How a CEO processes change shapes how the team recovers.
Change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological.
William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes
Budget cuts and layoff don’t just affect business operations; they also hit people emotionally.
Research confirms that job loss often triggers grief-like reactions: shock, denial, anger, and identity disruption (Forbes, 2025). Harvard Business Review also documents how the aftermath of layoffs can suppress morale and engagement for months and sometimes years (HBR, 2024).
Most CEOs have already processed the decision by the time the team hears it. That creates an emotional gap. If you’re not aware of it and don’t adjust for it, you’ll seem out of touch. That’s when trust breaks.
This session is a perfect compliment to the session hosted by David Dye. Whilst David's session will focus on the outer game, how to rebuild trust, cadence, and momentum after layoffs, using frameworks like the Stockdale Paradox and Seth Godin’s, this session with Cliff Scott gives you tools to do the emotional work leaders often skip, the inner game.
Cliff will introduce you to William Bridges’ Transition Model. We will focus on how you process your own change curve. Knowing where you are will help you pace your team, so you can rebuild trust and lead without emotional drag.
This session will not be recorded as we want to give you the opportunity to workshop and discuss your individual situations openly. Together we will identify where you are on the transition curve, where your team likely is, and what that gap means for how you lead.
Self-awareness is a crucial skill in transitions.
Cliff Scott is a senior coach at Cultivating Leadership, a world-class executive coaching group. Cultivating Leadership was founded by Jennifer Garvey Berger who hosted a fantastic INSIGHTS for us on Evolving as a Leader through different Development Stages which you can find in the Content Library.
Cliff's works with leaders navigating complexity and change - particularly when the emotional stakes are high. Cliff has coached biotech founders, Fortune 500 execs, and leadership teams facing restructures, identity shifts, and moments of deep uncertainty. His work helps leaders face their own transition so they can support others through theirs—with clarity, presence, and psychological realism.Cliff’s lens is practical but human. He uses tools like William Bridges’ Transition Model to help CEOs locate themselves emotionally in the change curve—so they can stop reacting unconsciously and start leading deliberately.
Why This Is Relevant for You
Most CEOs make it to the other side of a tough decision, especially layoffs, faster than their teams. But moving forward without doing the inner work creates blind spots. Research from Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today confirms that unprocessed emotion in leaders fuels short tempers, disengagement, impulsive decisions, and broken trust (HBR, Psychology Today).
If you don’t stop to process your emotional response to change, it will affect your leadership. Emotional self-awareness and regulation aren’t soft skills, they’re core to sound decision-making and team stability.This session will help you:
Understand where you are in the transition process and what that means for you.
Spot where your team likely is
Adjust how you lead so tone, timing, and pace match what your team needs.
David and Cliff’s sessions compliment each other—one shows you what your team needs next, the other helps you face what you need to process first.