Stand Out or Get Smoothed Over

A Merger Survival Guide for People Who Actually Want to Keep Their Jobs: Part 1

Mergers are organizational auditions. Every employee is being evaluated—whether you know it or not. Some will shine. Some will blend in. Some will complain themselves right out of a role.

You get to decide which one you are.

The Four Types Mergers Create

The Hero: Sees problems, builds solutions, makes leadership’s job easier. Gets kept.

The Squeaky Wheel: Complains loudly, offers nothing useful, drains energy. Gets cut.

The Ghost: Does solid work, stays quiet, gets forgotten. Gets reassigned or eliminated.

The Asshole: Brilliant but toxic. Creates value, destroys culture. Gets managed out eventually.

Your goal? Be the Hero. The one who makes things work while everyone else is panicking.

What Heroes Do During Mergers

They see gaps and fill them. Don’t wait for someone to tell you what’s broken. Notice it. Fix it. Document the before and after. Make yourself indispensable by solving the problems leadership doesn’t have time to see.

They translate chaos into clarity. Mergers create confusion. Heroes take messy situations and make them understandable. They answer questions before they’re asked. They create clarity when everyone else is creating noise.

They build bridges, not walls. The teams merging don’t trust each other yet. Heroes connect people. They introduce the right person to the right problem. They make collaboration easier, not harder.

They stay calm when everyone else is spiraling. Anxiety is contagious. So is composure. Heroes don’t panic. They don’t catastrophize. They stay grounded and help others do the same.

They make their boss’s job easier. Your manager is drowning right now. Don’t add to the pile. Anticipate needs. Deliver without drama. Be the person they can count on when everything else feels unstable.

What Heroes Don’t Do

They don’t complain without solutions. Yes, mergers suck. Yes, things are uncertain. No, your Slack rants aren’t helping. If you see a problem, bring a fix. Or stay quiet.

They don’t hoard information. Knowledge isn’t power during a merger—collaboration is. Share what you know. Help others succeed. Your job security isn’t built on keeping secrets.

They don’t play politics. Mergers bring out the worst in some people. Don’t be one of them. Don’t backstab. Don’t gossip. Don’t position yourself by tearing others down.

They don’t wait to be told what to do. Initiative matters more during mergers than at any other time. Don’t sit around waiting for instructions. Figure out what needs to happen and start doing it.

The Bare Minimum Will Make You Invisible

When uncertainty hits, most people’s instinct is to put their head down and just do their job. Keep quiet. Don’t rock the boat. Wait for the dust to settle.

That feels safe. It’s not.

The person who does exactly what’s asked and nothing more becomes part of the furniture. Functional but forgettable. When leadership sits down to decide who’s critical and who’s cuttable, you won’t even make it into the conversation.

You’re not bad. You’re just not memorable. And in a merger, memorable is what survives.

Doing the bare minimum puts you in the middle bucket. The “solid performer but nothing special” category. The group that gets divided up based on spreadsheet math, not strategic value. Some will stay. Some will go. It’s a coin flip. And your fate will be decided by people who barely know your name.

Here’s the brutal truth: mergers don’t reward competence. They reward demonstrated value. If your contribution isn’t visible, it doesn’t exist. If your impact isn’t documented, it didn’t happen. If leadership can’t immediately recall what you bring that others don’t, you’re replaceable.

You might be doing great work. You might be reliable, steady, someone your team depends on. But if no one outside your immediate circle knows it, you’ve made yourself vulnerable.

The person who solves problems quietly is doing important work. The person who solves problems and makes sure the right people know about it? That’s someone leadership can’t afford to lose.

The Fine Line: Standing Out Without Being a Jerk

Standing out during a merger is tricky. You need visibility, but you can’t trample people to get it. You need to demonstrate value, but you can’t do it by making others look bad.

The difference between the Hero and the Asshole is this: the Hero makes everyone around them better. The Asshole makes everyone around them smaller.

What standing out the right way looks like:

You volunteer for the project no one wants because it’s hard and messy. You figure it out. You bring others along with you. You share credit. When it succeeds, people remember you led it and also remember you made them part of the win.

You notice someone struggling and help them without being asked. You share information that makes your teammate’s job easier. You connect people who need each other. You build up your colleagues publicly and give them credit for their contributions.

You speak up in meetings when you have something valuable to add. You ask the question everyone’s thinking but no one wants to ask. You offer solutions, not just critiques. And when someone else has a better idea, you support it enthusiastically.

You take initiative, but you do it collaboratively. “I noticed this problem and started working on a fix. Want to take a look and tell me what I’m missing?” That’s leadership. “I fixed this problem you all were too slow to address” is just being a jerk with initiative.

What standing out the wrong way looks like:

You take credit for team efforts. You position your wins by contrasting them with others’ failures. You volunteer for high-visibility projects and then delegate all the actual work while keeping the spotlight.

You share information selectively, keeping the good stuff for yourself so you can be the hero. You throw teammates under the bus in meetings to make yourself look better by comparison. You backstab, gossip, and politic your way into leadership’s good graces.

You dominate every conversation. You interrupt. You dismiss other people’s ideas so yours can shine. You make sure everyone knows how busy and important and critical you are.

That might get you noticed. But it also marks you as someone who builds their success on other people’s failure. And smart leadership knows that’s not sustainable.

Standing Out as a Team Player

The best way to stand out during a merger is to become the person who makes the team work better.

Be the one who connects the dots between what the old team knew and what the new team needs. Be the translator who helps people from different cultures understand each other. Be the bridge between groups that don’t trust each other yet.

When someone’s struggling, help them. When someone’s overwhelmed, offer to take something off their plate. When someone does great work, make sure it gets recognized. When your team wins, talk about “we” not “I.”

Leadership is watching for people who make organizations stronger, not just people who make themselves look good. The person who helps five people succeed is more valuable than the person who succeeds alone.

You can be visible and collaborative. You can be ambitious and kind. You can stand out without stepping on people.

In fact, that’s the only kind of standing out that actually works long-term. Because the person who climbs by pushing others down eventually runs out of people willing to work with them. The person who rises by lifting others? They build a reputation that follows them everywhere.

How to Actually Stand Out

Document your impact—and make it visible.

Keep a running record, but not just for yourself. When you solve something, write it up. Send a brief update to your manager. Post wins in team channels. Make your contributions part of the organizational memory, not just your personal file.

The person who fixed the onboarding process six months ago but never mentioned it? They’re invisible. The person who documented the problem, the solution, and the business impact? That’s someone leadership remembers when decisions get made.

Track three things: what was broken, what you did, what changed. Numbers help. “Reduced processing time by 40%” beats “improved efficiency” every time.

Build relationships across teams—strategically.

Don’t just network randomly. Identify the people who will matter in the new structure. Who’s making decisions? Who has influence with leadership? Who’s already connected to both sides of the merger?

Then make yourself useful to them. Offer to help with their projects. Share information they need. Introduce them to people they should know. Create reasons for them to remember your name when opportunities come up.

But do it authentically. People can smell opportunism from a mile away. Help because you genuinely want things to work, not just because you’re playing chess.

Be visible without being annoying—there’s a formula.

Visibility isn’t about talking more in meetings or sending more emails. It’s about showing up when it matters and adding value when you do.

Speak up when you have something worth saying. Share work that demonstrates your capabilities. Volunteer for the projects everyone’s avoiding because they’re hard but important. That’s how you get noticed for the right reasons.

Bad visibility: dominating every conversation, taking credit for everything, making sure everyone knows how busy you are.

Good visibility: solving the problem no one else wanted to touch, helping someone else succeed publicly, being the person who can be counted on when stakes are high.

Stay adaptable—and prove it with action.

Everyone says they’re flexible. Few people actually demonstrate it. The difference is whether you resist change or help implement it.

When new processes roll out, be the first to adopt them. When priorities shift, shift with them without complaint. When the team needs someone to learn a new system or take on unfamiliar work, raise your hand.

The person who keeps saying “but we’ve always done it this way” is marking themselves for elimination. The person who says “let me figure out how to make the new way work” is marking themselves as essential.

Adaptability isn’t passive. It’s active. It’s visible. It’s choosing to be part of the solution instead of mourning the old way.

Take care of yourself—you can’t perform if you’re burned out.

Mergers create chronic stress. People make terrible decisions when they’re exhausted, anxious, and running on fumes. You need to stay sharp when everyone else is losing their edge.

That means protecting your sleep. Taking actual breaks. Saying no to the things that don’t matter so you can say yes to the things that do. Staying connected to people and activities outside work that keep you grounded.

This isn’t soft advice. This is strategic. The person who maintains their composure and judgment while everyone else is spiraling has a massive advantage.

Burnout doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a liability. Take care of yourself like your job depends on it. Because it does.

Insurance Policy No One Talks About

Here’s the part most merger survival guides won’t tell you: everything you do to survive this merger also sets you up to land somewhere better if you don’t.

The documented impact? That’s your resume writing itself in real time. The relationships you’re building? Those are your references and future opportunities. The visibility you’re creating? That’s your professional reputation extending beyond this company’s walls.

The person who spends a merger complaining and hiding has nothing to show for it if they get cut. No story to tell. No wins to point to. No relationships to leverage. They leave diminished.

The person who showed up as the Hero? They leave with proof. Proof they can handle chaos. Proof they solve problems under pressure. Proof they make organizations better even when those organizations are falling apart.

Your LinkedIn profile practically writes itself. “Led cross-functional integration during merger, reducing process redundancies by 40% and creating clarity for 200+ employees during organizational transition.” That’s not survival mode. That’s executive presence.

The people you helped? They remember. They become your network. They refer you. They vouch for you when their companies are hiring. They connect you to opportunities you didn’t even know existed.

The skills you’re building right now—translating chaos, building bridges, staying composed under pressure—those aren’t merger-specific. Those are leadership fundamentals that make you valuable anywhere.

So yes, do all of this to increase your odds of staying. But do it just as hard knowing that if you don’t stay, you’re leaving with more than you came in with. You’re leaving as someone who performed when it mattered. Someone who has evidence of their value. Someone other companies will want.

The squeaky wheel who gets cut? They’re just unemployed and bitter. The Hero who gets cut? They’re a proven commodity with a track record and a network.

Either way, you win. But only if you show up like someone worth keeping.

Mergers reward people who make things work and eliminate people who make things harder.

You can’t control the merger. But you can control how you show up in it.

Be the person leadership wants to keep. The one who solves problems, builds bridges, and makes everyone around them better.

Be the Hero. Not the squeaky wheel. Not the ghost. Not the jerk.

The Hero.

Because even if this company doesn’t keep you, the next one will want you.