Leading Through Transformation Conversation Kit

The moment

The all staff email has gone out. Your team has read it. They're looking at you, and somewhere between that email and your next one to one, a quiet thought arrives. I don't actually know what to say to them.

Most leaders in a restructure, merger or transformation are briefed on the plan. Very few are prepared for the conversations. So they wait until they have more to say. The silence fills with rumours. Their best people start updating their LinkedIn profiles, and trust drains away in the messy middle, long before the new structure arrives.

This kit changes that. It gives you the words for the six conversations that matter most, so you can lead your team honestly, even when you don't have the full picture.

What's inside

One map for every conversation

Every guide follows the same six stages, so you're never starting from a blank page.

1. Settle yourself. What's yours to control, and what do you need to put down before you walk in?
2. Tell them why you're here. No warm up, no spin.
3. Draw the edges. Here's what's known. Here's what's unknown. Here's what's still unfolding.
4. Ask, then listen. And keep listening until they've finished.
5. Set the next stretch. What you need from them, and what they can expect from you.
6. Keep your word. Come back when you said you would, even when the answer is "not yet".

Six conversation guides

• The First Conversation. Breaking the silence on day one.
• The "I Don't Know Yet" Conversation. Keeping trust when you can't promise certainty.
• The Pushback Conversation. When someone is resisting, loudly or quietly.
• The Stay Conversation. Keeping your best people when the ground is moving.
• The Upward Conversation. Telling senior leadership what's really happening.
• The Landing Conversation. When the change becomes personal.

Each guide gives you questions to settle yourself first, the actual words to open with, the questions to ask, lines for when it gets hard, and a real world example of how it played out.

Four tools you'll use again and again

• Before the Conversation. A five minute worksheet for walking in steady.
• The Promise Tracker. A simple log of everything you've said you'll come back on.
• Labels in the Room. For catching the stories we tell about people during change, before they become true.
• Practise With AI. Three safe prompts for rehearsing a conversation before you have it.

Built by someone who's had these conversations

Lana Johnston has led her own team through a restructure while being accountable for change across a whole organisation.

She knows what it's like to stand in front of your people without all the answers.

• 25+ years as an executive.
• 1,500+ leaders guided through transformation.
• 25+ restructures, mergers and demergers, affecting close to 20,000 people.

This kit is what she wishes every leader had on day one.