Leadership agility during organizational change has never been more important. Organizations are restructuring faster than ever, leaving leaders and employees trying to make sense of shifting priorities, new reporting relationships, and evolving roles. While companies can redesign an organizational chart overnight, the human brain needs time to adapt. Understanding the neuroscience of change can help leaders reduce uncertainty, strengthen trust, and help their teams perform with greater confidence during times of disruption.
The Org Chart Changed Again. What Do You Do Now?
Years ago, I sat through one of those organizational change announcements that many of you know all too well. The leader walked in looking unusually serious, someone closed the door, and a PowerPoint slide appeared with enough boxes, arrows, and dotted lines to qualify as an advanced geometry exam.
I remember looking at the screen and thinking, “Okay, John. Smile and look agile.”
Have you ever been there?
Maybe your organization merged departments or your association changed its structure. Perhaps you got a new leader, a new team, and a new set of priorities, all while being reassured that your role had not really changed.
Except now you report to someone you’ve never met, serve customers you didn’t know existed, and belong to a division whose new acronym sounds suspiciously like a prescription medication.
“Ask your Doctor if REORG X is right for you. Side effects may include confusion, additional meetings, and an uncontrollable desire to update your LinkedIn profile.”
I have spent a good portion of my career inside large organizations going through structural change. I have also worked with associations where committees merge, boards change, priorities shift, and strategic plans occasionally develop the life expectancy of a fruit fly.
I’ve been the leader. I’ve been the consultant. And I’ve been the employee sitting in the audience wondering what the heck happens to me next.
That’s one reason this topic has become so personal.
The conversations my team and I have been having with leaders recently led us to create Leadership Agility, our new neuroscience based approach to helping organizations and associations accelerate trust, empowerment, and results during constant change. The demand was almost immediate, and we begin delivering the program this month on the East Coast.
But while building the program, I kept thinking about the person sitting inside the change.
You.
Me.
What can you and I do when someone changes the structure, moves the boxes, announces the new strategy, and apparently forgets to ask our brains if they are emotionally available for another transformation?
Turns out, quite a bit. So let me share just a few tips in our time together today.
Three Neuroscience Strategies to Help Teams Think, Connect, and Perform During Constant Change
Strategy 1: Give Your Prefrontal Cortex a Fighting Chance
Think about the last major change in your organization or association. What happened inside your head when you first heard the news?
Did your brain calmly say, “This restructuring will undoubtedly unlock exciting opportunities for my professional development”?
Yeah. Mine neither. More often, one unanswered question quickly becomes five assumptions, and before long your brain has you unemployed, living in a van, and selling homemade candles at a roadside stand down by the river!!!
Our brains can be a little dramatic.
There is a neurological reason for that. Research by Yale neuroscientist Amy Arnsten has shown that stress can impair the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, the area heavily involved in working memory, attention, and higher order decision making. Under enough stress, we become less thoughtful and more reactive because the very brain systems we need for complex thinking are operating under pressure (Arnsten, 2009).
Arnsten has described the prefrontal cortex as the “Goldilocks of the brain.” It performs best under the right neurochemical conditions. Apparently, my prefrontal cortex and I have something in common. We both prefer a comfortable chair, a reasonable temperature, and nobody beginning a conversation with, “John, do you have a quick minute?”
In Build Your Best Brain, I wrote extensively about preparing your brain before cognitive pressure overwhelms it. That principle becomes especially important during structural change because you may not control what the organization does, but you can become more intentional about what you allow your brain to do with incomplete information. When you feel yourself starting to spiral, ask three questions:
What do I actually know?
What am I afraid might happen?
What information would help me think more clearly?
Why these questions? Because they help you separate information from imagination.
Have you ever discovered that the thing keeping you awake at 2:00 in the morning was something nobody had actually said? Sure, you have. I have too. Write down the facts. Name the fear. Then identify the question you need answered.
Your brain already has enough work to do without simultaneously serving as employee, detective, screenwriter, and executive producer of CSI: Organizational Restructuring Unit.
Strategy 2: Build a Small Circle Before You Build a Bunker
When change happens, what do you naturally do?
Some people reach out. Others pull back and quietly try to figure everything out alone. Then there is a third group who immediately finds the three most pessimistic people in the organization and schedules a lunch meeting.
You know what happens. By the time the appetizers arrive, the CEO is incompetent, the organization will be bankrupt by Friday, and nobody orders dessert because apparently hope has left the building.
Structural change does more than disrupt work. It can disrupt your social map. Research by social neuroscientist Naomi Eisenberger and colleagues found that social exclusion engages neural regions associated with the distress of physical pain, particularly the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003).
Think about that for a moment.
Have you ever experienced a reorganization where your actual job did not change very much, but the people around your job changed? Your trusted colleague moved to another team. Your leader left. The person who always knew how to get things done now reports somewhere else.
Suddenly, the workplace feels different.
That’s not weakness. Your brain pays attention to belonging because human beings are deeply social creatures.
So when your organization or association restructures, I encourage you to deliberately identify three people: someone who helps you understand what is happening, someone who helps you stay grounded, and someone you can help.
That last person may be the most important.
Research by Tristen Inagaki and colleagues found that providing support to others can engage neural systems associated with reward and caregiving while reducing activity in brain regions associated with stress related responses (Inagaki et al., 2016).
In plain English, sometimes one of the best things you can do for your own brain is help someone else’s brain.
Who around you is more confused than you are? Who needs context or encouragement? Who around you is newer to the organization or association? Who simply needs someone to say, “I don’t have all the answers either, but you don’t have to figure this out alone”?
You and I often feel most powerless when we focus exclusively on what is happening to us. Helping someone else reminds our brain that we can still influence what happens through us.
That’s not just kindness.
That’s a pretty darn good brain strategy.
Strategy 3: Stop Trying to Solve Thursday When It Is Still Tuesday
I need to confess something.
My brain is exceptionally talented at solving problems that do not exist yet.
Perhaps yours has this gift too.
You hear, “Our team is moving under a new division,” and within fifteen minutes you’ve mentally jumped six months into the future, lost your job, sold the house, and started wondering whether Costco offers dental benefits.
Holy cow.
Stress researchers have spent decades examining what happens when human beings experience unpredictability and a lack of control. Research by Sonia Lupien and colleagues has documented how stress affects the brain and cognition across the lifespan, while a major meta analysis by Dickerson and Kemeny found that situations involving social evaluation and uncontrollability are particularly potent triggers of the cortisol stress response (Dickerson & Kemeny, 2004; Lupien et al., 2009).
Structural change can hand you a lovely gift basket containing both unpredictability and limited control.
So what do you do? You stop trying to control the entire reorganization.
I know. Annoying advice.
Instead, ask yourself three different questions:
What do I control today?
What can I influence this week?
What is completely outside my control?
Then act accordingly. This connects directly to one of the principles I teach in Leadership Agility: Shrink the horizon.
You do not need to understand the next twelve months today. You need to identify your next useful move.
Maybe you schedule a conversation with your new leader and ask what success looks like over the next 30 days. Perhaps you reconnect with three important relationships or clarify which project now deserves your attention. And yes, maybe you update your LinkedIn profile.
Hey, I teach applied neuroscience principles. I do not teach denial.
Why does taking a small action matter? More recent neuroscience on learned helplessness has shifted our understanding of control. Steven Maier and Martin Seligman argue that the ability to detect control can engage prefrontal systems that regulate stress responses (Maier & Seligman, 2016).
You may not control the org chart, but you can still control your next conversation, your next question, and your next action. Sometimes that is enough to help your brain move from, “Holy cow, we’re doomed,” to, “Okay. I can handle the next part.” And during major change, the next part is often all you need to handle today.
Leadership Agility Means Helping Your Brain Adapt to Change
I think we have occasionally made a mistake in the way we talk about change.
We tell people to embrace it. I know I have. Many times. And unfortunately, after three decades as a professional speaker, there are a lot of videos of me saying that.
But really, John? Every change?
Have you seen some of the changes organizations make? Sometimes I do not want to embrace the change. Sometimes I would like to shake its hand politely, wish it well, and maintain a safe emotional distance.
Maybe you have felt that way too.
You do not have to love every restructuring, and you do not have to pretend every association realignment is brilliant. You certainly do not have to post “Thrilled About the Transformation!” on LinkedIn while quietly Googling, “How much does it cost to open a bait shop?”
What you do need is a brain that can continue to function.
In my book, Build Your Best Brain, I made the case that cognitive resilience is not simply about recovering after pressure. You and I need habits that help our brains perform during pressure, especially when the environment around us refuses to cooperate.
Your Next Organizational Change Starts Today
So think back to the last organizational change that really rattled you.
What story did your brain create before you had all the facts? Who did you surround yourself with? What did you spend energy worrying about that you could not control?
And, perhaps most importantly, what do you wish you had done sooner?
Your answers matter because another change is scheduled for sooner than you think… ‘kinda like how fast those uncomfortable medical exams seem to show up. Another structure will shift. Another leader will arrive. Another association committee will merge. And somewhere, right now, someone is creating a new organizational acronym that nobody asked for.
This time, you can be more prepared.
- Separate information from imagination.
- Build a small circle instead of a bunker.
- Shrink the horizon to your next useful action.
You may not control the structure, but you can influence the condition of the brain you bring into it. So here is my challenge for you.
The next time someone says, “We have an organizational update,” resist the urge to immediately text your therapist.
Ask yourself:
What do I actually know?
Who can help me stay grounded?
What is my next useful move?
Then give your brain something productive to do.
References
Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signaling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 410 to 422.
Dickerson, S. S., & Kemeny, M. E. (2004). Acute stressors and cortisol responses: A theoretical integration and synthesis of laboratory research. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 355 to 391.
Edwards, J. F. (2024). Build Your Best Brain: Building Habits Today For When Stuff Hits The Fan Tomorrow.
Edwards, J. F. (2026). Leadership Agility: A Neuroscience Approach to Accelerate Trust, Empowerment, and Results in Teams.
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290 to 292.
Inagaki, T. K., Bryne Haltom, K. E., Suzuki, S., Jevtic, I., Hornstein, E., Bower, J. E., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2016). The neurobiology of giving versus receiving support. Psychosomatic Medicine, 78(4), 443 to 453.
Lupien, S. J., McEwen, B. S., Gunnar, M. R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 434 to 445.
Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological Review, 123(4), 349 to 367.
John F. Edwards, CSP, CVP is an keynote speaker, leadership futurist and author who leverages humor and neuroscience to help accelerate your success.
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