Show Notes
Leading your team through change gets a lot harder when it's a change you didn't pick.
Somebody above you made the call. You weren't in the room. And now you have to walk in and tell your team.
Most managers reach for the same word in that moment: "they." They decided. They're making us. It feels honest. It feels like you're on your team's side. And it quietly teaches everyone that you're a messenger, not a decision-maker — so the next time you ask for something hard, some part of them waits to see if this one sticks either.
In this episode I break down how to deliver a decision you didn't make, and might not agree with, without lying to your team and without giving away your own authority:
1. OWN THE DELIVERY, NOT THE DECISION. Distancing and overselling both cost you. One is worse than the other, and there's an honest sentence that does neither.
2. FIGHT IT UPSTREAM OR FORFEIT IT DOWNSTREAM. What real pushback looks like in four parts, and why venting sideways to a peer manager changes nothing and poisons the layer around you.
3. GIVE THEM THE PART THEY STILL OWN. The Fixed / Ours split — the two-column tool that turns a decision done TO your team into work owned BY your team.
Plus what to do when nobody asked you in the first place, how to run the announcement meeting in four steps, and the day-14 check-in that proves your team's column was real. And how it maps to the LEAD Framework: Listen, Envision, Align, Drive.
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