Why the harder we reach for certainty, the less clear we lead.
There is a very real paradox at the heart of leadership in uncertainty. The more urgently we try to create certainty, the more likely we are to lose the clarity, flexibility and judgement we need to move through it.
We see it in real life all the time. A plan stops working, but we hold onto it because changing course feels like admitting we got it wrong. A decision needs to be made, but we keep asking for more information because we are afraid of what might happen if we choose badly. Or we fill the space with activity: more meetings, more projects, more messages, more urgency. Everyone is moving, but very little is actually moving forward.
This week’s Lead Always Forum session was inspired in part by listening to Dr Rebecca Homkes speak about three common traps leaders and organisations fall into under uncertainty: delusion, paralysis and frenzy. Her fourth response is acting on a tested belief. The language was simple, but it gave us a useful way to recognise what can otherwise be difficult to see while we are inside it.
Three very human traps
- Delusion is what happens when we continue as though the situation has not changed. The plan was sound. People agreed to it. Time and money have already been invested. So we keep going, even when the ground underneath it has shifted.
- Paralysis is the holding pattern. We tell ourselves that we are being responsible. We need another meeting, another report, a little more research, one more conversation. Sometimes more information is necessary. Sometimes the waiting has quietly become the decision.
- Frenzy is the opposite response. We launch, change, restructure and act. It can look energetic and decisive from the outside, but it scatters attention across too many priorities. The team becomes exhausted and the leader becomes busier without becoming more effective.
These are not signs of weak or incompetent leaders. They are very human responses to a situation the brain finds genuinely threatening.
The real question is whether we can notice the response before it begins making decisions on our behalf.
The response begins inside us
Uncertainty may be caused by something outside us, but our first experience of it is internal. We seldom notice this. The body tightens. The mind starts filling the gaps. We imagine the worst: what might happen, what others may think, what we could lose and what it could say about us. We find ourselves we are responding to the story as though it is already true.
This is why the work needs to flow both inward and outward.
We turn inward first.
Pausing to recognise what is happening.
What am I feeling?
What story am I creating?
What is this feeling driving me to do?
Where should I channel this energy?
Then we turn outward.
Noticing how is my response impacting others?
Am I adding fear, hesitation, confusion or urgency to the system?
Could I be weighing other people down? What is that about?
How can I better explore what remains possible?
This matters in every part of life, but it has has greater consequences in leadership. Your nervous system’s response is not entirely private when people are taking their cues from you. It shows up in your demeanour – your tone, your silence, your need to control, your reluctance to decide and the speed at which you ask others to move.
When learning becomes available in real life
One of the most meaningful moments in the Forum on Monday came when someone described how she wakes each morning with what she called an ‘existential sense of dread’. Then, in her words, she said she wakes up with my face in her head remembering the first Forum session, when we spoke about the brain’s threat response and drew the amygdala as a small almond.
She moves to self talk – a positive one with words like: “it is so small. It’s called the amygdala. It is a part of my brain trying to protect me, and it making me more afraid than I need to be.”
The anxiety does not disappear because she remembers an almond. Something else happens. She creates a small space between the alarm bell and the meaning she gives it. She can recognise that the body is responding before she assumes the response is telling the whole truth.
That is where choice begins.
Another participant noticed how quickly changed conditions can become an internal argument: perhaps I am behind, perhaps I am not good enough, perhaps nothing will work. He saw how much energy is consumed by fighting the feeling and the belief, compared with turning towards the practical question: what has actually changed, and what can I do now?
A third recognised how easily preparation can be mistaken for a guarantee. When you have carefully prepared plans A, B, C, D and E, it can be hard to accept that the answer may no longer be somewhere in the original plan. Preparation remains valuable. It cannot remove uncertainty from life.
The fourth response
When the facts are incomplete and more information is not going to make the decision risk-free, the alternative is not guessing. It is not recklessness. It is acting on a tested belief.
This asks us to once again, turn inward and dig beneath the loudest reaction.
What do I know from experience?
What evidence is already available?
What have I learned about this situation, these people and myself?
What do my values tell me?
What is intuition pointing towards, and what still needs to be checked?
Dr Homkes explains that a tested belief is not a hunch. It is a thoughtful commitment we can examine. We can ask: what would have to be true for this to be right? What am I basing it on? What would cause me to update it?
There are times when gathering more information is wise. There are also times when seeking more from the outside becomes a way of avoiding what we already know. We have experience, memory, judgement, values and inner wisdom. Sometimes the work is to become quiet enough to hear them, trust them and take the next responsible step.
What leadership in uncertainty asks of us
Leaders in that middle layer of organisations often carry this most visibly. They receive decisions from above, sometimes without enough context and sometimes without fully agreeing with them, and then have to translate those decisions into action. Their teams can feel when the message does not match what the leader believes. When there is silence, people fill the gap with their own stories, and those stories are often worse than the truth.
This is where steadiness becomes the goal in leadership during uncertainty. Steadiness does not mean pretending to be certain. It means remaining present with what is unresolved without allowing fear or discomfort to take over the whole decision. It means being honest about what is known, what is still unknown and what you believe is the wisest way forward from here.
We may not know exactly what happens next. We can still pause, return to what is real, listen to what experience has taught us and choose how we will meet it.
A question to take with you
- When uncertainty is present, what do the people around you experience : greater weight, greater confusion or greater steadiness?
- And if you stopped searching for a guarantee, what tested belief might already be available to help you take the next honest step?
If you’re reading this Blog and are curious how the Forum can support you, your company or your team, please get in touch or join our LinkedIn Live Event on 28 July. The forum is designed for that middle layer – the managers, future leaders, emerging leaders supporting the hard skills building the inner capacities to perform when uncertainty is the order of the day.
If you’re curious about how the Lead Always Forum can support you, your company or your team, please get in touch.
