162: Back To Functioning - Steadiness or Speed?

What happens when the crisis is no longer in the news?

We dig into that uneasy stretch when calendars fill back up and leaders feel the urge to get back to normal. And why that push can cause mistrust and leave people alone with their pain. Drawing from a survivor-informed lens, we unpack how disruption changes beliefs, expectations, and bodies.

We walk through the invisible pressures that drive speed—boards, customers, metrics, our own fear of mishandling—and contrast them with what actually steadies a culture: naming reality, defining functioning, and setting a shared pace. You’ll hear clear, practical ways to reset priorities without sounding cold, including which deadlines to move, which meetings matter, and how to offer real flexibility. We also equip managers, the crucial translation layer, with simple check-in language and decision guardrails so care and accountability can live side by side.

Instead of treating dips in capacity as moral failings, learn to read them as signals to adjust workloads and support. 

This is steady leadership: Guiding people through a changed reality with clarity and care. If you’re feeling the pull to move fast, pause with us, rethink your defaults, and choose the kind of steadiness that protects both people and results. 

Subscribe, share with a colleague who leads under pressure, and leave a review with one shift you’ll make this week.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Rush Back To Normal
• 1:00 Pressure Sources And Misread Signals
• 3:10 Assumptions That Fracture Trust
• 6:00 Silence, Signals, And Hidden Costs
• 9:33 Managers Caught In The Middle
• 12:41 Define Functioning, Not Normal
• 16:01 Uneven Impact And Capacity
• 18:41 Witnessing, Presence, And Memory
• 21:41 Continuity Versus Humanity
• 24:01 Optimize For Steadiness
• 26:01 Prepared Leadership In Practice

Transcript

Manya Chylinski: 0:01

One of the hardest moments in leadership doesn't come when you're dealing at the peak of a crisis. It comes after. After the first messaging goes out, after their emergency response has settled, after your calendar starts filling back up. That's the moment leaders feel a very real pressure to move forward, to restore momentum, to get stability, and to help people get back to normal. Welcome to Notes on Resilience. This episode is about why that instinct to get back to normal, as understandable as it is, can create unintended harm. It isn't because leaders don't care, it's not because they're doing something wrong, but because the concept of normal isn't really a shared reality, and definitely not after disruption, and especially not for the people who are most affected by the crisis or the disruption. What I want to do here is slow that moment down. Let's look at what actually happens when leaders rush back to normal, what people experience on the receiving end of that, and what preparedness looks like instead. This isn't about staying stuck or keeping you in that moment of crisis or freezing the organization. It's about understanding the difference between wanting to return to normal and returning to functioning. This is a survivor-informed lens on leadership under pressure, how people experience the decisions leaders make, the language they use, the silence after something disruptive, and what leaders underestimate once it seems like things are steady again. A simple way to listen to this episode is to ask, where is the pressure coming from for you right now? Is it external pressure? Customers, constituents, boards, the media? Is it internal pressure? Your own fear of mishandling it? Worry about morale on your team or in your community? Worry about momentum? This episode is for the moment when the urgent part of the crisis has passed. That first message has gone out. And as a leader, you start to feel the gravity of what do we do next? How do we move forward after this? The goal here isn't to hand you a checklist, it's to help you slow down and see the consequences of moving too quickly. One of the most common patterns I see after disruption, whether that's a workplace incident, a community crisis, a public loss, or another kind of destabilizing event, is that rush to get back to normal. Leaders don't usually say it out loud, but the thinking is something like this. We've acknowledged what happened, we sent out the message, we've offered support, we sent the email with the EAP in it. Now we need to get people back on track. That desire is understandable. The idea of normal feels stabilizing. And that feels like leadership. But here's the problem. After a crisis, there's not going to be shared agreement on what normal actually is. So if as a leader you're rushing people back to something undefined, that isn't going to stabilize the organization. It's going to cause fractures. And those quiet fractures can be expensive. So a useful way to think about this is the disruption itself, whatever it is, whatever you were dealing with, doesn't necessarily or doesn't only change what happens. It changes what people believe. It changes who and what they trust. And it can change what they expect from you as a leader. It even changes what people feel inside their bodies for some people. It can be different when they walk into the building or they open their laptop or they step into a meeting. They are feeling something different than they were before this thing happened. Sometimes the disruption is obvious and public. Sometimes it's internal and quieter. But either way, people are running calculations in their head. What is safe? What's expected of me now? Who sees me and what's happening to me? Who doesn't see me? What will happen to me if I speak up? If I say how I'm feeling? What happens to me if I don't say something about how I'm feeling? Leaders often feel pressure to restore stability. And that is absolutely a reasonable goal. But the mistake is believing that stability comes from pretending that the disruption is over or acting like it's over because the calendar has moved on. That stability comes from accepting reality, naming it, and dealing with it together. Many leaders carry a few assumptions after a disruption. They assume that people want structure immediately, that work will help distract from what happened, that if no one is complaining, that means that things are settled. And there's also a deeper assumption that productivity is reassurance and returning to normal is the kind thing to do. And that's not malicious. It often just comes from pressure, pressure to steady the organization from boards or stakeholders, pressure to get back to normal, pressure from metrics that are important for your organization, but they're not going to stop just because the humans have stopped. And those assumptions can shape your decision making. And they tend to misread what people are actually experiencing. Here's where leaders can get trapped. Making those assumptions, it feels efficient. It's practical. It's like the adult thing to do. Let's get back to work. Let's get back to what we were doing before. And that feels safer than the alternative, which is sitting in ambiguity and discomfort and saying out loud, you know what? We're not operating in the same reality we were last week. Things are different. And some leaders also carry a personal assumption that can be hard to admit. If I keep things moving, I won't have to feel this thing that's happening. And if we keep things moving, I can protect others from feeling it. And I won't risk making it worse by saying the wrong thing. That's human. It's also where avoidable harm can begin. For some employees, work is not a distraction after disruption. It's the place where the disruption is continuing. And that may be especially true if the crisis happened in the workplace or involves the workforce. And that makes work the place they have to perform where they're processing, where they have to decide if your leaders are trustworthy. So if you interpret that quiet and people not talking about it as things being settled, you can miss the truth that staying quiet just means people are in shock or they're afraid or they're prioritizing self-protection because they don't know what else to do. When leaders move forward too quickly to get back to what they define as normal, there's some predictable things that will happen. Some employees are going to be ready to work. They want that distraction, they want forward motion. Others are not going to be ready to work. They're still processing, they're still unsettled, they're unsure what the event means for their safety or even their place in the organization. So when leaders treat steadiness or readiness as universal, people who are feeling differently just go underground. And number two, your managers are probably stuck in the middle. They're told to get back to hitting their deadlines, resuming expectations, keeping their teams focused, maybe without any guidance on how to do that humanely. Some managers will improvise, some will push too hard, some will avoid the topic entirely, some may quietly absorb the emotional labor without support. And this inconsistency is exhausting for everyone. Third, the silence is communicating more than your words would. So when a leader stops talking about the event, some employees hear relief. Others hear dismissal, this doesn't matter. Others hear avoidance. And once people start interpreting the silence, they're filling in the blanks that you're leaving, then it's going to be harder for them to trust. A single email after a crisis can steady the organization or it can break it. People don't split into I'm fine and I'm not fine. They split into different ways of operating, different ways of functioning. Some employees become hyperproductive because productivity feels like control. Others slow down because their brains are overloaded. Some are irritable because they just don't have any tolerance because they're dealing with too much. Others disengage because they see that the workplace, the system, the community doesn't care about them. So they don't want to share anymore. None of that's going to show up neatly on a dashboard. You may never see this in a survey. But you will see it in tone, in meeting dynamics, in conflict, rise of small misunderstandings, absenteeism. Now let's talk about our managers for a moment, because this is where a lot of damage can quietly be done. They're the translation layers between the executives and the employees, and they're the people the employees watch most closely. But they can often be the least prepared to deal with this kind of thing. They didn't cause a disruption, but they also didn't get a choice about maybe being the emotional container for it. So when leaders rush back to normal, managers face moments like, do I cancel this meeting or do I pretend everything's fine? Do I check in? Or does that risk opening a conversation I can't deal with? Do I enforce the deadline or should I be flexible? Do I talk about what people are feeling? Or do we need to stay professional? When they don't get guidance, they make decisions based on personality and fear. And that's how your organization becomes inconsistent. And getting back to the concept of silence. Silence is not neutral. You are making a statement by not saying something, and it invites interpretation. And that interpretation in the mind of your employees becomes the story. And then that story will become your culture. You just need a few weeks of people thinking, leadership moved on and I didn't. This is where the gap in responsibility shows up. As a leader, you are not responsible for controlling how people feel. You are not responsible, but you are responsible for talking about reality. And one of the most underestimated leadership responsibilities after a crisis or disruption is this. Defining what functioning actually means right now. It's not the same as normal. It's contextual, it shifts based on what is going on. But leaders can skip this stuff because it's uncomfortable and it might be vague and it can be hard to operationalize. So instead, we default back to pre-crisis expectations and timelines or pre-crisis definitions of performance. And that's a shortcut and that can create harm. And leaders are not wrong to be caring about the work. If we're talking about a workplace situation, that's your job. But the challenge is that you're asking people to perform inside a reality that's different. And maybe leadership hasn't even acknowledged how it's changed. So being responsible here as a leader means talking about the fact that capacity may vary, productivity may be different. Acknowledge that there's an uneven impact on the people in the organization and in the community. Talk about flexibility and what it really means in practice. This doesn't slow you down. This steadies the organization, helps people feel seen. To make this concrete, consider the difference between these two leadership approaches. One approach says, we're back. All right, let's focus. We got a lot to do. The other says, all right, we're moving forward, our capacity is going to vary. Here's what matters most this week. Here's what can wait. And here are ways you can get support if you need it. That second approach is operationally so much smarter. It reduces ambiguity and any kind of conflict or hidden conflicts, and it reduces that silent shame employees feel when they aren't able to work at the same capacity and they assume that means they're failing and they don't want to ask you about it. When leaders don't define functioning, again, employees are going to fill in that empty void. They're going to define it for themselves. And usually that is so much harsher than anything you would define. People say things like, I should be over this by now, I shouldn't need help. If I say I'm struggling, I'll look weak. If I slow down, I'm going to be punished. And this is how your people can disappear while they're in plain sight. That uneven impact is the part a lot of leaders miss. After disruption, two employees can sit in the same meeting, having completely different experiences. One may feel stable, the other is activated. One may be grieving, one may be angry, one may be dealing with a crisis at home on top of the crisis at work that they're dealing with. So if you communicate as if everyone is in the same place, people will start to feel invisible. So being clear is about giving your employees permission to not be okay, to take a beat, to ask for support, to be able to work at a different pace this month than they did last month. Defining what you're thinking about functioning gives people a shared map and it reduces that feeling of chaos and guesswork. Here's what people tend to remember long after disruption. They probably aren't going to remember exact timelines or probably not even every single word of the initial message, but they will remember if leaders moved on quickly. Survivors often describe a specific moment. It's not the event itself, but when they realize that the organization or the community decided it was over. And that's going to land differently depending on the person. But it carries a similar message, whoever you are. You're on your own now. We're done with it. Whatever's happening with you, you have to deal with it on your own. And from the lens of a survivor, that rush can feel like you're erasing the experience. Like I'm left to deal with it privately because you've absorbed the shock. And listen, this doesn't mean you should be stuck in crisis mode. You do need to move on. But it's important to understand getting back to normal isn't a reset button that you just push and everything goes back to normal. And what people remember is not whether you had all the answers. It's whether, as a leader, you stayed present long enough for people to feel seen and understood. And here's where I want to slow down. This is the part leaders often can't see from the inside. For survivors, a big piece of recovery comes from witnessing someone saying, This happened, it matters, and it had an impact. That's not going to fix the pain someone might be in, but it's going to change how isolated they feel. And when you rush back to normal, it removes that opportunity to be witness to what your team and your community is experiencing. And when that happens, people again, we make those private conclusions in the absence of other information. I must be overreacting. This shouldn't affect me. I should be better. Maybe the organization doesn't want to know that I'm not okay. Maybe I'm supposed to keep this to myself. And then that shapes their behavior. And when we're talking about a workplace, that shapes their performance. Whether they ask for help, whether they trust their leaders, whether they decide to stay with the organization. Here's another reality. Crisis can reactivate someone's previous crisis or previous trauma or experience. And it might not be obvious to you. You think they weren't affected at all, but now their nervous system is responding. Their sleep is changing, they're irritable. Even though this actual threat to them doesn't match the current moment, they're responding to a historical event. This is a lot. You don't need to be able to diagnose this. Just need to avoid creating conditions where people feel like they have to hide it. And to avoid conditions where people feel like they have to explain to you why they're feeling what they're feeling. And here's the thing, and a lot of survivors see this really quickly. The system moves on because the system is designed to move on. That's the job, right? It's continuity. The human job is making meaning. And those timelines don't match. So when your leaders rush, employees feel like the organization, or if you're talking about a community, the community members feel like you're choosing continuity over humanity. And that may not be fair at all to your intent, but it can still be real to people's experience. And the good news is that staying present doesn't require grand gestures. Small, consistent signals over time that say, we know this is happening, we see you, we didn't forget. In the aftermath of disruption, leaders sometimes carry questions that they don't want to ask out loud, not even among their peers. Like, how long are we supposed to keep talking about this thing? What if people start using this as an excuse? What if our productivity never gets back to what it was? What if talking about it keeps this alive? These are human questions. But they're dangerous if they're what drive decision making. Because you could also ask the opposite questions, but people rarely do. What does pushing too fast to move back to normal cost us? What if not talking about it keeps it alive? And those costs show up: disengagement, turnover, burnout, resentment, readiness to deal with a crisis, and then dealing with the aftermath is about preventing avoidable damage. There are some things, of course, you can't control. Those private leadership questions reveal how leaders are optimizing. If the primary optimization is speed, you're going to make decisions that might increase your long-term cost. If the primary optimization is steadiness for your people, you're going to make decisions that probably reduce your long-term cost. You can think about results and still optimize for steadiness. They are linked together because when people don't feel safe, they're not performing at the level you need them to. And there's a leadership identity piece here for some people. Some leaders build their careers on being competent under pressure, and they solve problems by moving forward, and they prove their leadership by keeping things on track. That instinct can be a trap after a crisis. What people need then is not motion at any cost. They need a leader who can sit with the reality that moving forward requires understanding what everyone's experienced and figuring out a shared pace, not forcing a pace on people. And you're probably leading across a mixed group. Some people who are ready, some aren't. And as a leader, you're going to feel the discomfort of not being able to satisfy everybody. And the idea of being prepared here, you're not going to be able to eliminate discomfort. I think it's more about which is the discomfort that's worth paying for, and which is the discomfort that's going to be best for our people as humans. Prepared leadership is all about getting back to functioning and defining that function, not assuming it. Here's what that looks like in practice. First, name it explicitly. Say something like, we're moving from the immediate response into the next phase. This doesn't mean everyone is in the same place. That sentence does a lot of work. It tells employees that you see reality. It tells managers that they have permission to be a little nuanced here as they're dealing with their employees. And it tells the organization, we see you and we can keep working, and we're not going to pretend this thing didn't happen. The goal is to find a stable way forward. Secondly, redefine expectations temporarily. Very specifically. Which deadlines can move? Which are the meetings that matter? What flexibility is real for people? What does performance look like right now? This is where you can be practical without being cold. So this week, priority one is customer commitments. Priority two, internal projects. Everything else can wait. Or maybe you said your managers, do you have discretion to adjust deadlines for the next few weeks? If you need an extension, ask for it. Or maybe you say all nonessential meetings are canceled through Friday. Direct, simple. They reduce hidden negotiation. They reduce people feeling ashamed to ask if they can have these accommodations. They prevent people from having to guess. Do they have permission to do? These things. Number three, equip your managers with the language that they need. They need permission to check in, they need guidance on how to balance compassion and accountability. And they may need support themselves because managers are also people living in the community, living through the same event. Here's where I'd encourage you: think of your managers like your distribution system. If they don't have the tools, the organization will be inconsistent. It's as simple as giving them things like a short check-in script, guidance on what to do if someone's distressed. Give them clear information on when they can be flexible and what the priorities are, and a point of contact when they don't know what to do. And words matter a lot in these circumstances. So it's say something like, It's okay if your capacity feels different this week. Let's talk about what needs to happen and what can we. Or you don't need to share details, but if you need a lighter load for a few days, we can plan that. That's leadership, that's steadiness. Fourth, acknowledge without overcentering the event. Does it require constant focus? Brief check-in, follow-up notes, a reminder that support exists. Leaders are human, and humans are often afraid you're going to say the wrong thing. But as I've mentioned before, saying nothing is worse. So consistency can be, hey, a short note at the end of the week that just recognizes the strain people are under. Or starting out a meeting with something like, before we start, I want to acknowledge this week has been really difficult. And reminding people that flexibility is still available. And that may need to happen for a long time out into the future. And this tells people they aren't alone with their experience. And fifth, watch for that second wave. That comes when the adrenaline of the event fades and people are exhausted and maybe conflict increases and people start asking harder questions about what does this thing mean for us, for me, for the organization, for my life. So if you plan for that instead of being surprised by it, you understand that there might be more mistakes, more sick days, more withdrawal, more presenteism. And leaders might think, well, we already addressed this. We talked about this last week. We talked about it when it happened. But it needs to be integrated into people's lives and the workplace and the community. And that takes time. And you don't need to keep everybody in a constant emotional conversation. But planning for the second wave means you build in check-ins, maybe a couple weeks later, a few weeks after that. Manager support, reminders of resources, a way for employees to raise concerns safely. And maybe you don't put a time limit on that because these things can last. And leaders should decide ahead of time what are you going to do if you see someone's performance change? Because that's normal after a disruption. But if you treat it as that person's moral failing, you're punishing people for having a nervous system and having a normal human response. If you're a prepared leader, you can treat that as a signal. Think to yourself, okay, what support do they need? What expectations should we adjust? What does the work really require right now? What can we put off? That protects the person and the organization. Returning to normal after a crisis is seductive because it feels decisive. Leadership under pressure isn't about restoring the past, it's guiding people through the new reality, what exists now. And being prepared helps you avoid the harm that comes from how quickly these events get forgotten. So if you're listening to this episode as a leader who feels pressure to move quickly, here's a question to think about. What does the organization truly need to function with steadiness right now, given what has happened? This keeps you out of performative reassurance and forcing momentum. Keeps you anchored in human experience and responsibility. And if you're listening as someone who feels left behind by an organization or community that's sped past, your reaction also makes sense. But that gap between organizational continuity and human processing is real. Prepared leadership narrows that gap. That's the work. Not returning to normal, returning to functioning with care and enough presence that people don't have to go through it alone. Thank you for listening to this episode. We'll catch you next time.