Coming Up
A simple agenda for the first team meeting – and what to leave off of it
How to prepare for the hard questions you most dread being asked
The tempting promise that (probably) isn’t yours to make – and what to offer instead
What different personalities will need from you in that first meeting
Welcome to Day 1 of our Leading Well After Layoffs Challenge!
Nobody really trains you for this part of the job. When layoffs happen, most of a company’s attention goes to the cuts themselves – who’s affected, what’s announced, what’s legal. Far less usually goes to the manager left standing in front of a smaller, shaken team the morning after.
So that’s where we’ll start: with the first conversation, the one you may be dreading most. Get the words right, and you lay the groundwork for everything else this week – the trust, the steadiness, and the path forward.
Before we jump into today, here’s a reminder of what you can expect throughout this challenge:
Day 1: What to Say to Your Team After Layoffs (You Are Here)
The First Meeting Sets the Tone
Hold the first team meeting as soon as you reasonably can after the layoff news breaks. When you go quiet, your team fills the silence on their own – and what people imagine is almost always worse than what’s true.
You do not need a polished speech. You just need a simple agenda, delivered with care:
Acknowledge what happened, plainly and without euphemisms
Share what you know for certain
Be honest about what you don’t know yet
Explain what happens in the next few days – meetings, decisions, and when they’ll hear from you again
Open the floor, and stay until the questions slow down
Notice what’s not on that agenda: projections about the company’s future, pep talks, or new goals. There will be time for those later. Today, your team mostly needs to see that you’re not hiding.
This team meeting is for shared facts. Anything personal – changed roles, shifted responsibilities, individual concerns – belongs in one-on-one conversations in the days that follow. Nobody should learn what’s happening to their own job while sitting in a group.
Before that first meeting, it may help to consider what you tend to reach for under pressure – over-explaining, going quiet, rushing to reassure. If you’re not sure, taking our free personality test is a good place to start understanding your own tendencies before you’re standing in front of the room.
What You Can Say, What You Can’t, and What You Don’t Know
Before the meeting, take ten minutes and sort every question you think you might face into three buckets:
Things you can answer
Things you can’t share
Things you don’t know
The mistake managers make most often is saying “I don’t know” when the truth is “I can’t tell you.” It feels gentler in the moment, but people can usually tell the difference. And once someone catches you at it, they’ll start wondering what else you’ve been softening.
So stay honest. If you can answer a question, answer it fully. If you can’t share something, say so directly – something like, “I have some information I’m not able to share yet. When I can, you’ll hear it from me first.”
And when you truly don’t know? Say that too, but attach a commitment to it: “I don’t know. I’m asking the same question, and I’ll tell you what I learn by Friday.” On its own, “I don’t know” can sound like avoidance, but when you pair it with “here’s what I’m doing to find out,” it builds more trust.
Talk About the People Who Left
It can feel kinder to just not bring up the people who were laid off – less painful for everyone, you might think. In practice, the silence usually feels worse. Everyone still in the room is quietly asking a question they’ll never say out loud: If it had been me, would I have simply vanished from the conversation?
You don’t need to explain or defend the decisions. You just need to treat the people who left like people, not vacancies.
Acknowledge them by name where it feels natural. Recognize what they contributed. If your company permits it, let the team know it’s okay to stay in touch. That’s usually enough.
You’ll want to avoid euphemisms (“streamlining,” “right-sizing”) and any hint of relief. Your team is paying close attention to how you talk about their former colleagues in this moment, because it tells them exactly how they’d be talked about.
What Not to Promise
At some point – maybe in this meeting, maybe in a hallway afterward – someone will ask the inevitable question: “Are more layoffs coming?”
You will feel a strong pull to say no. Resist it – unless you’re the one who actually makes that call.
If you own the company, or the final decision sits with you, you may be able to offer real reassurance here: “There are no more layoffs coming. That decision is mine, and I’ve made it.” Said honestly, that can steady a team faster than almost anything else. Just make sure it’s a decision, not a hope – your people will hold you to every word of it.
For most managers, though, that guarantee simply isn’t yours to make. “Your jobs are safe” may be the most tempting sentence available to you right now – and the most damaging. If it turns out to be wrong, it takes your credibility with it.
What you can offer instead are commitments you actually control:
“I don’t have a guarantee to give you, and I won’t pretend to.”
“What I can promise is that you’ll hear what I know, when I’m able to share it.”
“I’ll advocate for this team in every conversation where I have a voice.”
Smaller promises, fully kept, will do more for your team than one big promise you can’t back up. We’ll build on this idea on Day 3 of this challenge.
What Different Personalities Need from This First Meeting
Everyone walks into that first meeting needing something a little different from you – and personality can help you anticipate what, before anyone says a word.
Team members with the Thinking personality trait usually need the reasoning. Give them as much of the honest “why” as you’re able to share, and expect follow-up questions until the picture makes sense. Feeling types are often asking a different question first: Were the people affected treated with care? For them, acknowledgment that this is hard may matter more than any explanation you give.
Extraverted team members often need room to react out loud, right there in the meeting – that’s the open floor on your agenda. Introverted ones are more likely to need time. They’ll process internally and may come back two days later with the question that really matters to them, so make sure they hear that the door stays open.
Some people will need more reassurance than others too. In our “Handling Stress” survey, 93% of people with the Assertive Identity said they feel confident facing day-to-day difficulties, compared to 62% of those with the Turbulent Identity. Your Turbulent team members are no less capable – but they may need more follow-up, and more explicit next steps, before the ground feels solid again. People with the Judging trait often need that same clarity: knowing what happens next, and when, matters a lot to them.
If you know your team members’ personality types, you may already have a sense of who will need the reasoning, who will need the acknowledgment, and who will need a few days. And if you don’t, our Team Assessments can give you an overview of your whole team’s mix of personality types – especially useful in a week when every conversation counts.
Your Action Item
Today’s exercise takes about ten or fifteen minutes, and you’ll be glad you did it before the next hard conversation:
Draft the first three sentences you would say (or, if the meeting already happened, should have said) to your team.
List the five questions you most dread being asked. Sort each into a bucket: can answer / can’t share / don’t know.
For every “can’t share” and “don’t know” question, write a one-sentence answer you could actually use with your team – including when they’ll hear from you next, if possible.
Then, if you haven’t held that first meeting yet, get it on the calendar – the sooner, the better. You’ll walk in with the words already in hand. And if the meeting is behind you, keep the list anyway. The questions may yet come up.
Coming Up Next: The meeting is over, but your team is just starting to process what happened. Tomorrow we look at workplace survivor syndrome – and its influence on how employees react to layoffs.