Leading Through the Winter Season: How to Support and Strengthen Your Team When It Matters Most

The end of the year often feels like a convergence point: deadlines tightening, expectations rising, and the emotional weight of a long season settling over teams who are trying to finish well while privately battling fatigue. Winter has a way of exposing the places where leaders matter most. Buried inside the flurry of year-end demands is a deeper question every employee carries but rarely articulates outright: Do I matter here?

At InitiativeOne, we see this every December as leaders try to navigate cultural realities that didn’t exist twenty years ago. Technology has accelerated the pace of work. Hybrid schedules have reshaped connection. Employees across generations approach authority, communication, and accountability with entirely different expectations. And yet the human needs beneath the surface such as belonging, clarity, trust, and purpose remain unchanged. They’ve simply become more visible.

Dr. Fred Johnson’s November Think Tank, “The Marshawn Lynch Rule: Love Hard Before You Coach Hard,” captured this modern reality with unusual clarity. He explained that today’s workforce will no longer accept authority simply because a leader holds a title. They expect involvement, respect, and a voice in how problems are solved. They expect authenticity over performance, and they can sense, with unerring accuracy, whether their leaders genuinely care about them or simply want compliance.

His point was simple: you cannot coach people hard unless you have already loved them well. That single insight reframes everything about end-of-year leadership. In moments of exhaustion, when employees are stretched thin and emotional bandwidth is low, people rarely respond well to pressure, but they almost always respond well to connection.

The Modern Workforce Has Changed, and Leadership Must Change With It

If it feels harder to lead today, it’s because it is. Dr. Fred is one of many experts who have noted that employees now participate in the flow of information in ways that reshape how they expect to be led. When people grow up in an interactive digital environment, they expect to be part of the solution, not simply the recipients of decisions.

This shift is not theoretical. It is sociological.

According to a 2024 McKinsey analysis, younger employees leave organizations not because of compensation, but because of poor communication, a lack of development, and a perceived absence of genuine care. Deloitte’s recent global workforce report reinforces the same trend: trust, growth, and relational transparency sit at the center of retention, not pay alone. Gallup’s latest workplace research shows that 61% of employees worldwide feel emotionally detached from their work, clarifying why simply motivating teams harder during the winter season backfires. Emotional detachment is not solved through pressure. It is solved through presence.

This is the real challenge hidden inside December leadership: employees aren’t just tired but also extremely disconnected. Disconnection requires a human response from leaders. A response that demands intentionality.

Building on November: The Marshawn Lynch Rule

At last month’s Think Tank, Dr. Fred shared a story about a running back coach who had an unusually strong relationship with Marshawn Lynch, one of the NFL’s most complex, private, and fiercely independent players.

When asked how he managed to coach Marshawn with such directness, even challenge him, the coach didn’t hesitate: “I coached him hard because I loved him hard. And the love came first.”

This isn’t sentimentality but disciplined leadership. It explains why teams accept feedback from some leaders and reject it from others. It explains why some leaders can have difficult conversations that deepen trust, while others fracture trust simply by raising a concern.

People’s inner dialogue during feedback is never neutral. They’re deciding in real time if they feel valued, respected, and understood. That’s when difficult conversations become invitations rather than threats. Challenge becomes a form of belief rather than a form of punishment.

As leaders move through the winter season, the Marshawn Lynch Rule becomes even more essential. Your team will tolerate hard coaching, but only if they trust the heart behind it.

 

Technology Has Made Connection Harder…and More Necessary

One of the most compelling patterns Dr. Fred highlighted in November was the sociological truth that as access to information increases, reverence for authority decreases. That doesn’t mean employees disrespect leaders; it means they feel like contributors, not subordinates.

Technology has also created a phenomenon sociologists call “cocooning,” the impulse to retreat, isolate, and avoid unnecessary connection because life feels overwhelming. As people retreat deeper into their homes, screens, and curated digital environments, they become more starved for meaning and belonging in the places where they spend most of their waking hours: work.

This creates a paradox leaders must solve: your team is more isolated than ever, yet more hungry for connection than ever.

Which means leadership is no longer primarily about expertise. It is about emotional intelligence. It is about presence. It is about the inner work a leader does so they can show up with strength, clarity, and calm in the midst of chaos.

Why Winter Exposes the Fault Lines in Workplace

While summer and fall create momentum, winter reveals meaning. Winter exposes what the year has quietly built: patterns of trust, clarity, or disconnection. It becomes clear who is aligned, who is struggling, and who feels unseen, not because people care less, but because emotional capacity is lower and organizational health becomes easier to see. 

InitiativeOne often observes the same patterns across industries:

●      Teams who feel psychologically safe innovate more freely.

●      Teams who trust their leaders bring forward problems early.

●      Teams who feel valued contribute discretionary effort willingly.

●      Teams who feel dismissed or invisible withdraw quietly but decisively.

Research continues to validate these dynamics. The Society for Human Resource Management reports that employees who feel respected are 56% more likely to stay and 93% more likely to report high engagement. Meanwhile, MIT’s Culture 500 study found that toxicity, even mild toxicity, is the single strongest predictor of turnover, outweighing compensation by a factor of 10.

Winter magnifies the gap between these environments. It makes trust harder to fake and easier to lose. Which is why the questions that matter most right now are not technical but instead:

●      Do people feel valued?

●      Do they feel safe being honest?

●      Do they feel seen?

●      Do they feel believed in?

●      Do they feel led or managed?

These are the very questions that determine whether the Marshawn Lynch Rule can take root in your team, because people will only receive challenge well when these emotional foundations are in place.

How Leaders Can Pour Into Their Teams This Season

Teams need leaders who slow down long enough to understand what people are carrying, not just what they are producing. They need leaders who communicate context, not just direction. They need leaders who invite dialogue, not just compliance. They need leaders who make inclusivity a daily practice, not a seasonal talking point.

Pouring into your team isn’t a moment; it’s a rhythm:

●      noticing small wins when they appear faint

●      extending grace when someone is operating on emotional fumes

●      naming strengths others have stopped recognizing in themselves

●      offering clarity when ambiguity is eroding momentum

●      creating space where people can safely tell the truth about what’s not working

When leaders pour into their teams this way, they create more than temporary relief. They create stability, connection, and an environment where people can recover their energy and rediscover their voice. That steadiness becomes the team’s competitive advantage, especially when the demands of the season feel heavier than usual.

The Inner Work of Leadership in Winter

The hardest truth Dr. Fred names in November is one every leader must face: you cannot out-love your team if you do not love yourself. Confidence, humility, and self-acceptance shape how leaders give feedback, receive accountability, and navigate conflict. If you fear rejection, tough conversations will feel threatening. If your value is tied solely to performance, you will avoid the very moments that create growth.

Winter exposes whether leaders have done this internal work. It shows up in how you enter the room, how you handle tension, how you respond to fatigue, and how you treat people when pressure is highest.

This inner work is not self-indulgent. It is the foundation of trust, and trust is the currency of leadership now more than ever. Plus, leaders who do this inner work now set the stage for the kind of clarity and cohesion that will define the team’s trajectory in the first quarter of the new year.

Ending This Year Right to Accelerate Next Year’s Beginning

Winter leadership isn’t loud. It’s not defined by big gestures or sweeping change initiatives. It is defined by steadiness, by the quiet moments where leaders choose presence over pressure, curiosity over control, and compassion over command.

The irony is that these quieter actions create the conditions for explosive growth in the new year. When people feel cared for, January arrives not as a restart but as a continuation, leading to a natural acceleration of momentum that was already building inside a connected, stable, and trusted team. Feeling steady and recharged, the team enters January aligned, grounded, and ready to move.

This work is not easy, and that’s why we create spaces for leaders to think together, challenge their assumptions, and sharpen the habits that make cultures strong. The conversations you seek and the clarity you want to carry into the new year are strengthened when you learn alongside others who are doing the same work, so we invite you to step into the full range of leadership development experiences we offer. From our monthly Think Tanks to immersive Leadership Transformation processes, executive coaching, cohort-based learning, and customized organizational consulting, each offering is designed to help leaders build the inner stability and relational strength that today’s workplace demands.

Join Us for the Next Leadership Conversation

Leaders today don’t need more noise, more checklists, or another set of abstract ideals that never make it past the page. They need a place where real issues can be named, where blind spots can be explored without shame, and where practical tools are grounded in the kind of human understanding that makes teams stronger. That is the work we do at InitiativeOne, and we invite you to be part of a community that is committed to leading with courage, clarity, and care.

Our next Think Tank will take you deeper into the practical side of this mindset shift: how comfort quietly replaces responsibility, how teams lose their edge without noticing, and how leaders reclaim clarity and purpose before a slow slide becomes a crisis. If you're ready to strengthen how you lead this winter and anchor your team for what comes next, register now at initiativeone.com/events 

December Think Tank: When I Am Enough Is Not Enough: When Responsibility Is Replaced by Comfort

December 12, 2025 beginning at 7:45 AM CDT

We’ll explore why comfort is so seductive, why it erodes accountability faster than we realize, and how leaders can reestablish the disciplines that keep teams aligned, focused, and resilient, especially during the winter stretch when energy and engagement naturally dip.

This is a hybrid event hosted across all locations:

ONLINE 

7:45 – 8:30 AM CDT · Presentation & Discussion

IN-PERSON · GREEN BAY 

7:15 – 7:45 AM CDT · Networking & Coffee 7:45 – 8:30 AM CDT · Presentation & Discussion

IN-PERSON · ATLANTA + KNOXVILLE 

8:15 – 8:45 AM EST · Networking & Coffee 8:45 – 9:30 AM EST · Presentation & Discussion

We’d love for you to join us- in the room or online- as we examine what happens when leaders drift into comfort, and how small but intentional adjustments can restore momentum for the entire team.

Future Events in 2026:

Mark your calendars now for our 2026 Think Tanks. These conversations are designed to strengthen your leadership muscle month after month, giving you a space to reset, reflect, and return to your team with clarity and confidence.

January 16, 2026

February 20, 2026

March 20, 2026

April 17, 2026

May 15, 2026

July 10, 2026

August 14, 2026

September 18, 2026

October 9, 2026

November 13, 2026

December 11, 2026