Leading through consolidation may be the hardest thing you’ll ever do as a communications leader, because it changes the one thing you assumed was fixed: who’s in charge.

I’ve worked with agencies on both sides of a merger, and I’ve watched the same scene play out over and over. The rules everyone counted on quietly change, and that’s jarring for even the most seasoned team.

When the Rules Change

The CEO who always had the final say suddenly reports to someone else. The executives who reported to that CEO now answer to a boss whose own authority just shrank. Everyone is renegotiating where they stand, usually without saying so out loud.

That’s different from the challenge I wrote about recently, when leading through change, and you carry a transition you chose. Consolidation is a transition you didn’t choose. It arrives from above and rearranges the org chart and the pecking order at the same time.

And it isn’t only an agency story. Corporate communications teams are being centralized, folded into marketing, or rebuilt under new leadership. Leading through consolidation looks different in each setting, yet the human challenge underneath is the same.

The Backdrop Is Impossible to Miss

Omnicom closed its acquisition of IPG late last year, creating the largest advertising and communications holding company in the world. The ripple through PR has been fast.

Golin and Ketchum became Golin Ketchum. Porter Novelli was folded into FleishmanHillard. By one industry tally, more than 12,000 holding-company PR jobs were eliminated in the first half of 2026. And it was recently reported that WPP may cut another 1,000 positions by year-end.

Behind each of those headlines are people trying to do good work while wondering whether their job, their team, or their manager will still be there next quarter.

What the Research Shows

The cost of that upheaval is well documented. EY research found that 75 percent of key employees are gone within three years of a merger. The people most likely to walk are your strongest, the ones with options.

It’s rarely the deal math that decides the outcome. EY’s more recent research on transactions found that success hinges on the human side — leadership, psychological safety, and collaboration across old dividing lines — yet nearly half of deal leaders say these moves still fail to deliver the value they promised.

Put plainly: whether consolidation succeeds or fails often comes down to leaders like you.

What Leading Through Consolidation Asks of You

Name the uncertainty out loud. When you go quiet, people don’t assume the best; they fill the silence with rumor, and rumor is always worse than the truth. Say what you know, say what you don’t, and say when you’ll know more.

Communicate more than feels necessary, especially when you lack every answer. “I don’t know yet, and I’ll tell you the moment I do” is leadership. Going dark until you have certainty is not.

Lead with empathy and mean it. Your people are anxious, and so, perhaps, are you. Naming that doesn’t make you weak; it makes you someone they’ll still follow once the ground stops shaking.

Be visible. In a season of consolidation, presence is a message in itself. A leader who shows up, listens, and stays steady says something no memo can.

Then sit with a few honest questions:

• When the rules changed, did you adjust honestly, or act as though nothing were different?
• Are you protecting your people’s confidence, or only your own position?
• If your best person were quietly deciding whether to stay, would this week’s version of you give them a reason to remain?

The Choice That’s Yours

Leading through consolidation is, in the end, a test of who you are when the ground moves.

Consolidation strips away much of what felt certain. What it can’t take is the kind of leader you decide to be inside it. That choice is yours, and it’s the one your team is watching most closely.

If you’re leading through consolidation right now and want a steady outside perspective, that’s the work I do with communications leaders. I offer a complimentary consultation. You can schedule it here.