People compare what they heard. Someone mentions a conversation they had with another department. A comment made several weeks ago suddenly seems significant. Different versions of what the change might mean begin to emerge.
This doesn’t necessarily happen because the original communication was poor or because people are looking for reasons to be negative. It happens because uncertainty is uncomfortable, and people naturally try to make sense of situations that could affect their work.
When information is incomplete, the gaps rarely remain empty.
Organisational change often has a period between the initial announcement and the point at which people understand how it will work in practice.
Leaders may know the overall direction but still be discussing responsibilities, reporting lines, processes or timescales. They might reasonably decide not to share details that could later change.
For the team, however, those unanswered questions can feel highly relevant.
People want to know whether their priorities will change, what will happen to existing work and whether decisions that affect them have already been made. When clear answers are not yet available, they begin drawing conclusions from other sources.
They notice which meetings have appeared in the diary. They pay attention to who seems confident and who appears uncomfortable. They compare the language used by different leaders and look for differences between the formal message and what is happening around them.
This is a normal attempt to build a coherent picture. The difficulty is that the picture may be built from fragments, assumptions and information that was never intended to carry so much weight.
Informal communication plays an important role in every team. It helps people test their understanding, raise concerns and find out how others are interpreting a situation.
During uncertainty, its influence can increase considerably.
A confident interpretation shared by one colleague can quickly become accepted as fact. Someone with access to senior leaders may be assumed to know more than they do. An unanswered question can gradually turn into an expectation about what will happen next.
By the time further information is formally communicated, the team may already have developed its own account of the change.
Leaders sometimes respond by dismissing these conversations as gossip. That can overlook why they emerged in the first place. If people are relying heavily on informal narratives, it may suggest that they are struggling to understand what the available information means for them.
Correcting an inaccurate rumour may be necessary, but it does not resolve the conditions that allowed it to become convincing.
The effect is not limited to what people say to one another. Uncertainty can also change what they communicate to leaders.
Someone who is worried about their role may hesitate to ask a direct question in a group setting. They may not want to appear resistant, self-interested or unable to cope.
Others may decide that asking questions is pointless because they expect to receive the same limited answer. A team member might wait to see what more influential colleagues say before expressing their own view.
This can create a misleading impression of agreement.
A quiet meeting may mean that the team understands and accepts what has been communicated. It could also mean that people do not yet know what to ask, are unsure how honestly they can respond or have chosen to continue the conversation elsewhere.
Leaders cannot assume that an absence of questions means an absence of concern.
There are understandable reasons why leaders sometimes hold back during change.
They may want to avoid creating confusion by sharing information too early. They may be waiting for decisions from elsewhere in the organisation or trying to protect the team from unnecessary speculation.
The intention may be sensible, but silence is rarely experienced as neutral.
If people know that decisions are being discussed but receive no further information, they are likely to interpret the absence. Depending on their previous experiences, they may conclude that leaders are avoiding difficult conversations, that the outcome has already been decided or that the implications are worse than they have been told.
This doesn’t mean leaders need to provide constant updates with little substance. Repeating that discussions are ongoing can become frustrating if people still do not understand what the process involves.
Useful communication makes the boundaries of uncertainty clearer. It distinguishes between what has been decided, what remains open and what cannot yet be answered. It also gives people some indication of when the next meaningful update is likely to happen.
An honest “we don’t know yet” can be reassuring when it is accompanied by a clear explanation of what happens next.
Communication during change is often approached as a question of delivering the right message. The message matters, but so does the conversation that develops around it.
Leaders can learn a great deal by asking people how they currently understand the change. This makes it possible to notice where interpretations have started to diverge and where assumptions are influencing behaviour.
Rather than asking whether everyone understands, it may be more useful to ask:
“What do you think this change means for the way we work?”
“What still feels unclear?”
The answers may reveal practical questions that have not yet been considered. They may also show that different parts of the team are working from very different expectations.
These conversations should not happen only once. People often need time to process information before they can identify what they are concerned about or what they need to know.
Returning to the subject also demonstrates that the initial announcement was the beginning of the communication process, not the end of it.
Leaders can’t remove all uncertainty from organisational change. Nor can they prevent people from discussing what might happen.
What they can do is create conditions in which uncertainty can be spoken about openly rather than left to circulate beneath the surface.
That means being honest about the limits of current knowledge, paying attention to the informal stories developing within the team and making it possible for people to test their understanding without being labelled as resistant.
When teams do not have the full picture, communication becomes part of how they construct it.
Understanding those communication patterns can provide valuable insight into the confidence, openness and emotional conditions within a team. Amazing Team Performance helps organisations see what may be shaping the team’s response across performance, emotion and leadership.