Eleanor Tweddell is a change and communication expert, speaker and coach, and creator of the Change Mastery framework.
She is the author of Another Door Opens: 5 Steps for Navigating Change in Life and Work (Bonnier, 2025), shortlisted for the 2026 Business Book Awards, and Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You (Penguin, 2020).
Nobody hands you a manual when you’re suddenly the person your team looks to during a new direction, a new boss or an unexpected change of plan. And in tech, that moment comes round often, a restructure, a new tool rolling out, an AI shift nobody fully understands yet, a team merging into another. Leading through it well needs a change in how you lead.
Know which kind of change you’re leading
Not all change is the same, and the leader playbook that works for one kind can backfire on the other. Some change has a destination: a mission or goal, a defined future state, sometimes a genuine “burning platform” urgency driving change. That kind benefits from the traditional approach, a vision to inspire and motivate, milestones to celebrate, a confident rallying cry.
But sometimes it isn’t a defined change. Sometimes you are leading in uncertainty, no confirmed “after,” no clear endpoint, or even start point. That needs a different approach: more acknowledgement, presence and honesty, including the willingness to say “I don’t know” without it reading as weak leadership. More conversations about where the team are, what is in their control, what is not. Many managers get this wrong because they’re running the traditional change playbook, confident vision, rally the team, in a moment that really needed the uncertainty one: calm, steady, honest. The team can feel the mismatch.
Knowing the type of change you’re in is the first step to feeling confident to lead. From there you can then create the right type of communication, support and encouragement.
The 5 steps to navigating change is a great tool to help create conversations that recognise everyone is processing change differently, and that everyone has something to contribute, no matter what change, and where they are in their journey.
Use the five steps to have conversations with your team, individually and together.
Not everyone moves through these steps at the same pace, or in the same order. Some people want to talk it through immediately; others need days before they’re ready for a “messy” conversation. No-one is doing it wrong, it’s people processing change in their own way.
1. Activating the strategic pause
Before you say anything to your team, give yourself a pause, not to find perfect words, but to notice how you’re actually feeling. Then pause with your team too: resist filling the silence in that first conversation with a plan, or trying to answer or over explain. Ask questions about what they’re noticing, rather than telling them what to think. Pause is a moment of stepping out and reflecting on the moment. Without this moment opportunities can be missed, people can disconnect from the process.
2. Acknowledging messy emotions
Let the mess be visible, yours and theirs. Fear, scepticism, anxiety, even excitement is all normal. Ask your team what’s on their mind, in one-to-ones as much as group settings. You have to do this within a safe environment. People maybe silent because they are worried, they may be silent because they are processing. Your role as leader to make all silence and emotions OK. The temptation to power through, ignore themes, if dismiss it, leads to disconnection quickly.
3. Inviting people to play with ideas and possibilities
Once the initial mess has had some room to breathe, curiosity becomes possible. This is where you invite your team into low-stakes exploration: what might this change make possible that wasn’t before? What’s worth testing before anyone commits to a direction? Play isn’t about forcing positivity, it’s about creating space to explore without the pressure of getting it right first time. This us where change can create opportunity, when we are allowed to talk out loud and explore ideas.
4. Encouraging small experimental steps
Encourage small, visible action rather than a perfect plan. In tech especially, teams often wait for full clarity before moving, and full clarity is never really a possibility. Identifying small steps you and the team can make creates a positive energy for future thinking. The momentum created is the moment the team feels like there is progress, and options, and something to look forward to.
5. Taking ownership of the future
Being intentional about the moment to ‘restart’ is the deliberate step of helping your team own the next chapter. It draws a line and resets everything that has been learnt in the previous steps, the moment the team are ready to move forwards – whatever that looks like for everyone. It answers the question ‘how do we all move forwards together and make this work.’
Leading through change can take different shapes and directions, sometimes there’s a destination to work towards, sometimes, especially in fast-moving tech, you’re always in uncertainty. Either way, it starts with you. Before you can lead your team well, you have to be willing to change yourself first: your own relationship with not knowing, your own instinct to perform confidence you haven’t got. Skip that, and you won’t build the trust foundations your team needs.
Often you don’t have the answers. What builds trust isn’t having every answer ready; it’s honest, messy conversations about what’s known, what’s in your control, and what isn’t. And know that resistance isn’t the team getting it wrong, it is usually data not defiance, containing valuable insights and opportunity. Be curious before being judgemental.
That shift, leading yourself through change before you try to lead anyone else through theirs is, the foundation everything else depends on.
