Leading Through Limbo: How to Keep Your Team Moving During an Organisational Redesign

The Problem No One Talks About

Organisational redesigns are rarely a single moment. They are a process, and often a slow one. Before the announcement comes the analysis. Before the analysis comes the strategic review. And somewhere in the middle of all of that sits your team, watching, waiting, and wondering what it all means for them.

This is the limbo period: the stretch of time between when rumours of a restructure begin to circulate and when formal decisions are finally communicated. For many leaders, it is one of the most uncomfortable positions to be in. You may have some visibility of what is coming, or you may have none at all. Either way, you are expected to keep your team productive, motivated, and focused, often without being able to tell them anything concrete.

The cost of getting this wrong is significant. Uncertainty breeds speculation. Speculation breeds anxiety. Anxiety breeds disengagement. And disengagement, particularly among your strongest people who have options, can quickly become attrition. The very talent you need to execute a new structure may walk out the door before the ink is dry on the announcement.

So how do you lead effectively when the ground beneath you hasn't settled yet?

Not All Uncertainty Is Created Equal

The first thing to recognise is that there is an important distinction between short-term and long-term organisational uncertainty, and they demand very different responses from a leader.

Short-term uncertainty is when a decision is imminent. The redesign is happening, the timelines are defined, and the announcement is weeks away. In this situation, a leader's job is relatively straightforward: maintain business-as-usual momentum, keep people focused on the work in front of them, and manage the emotional temperature of the team. The discomfort is real, but it is finite. People can tolerate a short wait when they trust that clarity is coming.

Long-term uncertainty is a different challenge entirely. This is where the decision sits several layers above you in the organisation, perhaps at board level, perhaps dependent on a merger, a regulatory outcome, or a strategic review that could take months or even years to conclude. In this scenario, you are not just managing a waiting period; you are managing an indefinite one. And that requires a fundamentally different mindset.

The mistake many leaders make is treating both types of uncertainty the same way. They offer reassurances that are either premature or impossible to keep. They say "we'll know soon" when they genuinely don't know. They try to neutralise the anxiety rather than equip their teams to work through it.

What You Can Control When You Can't Control the Decision

The most important shift a leader can make in a long-term uncertainty situation is to move from focusing on what they cannot control (the decision, the timeline, the outcome) to focusing entirely on what they can.

Be honest about what you know and what you don't. Teams do not expect their leaders to have all the answers. What they cannot forgive is the sense that they are being managed or misled. If you genuinely do not know the outcome of the redesign, say so. If you are not in the room where decisions are being made, acknowledge that. Transparency about the limits of your own knowledge builds trust far more effectively than false confidence.

Protect the team's sense of purpose. One of the most corrosive effects of uncertainty is that it causes people to question whether their work matters. If the structure might change, why execute the current strategy? If their role might disappear, why invest in their development? As a leader, your job is to continually connect people to the work that has value regardless of what the structure looks like. Good work done today is not wasted because a reorganisation is coming.

Create stability where you can. Even when the big picture is unclear, a leader can create micro-environments of certainty. Consistent one-to-ones, clear short-term priorities, recognition of contributions. These may seem small, but they signal that the team is being looked after, that there is still a leader investing in them, and that today's work still counts.

Use the waiting period productively. Long periods of uncertainty can be reframed as an opportunity. Teams can document processes, revisit ways of working, upskill in areas of known strategic importance, or strengthen cross-functional relationships. None of this requires knowing the outcome of the redesign, and all of it positions the team to be more effective whatever the new structure looks like.

Manage upwards as well as downwards. Leaders in the middle of an organisational redesign often focus entirely on managing their team's anxiety but forget to manage their own visibility upwards. Making yourself and your team's contributions visible to those making decisions is not just about career self-preservation; it is about ensuring that the people designing the new structure have an accurate picture of what your team does and why it matters.

The Hardest Part: Sitting With Not Knowing

Perhaps the most under-appreciated skill in leadership is the ability to hold uncertainty without transmitting it. Teams take their emotional cues from their leaders. A leader who visibly struggles with not knowing, who becomes distracted, withdrawn, or erratic, creates anxiety in the people around them even when they say nothing at all.

This does not mean pretending everything is fine. It means modelling the kind of composed, purposeful uncertainty that says: I don't know exactly where we're going, but I know how to lead us well in the meantime.

That posture, grounded, honest, and focused on the controllable, is not just good crisis management. It is the hallmark of a leader who can be trusted precisely when trust is hardest to earn.

A Final Thought

Organisational redesigns are often spoken of as challenges for the people designing them. In reality, the harder leadership test often falls on those in the middle: the managers and directors who must absorb the uncertainty from above while shielding their teams from the worst of it below.

The leaders who do this well are not the ones who have all the answers. They are the ones who are clear about what they stand for, honest about what they do not know, and relentless about keeping their teams moving forward, even when the destination has not yet been announced.