As he stared at me with glaring eyes, I knew the project manager Bart was about to make a bad decision. My problem? I couldn't find the words to interrupt the freight train of his plans. We were in the middle of the biggest of the many change projects we had going at the bank where I worked. Mergers, new software systems, reorganizing how we approached clients. All these changes and more were colliding as we watched our coworkers get fired or moved or demoted. Some were mysteriously getting promoted as well. But for what? Questions circled constantly about who was next to get good or bad news. Important work was falling through the cracks and clients were leaving in droves. No one was sheltered from the change. The heat was on. Somehow, I found myself in a semi-advisory role, charged with much of the training on new systems and approaches, and, ironically, teaching leaders how to lead change in a changing environment. We were in a meeting to plan critical dates and milestones for rolling out the project. As with any good project manager, Bart was nailing down dates and creating urgency with deadlines. He had not been in the field. My colleague Mitch and I had been out taking the temperature of the people being impacted, and we had called the meeting to update him on the status. Our intention was to lower the heat a bit to give people who were feeling very unsafe a chance to ...