Clarity as Care

RIFs, reorganizations, and the moral weight of communication

There’s a moment in every restructuring where the air gets heavy. People feel it before anyone says a word - the shift, the quiet, the leadership calendars blocking off mysteriously (or in the case of one organization where I worked, conference room windows being blocked with paper - hot tip: do not do this. People are not stupid). Change has its own gravitational pull. 

But the real weight doesn’t come from the change itself. It comes from not knowing.

Clarity is a form of care.

When people’s livelihoods are at stake, ambiguity becomes cruelty. The harm doesn’t typically come from the decision. As painful as layoffs and reorganizations are, much of the pain comes from the silence that fills the space where truth should live.

Silence breeds fear.
Fear breeds stories.
Stories fill the gaps leadership didn’t.

I once coached a leader through a reorg who kept insisting, “we’ll tell the team as soon as the plan is finalized.” Except the plan shifted daily. Meanwhile, the team was spiraling - screenshotting calendar blocks, decoding email response delays, and piecing together their own theories like amateur organizational cryptographers.

When he finally did communicate and we went to the team for feedback in the aftermath, one of his reports said something along the lines of, “we would’ve handled this better if you’d just let us into the uncertainty.”

It was a glaring reminder: leaders often fear communicating too soon, when the real damage comes from communicating too late.

Communication as an Ethical Act

As Brené Brown puts it, ‘clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.’ It’s a line that takes on an entirely different weight during a RIF. Communication stops being operational and becomes an ethical act.

There’s a persistent myth that compassionate communication is about avoiding hard edges - softening the truth, cushioning impact, making the difficult feel palatable.

It’s the opposite.

To communicate with compassion is to deliver reality directly - with accuracy, with steadiness, and with respect for the people who must live inside the consequences.

Clarity is not the enemy of empathy. Clarity is empathy.

Dignity Allows Grief to Move

In every RIF or reorganization, there is collective grief even when the change is necessary, strategic, or unavoidable.

Dignity is what allows that grief to move.

When people feel respected - through transparent messaging, through honest Q&A, through leaders who don’t hide behind jargon - they can metabolize the transition. They may not like the change, but they can understand it. And understanding is the first step toward acceptance.

Confusion traps people in place. Clarity lets them move.

The Ethical Weight of Leadership

Leaders often underestimate how much emotional labor communication actually is. They imagine it’s about drafting an email or prepping talking points. But the real work happens in the choices behind those words:

Will we tell people early enough for them to prepare?
Will we answer their questions or avoid them?
Will we speak plainly or hide behind corporate gloss?
Will we acknowledge the impact, or pretend business is “as usual”?

These aren’t operational choices - they’re ethical ones.

Clarity as an Act of Care

In moments of upheaval, clarity becomes one of the most powerful tools a leader has. It communicates:

I respect you.
I trust you.
You deserve the truth, even when it’s hard.
And I will not leave you in the dark.

Because in change, care is not about comfort. Care is about clarity.