Imagine opening Slack on an ordinary Tuesday and watching your colleagues' names turn gray, one by one. You refresh. You assume it's a glitch. And then your own access drops, your laptop locks, and your badge stops working.

No call. No meeting. No warning.

That actually happened — and it's stories like this that might be haunting your team members right now.

In this episode, I get into what organizational contraction does to the people you lead, and what you can do to lead the way with coherence, clarity and kindness.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• Why leading through contraction is a very different challenge than leading through expansion
• What's happening in a frightened brain, and how worst-case assumptions can impact trust.
• The different faces of fear, and how disengagement, over-functioning and combativeness may all come from the same source.
• How information scarcity may be fueling the rumor mill.

Four moves for leading through times of contraction

1. Anchor to your values — (and do this work before you need it!) Your values aren't wall art; they're your decision filters. They determine what you protect and how you make hard decisions.
2. Apply your decision filters. Applying your values helps you make better decisions. It doesn't make hard calls easy, but it make them coherent — and coherence keeps trust alive when people are scared.
3. Slow down, and communicate with extraordinary care. Your instinct in times of crisis may be to speed up. But leaders rushing decisions in times of contraction make worse decisions and break more trust — partly because leaders are having their own fear response, and none of us make our best decisions under stress.
4. Be patient with people's fear responses. Patience isn't permissiveness — you still need the work done. But patience means factoring human biology into your leadership strategy.

This week's challenge

Begin to name your values and decision filters. They will help you make your best decisions. Write down the two or three questions every hard decision in your organization has to pass through. Having these filters clarified up front will make hard decisions a little easier.

If you can't name them, or if your team members all have different ideas about which filters matter most, that's your work.

Resources Mentioned:

• David Rock's SCARF model — status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness
• Harris Poll for Bloomberg News, October 2025 — 55% of employed Americans concerned about losing their jobs
• Episode 66 with Lisa Alessi on fear based responses
• Episodes 58 and 72 with Dr. Lisa Riegel on brain-based leadership

Ready to go deeper? If you want to build the kind of leadership foundation that holds in any season — clear values, real decision filters, and enough trust to get you through the hard parts — reach out for a free consultation. Visit ClaireLaughlin.com and click "Schedule a consultation" at the top of the page.

Until next time, lead the way!

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To learn more about my services, subscribe to my newsletter, and for additional tools to enhance your leadership impact, visit ClaireLaughlin.com and connect with me on social channels @Claire Laughlin Consulting.

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