficulty of the transition, focus the conversation entirely on future goals and the support your high-performing team needs to deliver.
• Communicate the Team’s Needs: Clearly explain that your team’s success is dependent on high-frequency feedback and a culture of clarity. Present this as your proven model for success. Example: “To handle the complexity of Customer X, our team relies on full transparency regarding priority shifts. We want to ensure we set you up for success in leading us by being clear about our needs.”
• Reinforce Positive Behavior: Look for small, consistent actions where your new manager exhibits great communication or transparency. Acknowledge and reinforce these wins to accelerate the rebuilding of trust at your level.

4. Adjust Your Personal Lens

Finally, protect your energy and focus by adjusting personal expectations for the senior organization.

• Accept the New Reality of Communication: The most difficult realization may be that senior-level communication may not always meet the high standard of trust you wish for. Accept this reality pragmatically. This shift in perspective prevents you from being constantly surprised or disappointed by organizational noise.
• Find Fulfillment Internally: Your primary source of job satisfaction should now be anchored in the quality of your work, the success of your peer group, and the value you deliver to your customers; not solely on effective management from above. Your success is internally driven.

A trust reset is about pragmatism and resilience. It’s about accepting the disappointment, isolating the source of the breakdown, and intensely focusing your energy on protecting and amplifying the high-performing core of your immediate team. This is the only way to successfully maintain your momentum through organizational turbulence.

1: I’m reclaiming the use of emdashes from the machines. I used them before but have stopped due to the confusion surrounding LLMs using them as well. I’ll add “---“ to differentiate my use vs. the machine’s.