Insights from the Leadership Lyrics conversation with change and transformation specialist Adrienne Gibson.
Most companies talk about change constantly and still get it badly wrong. I know, because I am often the person called in afterwards.
One engagement stays with me. A consulting firm had been brought in to restructure a business. One of the branches was liquidated, and nobody communicated anything to the teams. No preparation, no explanation, no change process at all. By the time I arrived, the damage was done. I walked into fear, anger, misplaced trust and a workforce that needed genuine healing before they could forgive management and work with them again.
Broken trust can be repaired, and the repair can leave the organisation stronger than before. But the repair takes far longer than the communication that would have prevented the break. That is the theme I explored with Adrienne Gibson on Leadership Lyrics. Adrienne has spent thirty years leading change and transformation work across more than 100 countries, in financial services, technology, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, and in 2025 she had to apply her own frameworks to her own life when her business and her geography changed at once.
Here is what leaders need to take from that conversation.
1. The vacuum is the danger zone
Adrienne was unequivocal: the single biggest danger in any change process is a vacuum of communication. The human brain is wired to make sense of things, so when leaders share nothing, people fill the gap themselves. They compare theories, the theories spread, and the rumour mill ends up writing the story of the change on management’s behalf.
The worst version of this she has witnessed is the change announced by email. Leadership sends the message, then assumes it was read, assumes it was understood, and assumes people are acting on it. Every one of those assumptions is unsafe. As she put it, leaders who fail to notice resistance are usually leaders who never checked.
2. Change lands through dialogue, and dialogue needs many doors
There is no such thing as too much communication during change. But volume alone is one-way, and one-way communication is exactly how leaders end up surprised.
Adrienne’s practical guidance is to build multiple channels for people to respond, ask and challenge. Some people will speak in a big meeting. Others need a small group, a one-on-one, a written channel, a survey, or even an anonymous note box on a table. The more comfortable you make it for someone to raise a concern, the more likely you are to hear about the blind spot before it becomes a crisis.
That includes deliberately inviting the naysayers into the planning. The people you expect to resist often hold knowledge you cannot see from the org chart. Adrienne described a bank restructuring in 2008 where positions were cut swiftly, and only afterwards did leadership discover that some of the people removed carried deep institutional knowledge nobody had mapped. Their titles gave no hint of what walked out the door with them.
3. If the announcement feels like a non-event, you did it right
I shared a story on the episode about a leadership succession I supported. Before anything was announced, we mapped everyone who would be affected, identified the people likely to struggle with the news, held those conversations privately, and rehearsed the announcement itself. When I followed up afterwards, the feedback was that the whole thing felt almost disappointing. Nobody was surprised. It went swimmingly.
That is the goal. When the pre-work is done properly, the announcement rocks no boats, because the boats were steadied in advance.
4. Culture is change management’s slower twin
The conversation moved naturally from change into culture, because a culture is simply the accumulated result of every change a business has absorbed, managed or ignored.
I have worked with companies where the culture reads fine on the surface while operating like a cold war underneath. No visible conflict, yet gossip, backstabbing, information hoarding and people who have checked out while still showing up. One of the most damaging patterns I see is the toxic top performer: the salesperson bringing in the bulk of the revenue who is allowed to poison the environment around them because nobody wants to risk the numbers. Managers give feedback readily on missed targets and almost never on behaviour, and good people resign one after another while the problem stays protected.
Every culture is designed by something. Either leaders design it deliberately, through what they measure, reinforce, reward and refuse to tolerate, or it designs itself by default, through every behaviour that gets allowed. Culture journeys can run three to four years, which is precisely why waiting costs so much.
5. Do not outsource the change itself
My biggest lesson from Adrienne: bring in a consultant for the thinking, the strategy and the planning, but never for the voice. The communication has to come from the leaders. People need to hear the reasons, the direction and the honesty from the person in charge, with real opportunities to respond, disagree and debate. A leader who delegates the talking has already started going dark.
Listen to our Podcast that is out now
More information on my guest in this podcast episode: Adrienne Gibson
Adrienne Gibson has spent thirty years helping organisations navigate change — not just the structure and strategy of it, but the human experience underneath it all. She has delivered leadership and transformation programmes across more than 100 countries, working with major institutions in financial services, technology, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and more.
Adrienne Gibson is the founder of Genesis Global Consulting, the co-author of Connect, Lead, Succeed, and the creator of the Heart of Change model. Originally from Montgomery, Alabama – southern roots, as she puts it, with global wings – she has travelled the world, visiting close to 60 countries, living nomadically in several countries, but calling the UK home since 2009.
Connect with her here:
or on LinkedIN https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriennegibson/
More about Yoke van Dam
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