Holding the Middle During Organizational Upheaval: The Real Work of Self-Leadership

MOST leadership narratives talk about upheaval change as if it’s solely managed as a sequence: a plan, a timeline, a communication strategy, a rollout. Apply the favored change management steps, and all will be well.

But when you’re inside a pending reorganization, merger, leadership removal, cultural overhaul, or sudden strategic pivot, you quickly learn something most leadership books never say: The hardest part isn’t the change. It’s the in-between.

The stretch of time where what was no longer fits or exists, and what’s coming hasn’t yet taken shape, is an uncomfortable period of ambiguity, disorientation, and suspended identity for organizations, teams, and leaders themselves.

Call It Liminality

Upheavals such as a reorganization, merger, or unexpected leadership transition create a liminal space — a structural in-between where the old way, strategic plan, norms, and org charts no longer exist but the new one hasn’t been created. What leaders and teams experience inside that space is liminality: the psychological, emotional, and identity-level disorientation that comes from being suspended between two realities.

The term liminality comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. It originated in the early 1900s when anthropologist Arnold van Gennep used it to describe the middle stage of rites of passage — the ambiguous and amorphous period as someone leaves behind who they were but hasn’t yet stepped into who they’ll become.

Later, anthropologist Victor Turner expanded the concept, describing liminality as a space of:

Uncertainty
Identity dissolution and disorientation
Destabilized roles and rules that no longer apply
Heightened and perhaps intense emotion ranging from excited to afraid
What Turner called communitas — collective meaning-making and camaraderie from navigating liminal space together

Historically, liminality and the other side of the threshold represented profound transformation. Today, liminality resonates as the psychological and relational experience of navigating major transitions in times when the structures, norms, and identities that once guided us are temporarily gone.

It validates the collective unmooring impacting leaders, teams, and the frontline simultaneously. Everyone is in a version of the fog at the same time.

Liminality Impact

Liminal space can be used for good, but leaders must be honest about how it impacts their own leadership identity as they attend to the same questions for those they’re leading. Numerous organizational impacts during upheaval can contribute to leaders’ liminality-related unmooring.

Some of these include:

Changing roles
Collapse of cultural norms
Questioned decisions
Anxious teams
Fractured, inconsistent narratives
Fragile trust
Unclear expectations

Statements and questions I’ve heard from leaders I’ve supported in these situations sound like:

“I don’t know where I fit anymore.”
“I’m not sure my approach is still relevant.”
“I see what’s ending for me.”
“What narrative or norm are we even in right now?”

Sometimes leaders carry the burden silently, assuming either that they shouldn’t feel unmoored or that honesty about their experience can’t be shared with those they’re leading. In reality, and per the research, ambiguity increases anxiety and emotional contagion. Leaders under high emotional load communicate less effectively, and teams detect a leader’s emotional state with very high accuracy (70-80%).

But leaders who acknowledge liminality’s impact on them and the organization isn’t weakness — it’s leadership.

Identity Clarity in Liminality

When leaders have identity clarity — alignment between who they are, how they lead, and what they stand for — they have a grounded, stable center, while everything around them is shifting and waiting in the middle feels unstable. Research shows that identity-secure leaders better tolerate ambiguity and exhibit resilience and ethical behavior under pressure.

Leaders committed to their core, essential foundation, ask themselves during liminal waiting:

Who am I as a leader in these uncertain and uncomfortable conditions?
What values and convictions continue to guide me even when the path is unclear?
What do I refuse to compromise?
How do I stay aligned with my deeper purpose during instability?

Not only does this ground the leader during upheaval-imposed liminality, but it also gives leaders greater capacity to:

Model and reinforce psychological safety via authentic honesty and care
Build a shared narrative to reduce ambiguity and stress
Facilitate transparency, which builds trust

Identity clarity doesn’t give leaders all the answers, but it does provide them with a grounded presence that others can anchor to.

3 Strategies to Hold the Middle During Liminality

Strategy 1: Name the liminal season clearly and often
Use language that normalizes the experience:

“We’re in a transition without a map yet.”
“It’s normal to feel unsettled right now.”
“This is a liminal period — an in-between — and it won’t last forever.”

Why it works: Research shows that naming an emotion or experience reduces the activation of fear and anxiety. It literally calms the brain.

Strategy 2: Use the phrase, “This is hard, and we keep going.”
Most leaders either over-employ empathy (“I know this is hard”) and lose direction, or over-rely on execution (“We still have work to do”) and invalidate the emotional reality. The artistry of leading in liminality is holding both truths at once: “This is hard and we keep moving: together, steadily, intentionally.”

Acknowledging the discomfort might sound like:

“This is a lot.”
“Ambiguity is uncomfortable.”
“Your frustration makes sense.”
“I feel the weight of this too; how can we move through this together?”

Beyond the emotional validation, the team and frontline also need to know what still matters, what they’re still responsible for, and what they can count on.

Strategy 3: Create micro-stability in the middle of macro-uncertainty
Do small, consistent things that give reassurance:

Weekly “what’s true now?” huddles
Consistent Friday updates and Q and As
Opening and closing rituals
Shared wins
Clarity around the next one or two steps, what is known

Why it works: Predictability is one of the strongest buffers against the stress of uncertainty. Micro-stability equals macro-resilience.

Liminality Is Shared and Can Be Utilized

Leadership in an era of big change and upheaval isn’t always about having the answers. Of course, decision-making and operations must be managed. But so must identity clarity and grounded presence that’s strong enough to hold the in-between with others.

When teams and the frontline are suspended in the middle, they don’t anchor to strategy — they anchor to the human leader in front of them.

The leader who can say, “I’m navigating this with you. The unknown is uncomfortable. Let’s stay connected, grounded, and honest as we move forward,” is the leader people trust to guide them through liminality.

Acknowledging liminality doesn’t slow organizations down — it stabilizes them. Leaders who convey the truth of the in-between build stronger trust and deeper resilience across their teams. What emerges on the other side is not just a new structure, but a more aligned, adaptive, and human organization.

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Natalie Pickering, PhD, is a TEDx speaker, organizational psychologist, and executive coach who helps leaders trade performance pressure for authentic influence. For more than two decades, she has partnered with executives, founders, and teams across healthcare, education, startups, and global organizations to navigate change, strengthen culture, and lead with courage. She is the founder of The Becoming Institute, a leadership development firm dedicated to helping organizations scale without losing soul. Her new book is Leading Becomes You: A Real-World Framework for Leading from Inside Out (Sept. 18, 2025). Learn more at drnataliepickering.com.

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