LeadTime#15 - Managing Negativity During Uncertain Times
How can an Engineering Manager improve team morale after disappointing company results? What approaches show support while ensuring undisrupted delivery? How to balance empathy with accountability?
Hi, this newsletter is a weekly challenge for engineers thinking about management. I'm Péter Szász, writing about Engineering Leadership and training aspiring and first-time managers on this path.
In this newsletter, I pose a weekly EM challenge and leave it as a puzzle for you to think about before the next issue, where I share my thoughts on it.
Last Week’s Challenge
Last week, we explored a situation where bad company results led to spreading negativity within a team. Read the details here if you missed it. I'll approach this situation with the usual three-step approach:
Goals to Achieve
Execution: Maintain delivery speed and quality, despite uncertainty. Redirecting the focus of the team to execution is key for maintaining productivity. I also have to provide clarity in what “getting back to basics” means concretely for our team, so people see how their work connects to business goals.
Team/Organization: I need to improve (or at least maintain) team morale. I should also preserve a healthy team dynamic that allows for openness, for everyone, without toxicity or fear of speaking up.
Personal: When giving support to my team members, I need to balance transparency with leadership responsibility. I must represent company decisions even when I don't fully agree with them, while maintaining credibility with my team by not dismissing concerns.
Risks to Avoid
Execution: Uncertainty in business goals can negatively impact product development, which can cause further frustration. Doubling down on work can also increase the risk of incidents and burnout in this already stressful time.
Team/Organization: Creating fractures within and around the team by allowing an "us vs. them" mentality to develop. This can damage team culture and make it harder to integrate newer members who may feel caught in the middle. The critical senior engineers have legitimate concerns that deserve space, but not at the expense of psychological safety for newer members or team cohesion. Tolerating unacceptable behavior sets a bad example and shows that my expectations are lowered for everyone.
Personal: Losing trust by either blindly defending management decisions I don't believe in or by openly criticizing leadership. This balancing act is critical - lean too far either way and I become either an ineffective messenger or an untrustworthy leader. (For more thoughts on this, see my article on How to Represent Decisions You Disagree With.)
Mental Health: Overlooking signs of anxiety, burnout, or isolation. Not just in team members, but within myself too: these situations require tremendous energy from Engineering Managers to navigate, so I need to watch out for signs, and know when and who to ask for help.
5 Questions
What specific areas can our team control right now? This helps redirect energy from passive complaints to active work. For each area of frustration, I need to sort them into "things we can influence" versus "things outside our control." Then I'll work with the team to create concrete actions for the things we can change. For example, if product direction feels uncertain, we can create more visibility into our current work's impact on business metrics to demonstrate value.
How can I transparently communicate what I know while respecting confidentiality? I should establish a regular cadence of updates that includes: what I know for certain, what remains unclear, what I'm actively seeking answers on, and when the team can expect more information. This approach builds trust by demonstrating I'm not withholding information, while creating a structure that reduces constant speculation. Delivering on these promises will free the team from worrying about what information they are missing.
What's the actual impact on each team member? I need individual conversations to understand personal concerns beyond what's voiced in group settings. Some may be worried about career growth in scaled-back projects, others about job security, while newer members might question their decision to join. These conversations help me tailor my support to each person's specific situation, including helping those who might be better off transitioning elsewhere. Relatedly, if relevant, I need to dig into how remote team members are processing this uncertainty. Physical separation can amplify anxiety during uncertain times. Are remote team members getting the support they need? Do they know about available resources like mental health benefits, wellness time, or even simple options like taking vacation days? I should create safe spaces for remote team members to connect both with me and with each other, beyond just work discussions.
How can we redefine "getting back to basics" in a way that motivates rather than deflates? Working with the Product Manager, I need to frame our adjusted priorities in terms of impact and growth opportunities rather than simply as cuts. For example, "We're focusing on improving our core user journey, which touches 85% of our daily active customers." highlights importance rather than merely noting what we're not doing.
Why is this still a decent place to work at? We tend to take the good stuff for granted, and when something changes for the worse, we focus on that only. Most places are still pretty good, for example, the salary is probably decent, colleagues are inspiring, the tech stack provides a lot of learning opportunities, hybrid work allows flexibility, etc. What makes our team a good one, and how can I show this to the people in subtle, indirect ways (so it's not interpreted as changing the subject away from bad news)?
The fundamental challenge here isn't just managing negativity, it's nurturing a team culture that can process disappointment constructively. The "disagree and commit" concept can become handy: team members should feel free to voice concerns, but once decisions are made, we must align on execution rather than continuing to relitigate the past.
Ultimately, my goal isn't to eliminate all negative feelings; that would be unrealistic and patronizing. Instead, I want to create an environment where people can express frustration without spiraling into cynicism, and where we can acknowledge setbacks while still finding purpose and engagement in our work. (See more on handling team members’ frustration in my article on How to Deal with Negative Behaviour.)
What's been your experience managing team morale during uncertain times? Have you found effective ways to balance empathy with maintaining momentum? Let me know in the comments!
This Week’s Challenge
You're an Engineering Manager who has been running a hiring process for a senior developer role. Finally, you've narrowed it down to two excellent candidates. Both impressed everyone during the interviews, but have slight differences in what they could bring to the table.
The first candidate has deep expertise in your current tech stack and proved during the technical interview that they could navigate your complex codebase with surprising ease. They identified several issues your team has been struggling with for months. They're clearly a specialist who has mastered your exact technology combination.
The second candidate brings a much wider range of experiences across different domains and technologies, though not as deep in any specific area. They showed an open mindset, asked insightful questions about your system, and have good pragmatic opinions on the options you described them.
Your team is split on their preferences, with senior members leaning toward the first candidate's immediate impact, while others appreciate the second candidate's broader perspective and enjoyable collaboration attitude. Their salary expectations are both withn range, and your director has left the decision entirely up to you.
You need to make an offer within the next two days, and you can only hire one of them.
What do you do?
Think about what your goals would be and what risks you'd like to avoid in this situation. I'll share my thoughts next week. If you don't want to miss it, sign up here to receive those and similar weekly brain-teasers in the future as soon as they are published:
Until then, here's an inspiring quote related to last week’s challenge:
See you next week,
Péter