What We’re Seeing and Learning in These Times: Leading Through Hard Transitions Can Actually Build Cultures That Grow Stronger

This year has been tough for the social impact sector on many fronts - from federal cuts, philanthropic constriction, government shutdowns, and increased need.  As we reflect on the resilience of leaders this year, we want to share what we’re seeing and learning.

Over this past year, our team at Volution Advisors has walked alongside several organizations navigating two extremely difficult but defining challenges at the same time:

1. Executing reductions-in-force (RIFs) with humanity and strategic clarity, and

2. Preserving—and even strengthening—the conditions for positive culture, continuous learning, and peak performance.

It’s easy to treat these as separate endeavors. In practice, they are deeply intertwined. One of our clients learned this firsthand as they grappled with how to reduce their team without shattering culture, trust, or morale—while also recommitting to a culture where people receive honest feedback, understand expectations, and keep growing.

Working with them, we were reminded of a profound truth: organizational health is most visible not in moments of ease, but in moments of strain.

Below are some key learnings we want to share with the field.

1. Humane RIFs Are Possible—but Only With Clarity, Transparency, and Care

One of the most important learnings was that how an organization approaches layoffs matters just as much as why they’re happening. We worked with leaders to be deliberate, thoughtful, and transparent to avoid the culture-crushing effects that blunt, hurried, or opaque cuts can create.

What we learned:

• Strategic clarity is a form of care. Taking the time to make targeted, mission-aligned decisions reduced confusion and helped the team understand the “why” behind the reductions.

• Transparency diffuses fear. Employees didn’t need perfect information—they needed honest information. What would happen, when, and how decisions were made.

• How people leave shapes how people stay. Supporting transitioning employees signaled organizational values loudly.

In short, the tone leaders set during reductions becomes the culture people remember.

2. “Stay Conversations” Are Culture-Saving, Not Just Nice-to-Have

We worked with a client to determine his highest performers and access their retention likelihood. Importantly, we looked at their motivations and examined how connected they might be to the organization.  Intentional stay conversations with high-performing team members helped not just retain top talent, but also made them feel valued and motivated.

During uncertainty, people don’t just wonder about the organization; they worry about their own future in it.

What we learned:

• Proactive, personalized conversations to affirm someone’s value dramatically increased their sense of belonging and stability.

• These conversations gave leaders real-time insight into fears, morale, workload, and retention risks.

• When leaders took the time to acknowledge strengths and map out growth paths, employees reported feeling more secure and more motivated—not less.

The simple act of saying, “Here’s why we need you, and here’s how we’ll invest in you,” became a powerful stabilizing force.

3. Culture Holds When Feedback Flows—Up, Down, and Across

Organizations often freeze during moments of crisis—hesitant to give feedback, hesitant to raise concerns, hesitant to make mistakes.But our work reinforced that continuous learning can’t be paused, even when the organization is under strain.

In fact, during periods of restructuring, the foundations of the “growth flywheel”—clarity, feedback, reflection, and celebration—became more important than ever.

What we learned:

• Clarity protects performance. When expectations are shifting, people desperately need to know what success now looks like. Ambiguous goals compound fear.

• Real-time, bite-sized feedback accelerates stability. When people are stretched thin, long feedback cycles are too slow.

• Leaders modeling vulnerability builds psychological safety. When leaders asked for feedback themselves, it signaled that learning—not perfection—was still the norm.

• Short reflection cycles prevent repeated mistakes. Quick debriefs allowed the team to course-correct in days, not months.

• Even small celebrations had outsized impact. Wins—especially during hard moments—created energy and hope.

  
  

The lesson: organizational health is not about removing all tension, but about building enough trust and clarity that people can keep learning within it.

4. Accountability and Humanity Are Not Opposites—They Are a Pair

One of the most powerful insights from this work was that organizations that handled layoffs most humanely were also the ones that had the strongest habits of continuous growth.

Why?

Because in cultures where expectations are clear, feedback is normal, and people always know where they stand, decisions—whether about development or exits—aren’t surprises.

What we learned:

• Avoiding accountability is not kindness. It simply defers hard truths until they are more painful.

• Clarity is compassion. Documented goals, regular check-ins, and honest feedback equip people to succeed—or to understand why a transition might be needed.

In other words, the cultures that care the most are the ones courageous enough to be honest.

5. Organizations Can Come Out Stronger

RIFs do not need to break an organization's culture.

In their case, the opposite happened.

Because leaders communicated clearly, showed care in how they offboarded, engaged intentionally with those who remained, and kept the growth flywheel moving, the organization emerged:

• More focused

• More aligned

• More self-reflective

• And, surprisingly, more connected

  
  

Not because the cuts were easy—but because the culture was tended to with discipline, openness, and humanity.

In the end, managing through hardship isn’t about softening the blow.

It’s about choosing to lead with clarity and care, even when the decisions are difficult.