Episode Details
Back to Episodes
#181 | I Don't Have Answers (and My Team Needs Them Anyway)
Published 1 month, 2 weeks ago
Description
▶︎ #181 | I Don't Have Answers (and My Team Needs Them Anyway)
In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska tackles a subject listeners have been asking her about for years: what to actually say and do when your team needs answers, and you don't have them.
Reorganizations, AI-driven restructuring, rolling layoffs, hiring freezes that appear and disappear without warning (change has become constant, not a rare crisis). Alex names the two instinctive but costly patterns leaders fall into under this pressure: manufactured certainty ("everything's fine"), which quietly destroys trust the moment reality catches up, and silence, which teams read as something being hidden. Both come from the same well-meaning impulse: protecting the team from discomfort. Her reframe is the heart of the episode: that was never the job. The job is helping people hold real information, including the information you don't have yet.
Alex applies the Wheel of Conflict in a new way here, splitting uncertainty itself into a structural layer (the actual, sometimes-unknowable facts) and a relational layer (trust, anxiety, whether people feel like a priority) and shows why leaders who try to resolve the second with facts they don't have end up either overpromising or going quiet.
The episode closes with a simple three-part script listeners can use starting this week, plus a clear challenge: name the one thing you've been avoiding telling your team plainly, and say it, honestly, this week.
Mentioned in the episode:
"From Code to People: The CQ Leadership Method That Transforms Technical Experts into Leaders Teams Actually Want to Work For":
https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/
✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/
In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska tackles a subject listeners have been asking her about for years: what to actually say and do when your team needs answers, and you don't have them.
Reorganizations, AI-driven restructuring, rolling layoffs, hiring freezes that appear and disappear without warning (change has become constant, not a rare crisis). Alex names the two instinctive but costly patterns leaders fall into under this pressure: manufactured certainty ("everything's fine"), which quietly destroys trust the moment reality catches up, and silence, which teams read as something being hidden. Both come from the same well-meaning impulse: protecting the team from discomfort. Her reframe is the heart of the episode: that was never the job. The job is helping people hold real information, including the information you don't have yet.
Alex applies the Wheel of Conflict in a new way here, splitting uncertainty itself into a structural layer (the actual, sometimes-unknowable facts) and a relational layer (trust, anxiety, whether people feel like a priority) and shows why leaders who try to resolve the second with facts they don't have end up either overpromising or going quiet.
The episode closes with a simple three-part script listeners can use starting this week, plus a clear challenge: name the one thing you've been avoiding telling your team plainly, and say it, honestly, this week.
Mentioned in the episode:
"From Code to People: The CQ Leadership Method That Transforms Technical Experts into Leaders Teams Actually Want to Work For":
https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/
✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/