By Alison Lucas and Lizzie Bentley Bowers
Here, Alison Lucas and Lizzie Bentley Bowers explore the emotional complexities of corporate restructures-emotionally complex endings that shape trust, performance and culture long after changes occur. It offers practical guidance for supporting those affected, emphasising the need for clarity, compassion and meaningful closure, making the case that, by attending to reality, emotions, accomplishments and ritual, leaders can create healthier endings and stronger beginnings.
Corporate restructures are no longer an occasional disruption to organisational life; they are a recurring feature of it. For leaders navigating mergers, restructures, redundancies and operating model changes, these moments are often framed in terms of strategy, savings and future growth. They are also something else: endings. Endings that bring loss, uncertainty and shifts in identity for the people living through them.
Leaders are constantly leading endings, whether they recognise it or not. The quality of those endings has a direct and lasting impact on trust, engagement and performance long after organisational charts change. This article offers practical guidance for leaders who want to lead restructures in a way that supports colleagues without leaving invisible damage behind, and that creates the conditions for stronger, more sustainable beginnings.
Why restructures are so challenging for colleagues
Restructures often involve losses that are not immediately visible. Alongside changes to role or employment status, people may experience loss of identity, certainty, status, team membership or a sense of future direction. Unspoken loyalties to legacy organisations, teams or leaders are also common and powerful. Together, these experiences can activate people’s threat response, reducing trust, narrowing attention and limiting their capacity to engage and perform at their best.
Those affected are not only the people whose roles end. Colleagues who remain must make sense of what the changes mean for them, while leaders are often required to implement decisions they may not fully agree with. The multiple endings created by a restructure ripple out in visible and unseen ways, shaping team dynamics, decision-making and performance.
Restructures are rarely a single moment. They tend to unfold as a sequence of endings over time. For some colleagues the ending is sudden and clear; for others it is gradual, ambiguous or repeatedly deferred. Timing differences matter. Some leaders are involved in restructuring conversations long before others know change is even being considered. In some cases, leaders who have helped design a restructure later find their own roles at risk, carrying complex emotions while still being expected to lead others through the process.
Why support often falls short
During restructures, leaders understandably focus on legal process, timelines and future plans. Communication can become centred on information delivery rather than helping people make sense of what is happening and what it means for them.
There is also pressure to remain positive and future focused. Optimism and vision matter, particularly when organisations are under strain. However, when positivity is used to move too quickly past uncertainty or loss, it can unintentionally shut down honesty. Endings that are rushed, minimised or left unnamed do not disappear. They are carried forward, often surfacing later as disengagement, mistrust or reduced productivity.
Supporting people well through restructure requires emotional intelligence and leadership skill in a vulnerable space of uncertainty and mixed emotions. These capabilities are not always explicitly valued or developed in organisational systems, yet this is precisely where leadership presence and emotional literacy matter most.
Paying attention to stayers, leavers and yourself
Restructures affect three distinct groups: those who stay, those who go, and those leading the process. Supporting colleagues well means paying attention to all three.
Supporting those who stay
Those who remain after a restructure are often the quickest to be overlooked. Because they still have a role, they are frequently expected to move on rapidly and refocus on delivery. Yet many experience survivor guilt, anxiety, reduced trust or a loss of confidence in the organisation, even when they also feel relief, hope or renewed motivation.
People may comply and perform, but with less clarity, energy and commitment than might otherwise be possible.
Leadership opportunities
- Name what has been lost as well as what remains.
- Make room for mixed emotional responses without rushing people into certainty.
- Acknowledge the contribution of those who are asked to carry on.
Supporting those who go
Most leaders care deeply about their people yet support for those leaving often falls short. This is rarely due to lack of goodwill. More often it reflects a misalignment between organisational processes and human needs at the end of a role, team or career chapter.
Well-led endings for those who leave require time, attention and acknowledgement. When this is absent, the emotional impact of the ending does not stop with the individual. It shapes how the organisation is experienced by those who remain and how trust is carried forward.
Leadership opportunities
- Be explicit about what is ending and how decisions have been reached.
- Allow emotion to be expressed without correction or premature reassurance.
- Find a way to mark the ending that reflects the significance of what is being left behind.
Supporting yourself
Restructuring is a marathon, not a sprint. Leaders are required to hold multiple perspectives, absorb strong emotions and make difficult decisions over extended periods of uncertainty. This work takes capacity.
Leading endings can feel uncomfortable and exposing. Leaders cannot outsource their own endings, and unacknowledged personal impact can quietly drain the energy needed to lead others well.
Leader tips
- Be honest about where you sit in the change and what it is asking of you.
- Pay attention to your own emotional responses and how they are shaping your judgement, decisions and behaviour.
- Create a deliberate pause before fully committing to what comes next.
A practical framework for leading endings well
In Good Bye, we offer leaders a practical structure for attending to endings: Reality, Emotions, Accomplishments and Ritual. Together, these steps provide a guiderail for leading restructures in a way that supports those who stay, those who go and those leading the work.
- Reality begins with clearly naming what is actually ending. This may include roles, teams, reporting lines, locations, identities or ways of working. Leaders need to be explicit about who is affected, what is known, what is not yet known and what remains undecided. Clarity, even when incomplete, helps people orient themselves.
- Emotions are not a side effect of restructures; they are central to the work. Shock, fear, anger, relief, guilt and grief often coexist. Effective leadership does not mean fixing emotions. It means naming them, creating safe space for them to be expressed and recognising that people may need different kinds of support at different times.
- Accomplishments are often overlooked during restructures. A role can be no longer required and yet the contribution of the individual is central to their sense of self and confidence to move forward. Acknowledging skills developed, contributions made and relationships built helps people separate identity from outcome and frees energy for what comes next.
- Ritual marks completion beyond words or process. It signals that a chapter has genuinely closed. Ritual does not need to be elaborate, but it does need to be intentional.
Better endings create better beginnings
Restructures will continue. When endings are attended to with honesty and care, trust is restored, energy is released and space is created for what comes next. Endings happen no matter what. Whether there is a good bye is optional.
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