The email went out Tuesday morning. By then, the team had already compared notes and made up their minds.
The official words were careful, measured, designed to reassure.
The unofficial version? Sharper. Darker. More personal. And it was already spreading faster than anything she could say.
She realized something that made her stomach drop: The real story wasn’t living in a slide deck. It was living in the hallway conversations, Slack DMs, the things people said when they turned away from their screens.
Here’s something I often hear about happening: You can craft the perfect message, but if people have already filled in the blanks themselves, your words can miss them completely. Then, you’re explaining and defending instead of connecting.
In this episode, you’ll get one small thing you can try when it seems like the story has already gotten away from you.
What Happens When the Story Gets Ahead of You
When most people hear that a change is coming, they don’t wait for the official word. They instinctively start piecing together patterns. Comparing notes in the kitchen, reading between the lines in meetings, and trying to fill the blanks with whatever information they have.
That can make you feel like the story has gotten away from you. And honestly? That feeling makes a lot of sense. But if you try to overmanage the message, you can end up talking right past your own team.
I worked with a leader who was facing a huge restructuring. Before anything had even been formally announced, her team had already filled in the blanks.
Some of the rumors were exaggerated. Some were flat-out wrong. And some were just people trying to protect themselves by imagining the worst.
When She Stopped Correcting and Started Listening
She felt pressure to step in and correct everything. But the more she tried to set the record straight, the more distant and official the whole thing felt.
What helped was smaller and less dramatic than she expected.
In a small meeting with her team, she asked, “What have you been piecing together about what’s happening?”
The room went dead still. But then people started talking. Not complaining, not accusing. Just saying what they’d been thinking.
And she didn’t jump in to correct them! She listened for what they were actually afraid of, what they were hoping for, and where they were getting stuck.
Then, together, they built one plain sentence that wasn’t corporate, and wasn’t a rumor. Just honest. In this case, it was: “We’re worried this means layoffs, but we don’t actually know that yet.”
She later told me: “As soon as I stopped trying to win the argument and control what they think, it got a lot easier.”
The Experiment to Try
So this week, you might try asking your team what story they’re already telling themselves. Then listen for what they’re really worried about.
You may be surprised how much the tension drops once someone finally says it out loud.
My question for you is: What unofficial story is already running in your team that you’ve been pretending doesn’t exist?
If this resonates and you’re wondering what happens after the big announcement goes out—when people say ‘we’re fine’ but you know they’re not—Episode 133 is the natural next step. You can find it at YourFutureRealized.com/133.
You can’t stop the chaos, but you don’t have to let the story run without you.