It happened in a staff kitchen, of all places. I was consulting in a university at the time, not in a change management role, but my past experience was well-known among colleagues. That day, a few staff members pulled me aside to vent their frustration about an organisational change they felt was being poorly handled. They weren’t being heard. They weren’t being considered. And they needed someone—anyone—to listen.

They knew I’d been a caring ear before. They also knew I’d had influence with senior leadership in the past. So, while I had no official role in this particular change initiative, I decided to pass along a suggestion: perhaps an engagement activity could help surface and address these grievances.

What unfolded next became a lasting lesson in just how crucial the How is, in any engagement during change. The senior manager took action. He scheduled an information session with two days’ notice. It was to be held in a lecture hall between student classes—a time-constrained, 50-minute window in a space designed for a limited type of dialogue.

When the day arrived, the senior leaders stood at the front, with two other senior managers in business suits sitting alone in the front row. Staff had to negotiate through a teeming mass of students exiting their class, to make their way into the room. They took their place organised into rows of tiered seating facing the lectern. The leader spoke for 40 of the 50 minutes, then opened the floor for questions. There were few.

From his perspective, he’d done the right thing. He’d held the meeting. He’d shown up. He’d informed. So why didn’t the tension ease? Why didn’t people feel better?

Because the How of the session drowned out the What. It wasn’t that he didn’t care at all—he cared in a very limited fashion, with a dose of ignorance about how to show that care effectively. The format, the setting, the tone, the power dynamics—all of these sent a louder message than the words being spoken.

The result? A session that arguably did more harm than good. It would have been better not to hold it at all.

And that’s the rub. So often, a communication activity is a tick-box exercise. Send the email. Hold the meeting. Deliver the presentation. Job done. But engagement (much more than mere communication) during organisational change isn’t just about getting information out—it’s about creating the conditions where people feel safe enough to take it in, make sense of it, and engage with it.

There were many small but significant ways that session could have been done differently:

• Give people more notice, and invite them to submit their questions and concerns anonymously. Let them know it’s safe to ask tricky or uncomfortable questions – that they might otherwise think would be career-limiting!
• Allow leaders time to read and reflect on those questions before the session. They can prepare thoughtful substantive answers where possible, and prepare themselves emotionally to deliver any tough messages without negative overtones.
• Choose a meeting space that signals equality, not hierarchy. A room with chairs in a circle, not a lectern in front of rows, where people can see each other better, and have a sense of a shared collective experience.
• Hold the session at a time and in a place free from disruption and time pressure. Let there be room for calm, not constraint, before, during and after.
• Bring in a neutral facilitator to guide the session, opening space for genuine interaction.
• Let leadership speak briefly, then mostly listen.
• Have the facilitator read aloud the questions submitted – in the original wording without sanitisation or translation. Staff should be able to recognise their own words.
• Allow time afterward the session for informal conversations. Let people digest together. This could be done over drinks and snacks which is a nice hospitable thing to do.
• Follow up with a pulse survey—check what was heard, and what might still be unspoken.

These aren’t revolutionary ideas. But they’re easily overlooked when communication is seen as a task to complete rather than an engagement space in which to relate.

There’s an old Ella Fitzgerald song that goes:

“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way/the time/the place that you do it. That’s what gets results.”

Never truer than in organisational change. People remember how they were made to feel far more than what they were told.

So if you’re a leader planning to communicate during a time of uncertainty, ask yourself not just what you’ll say, but how you’ll create the environment for it to land well. More importantly, prepare yourself to listen far more than you will speak.

It’s this kind of wisdom that comes from a change management practitioner compared to outsourcing your communication need to your communications department. Engagement is more than communication. It’s more than crafting messages—it’s about hope, trust, compassion and stability that are the lifeblood of relationships and human interactions which underpin effective organisational change.

Change management practitioners bring a deep awareness of human dynamics, emotional safety, power structures, and meaning-making. The good ones focus on designing engagement experiences that create hope, build trust, show compassion and provide stability. They understand that every interaction is an opportunity to strengthen or strain the relationships between people.

If you want communication to truly support organisational change, you need to think beyond an event and a message. You need to design for meaningful human experience.

Because it ain’t What you do. It’s the way that (How) you do it.

Author
Helen Palmer is Founder and Team Development Facilitator at Questo. Like Winnie the Pooh, she ‘sits and thinks’ … and imagines how people can make a better life for others and themselves – often in the midst of organisational change. She likes to share those thoughts with the possibility that they inspire and initiate meaningful ways of humans engaging and relating with each other.