What No One Tells You About Leading a Turnaround

Leading a turnaround is one of the toughest tests in leadership. Everyone loves to talk about the success stories, the comebacks, the meteoric rise from the ashes. But what they don’t talk about are the sleepless nights, the difficult conversations, and the silent second-guessing.

When you step into a struggling business, you are not just inheriting a P&L. You are inheriting a culture that is bruised, a team that is exhausted, and a sense of collective doubt that hangs in the air like a fog. The numbers are easy. It is the morale that is hard. It is the trust that has been broken by previous leadership. It is the belief in a vision that has been promised and failed.

I have walked into rooms where the team wasn’t just skeptical, they were cynical. They had seen leaders come and go, each with a new strategy, each with a promise of change. And after every initiative failed to deliver, they stopped listening. They stopped caring. And the worst part? They stopped hoping.

To lead a turnaround, you need more than a new strategy. You need the courage to sit down with people and ask them what they need, not what you need from them. You need to face the hard questions, the ones that have been left unanswered for too long. You need to rebuild trust, not just revenue.

The first step in a turnaround isn’t writing a new plan. It is restoring faith. It is reminding people that they matter, that they are seen, that their work is valuable. It is walking the floor, sitting in on the meetings, asking for their input, and meaning it.

The turnaround isn’t complete when the numbers go up. It is complete when the team believes again. And that takes more than a strategy. It takes leadership that isn’t afraid to walk through the fire with the people who have been burned by it.