How to Avoid Polarisation in an Uncertain World

Can a better understanding of our uncertainty fingerprint help reduce polarisation?

Fear of the unknown may be a, or possibly is the fundamental fear.

N.R. Carleton

A few weeks ago, I was talking with the head of transformation at a large global organisation, who told me how delivering change had become so much more complex as their diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda had to be factored into their business model change programme.??“I love change”, they told me, “But it seems to be getting more complicated to achieve every year.” I paused and said, “Perhaps that’s because you’ve had a career doing it to others. How does it feel when it’s done to you?” There was a pause, and then with a sheepish smile, they said, “Nah .. I don’t like that!”

It’s a truism, but we like what we’re comfortable with and good at and tend to take for granted or even diminish the opposite. Our relationship with uncertainty is the source of our most profound societal blind spot, and now amplified by social media, it’s generating a growing sense of polarisation, not just amongst social groups but within families and organisations.??I’m not talking about polarisation around beliefs, ideas, or between social tribes but our innate need for certainty and how it distances us from others.??We each have a unique uncertainty fingerprint depending on our genetics, upbringing and the culture and situations we find ourselves in. For most people, their relationship with uncertainty is unknown to them.

Neuroscientists[i] ?are starting to discover brain networks and regions associated with close-mindedness and how this affects our worldview on topics ranging from climate change acceptance[ii] ?to how objectively lung cancer screening is conducted.[iii] ??This and other research show that we can become more attuned to how we react to uncertainty and build mindsets enabling us to live more contentedly with it.?

It starts by recognising that we’ve told a story, particularly in liberal countries, that having a high tolerance to uncertainty is good and close-mindedness is bad. This binary framing is unhelpful and part of a polarising worldview.??It limits our ability to understand ourselves in an uncertain world and discover our optimal contribution to navigating the future.

What’s your relationship with uncertainty?

Researchers, including?Arie W. Kruglanski , who have studied our psychological relationship with uncertainty, have identified distinct components, including a preference for order, predictability, decisiveness, discomfort with ambiguity and the need for closure.?

If you want to gain more insight into your tolerance for uncertainty, you can take the?Need for Closure Scale .??This looks at your impulse to find definitive answers to problems because of an aversion to being confused or uncertain.??A strong need for certainty can lead to several consequences, including anger, anxiety, and impatience when decisions aren’t made. Or a strong desire to maintain the closure we’ve achieved, avoiding new information that affects this stability.?

But again, this isn’t a black-and-white, good vs bad picture.??My career has always been about leading change of some form, and perhaps I’ve told myself a story about being highly tolerant to uncertainty (which the test incidentally confirms), but I also have learnt that situations, particularly involving conflict or fatigue, or major threats to our commercial viability quickly increase my close-mindedness.??This points to how important reading our emotions is - how they powerfully reveal our unmet core needs in uncertain situations and can quickly get us to root cause analysis. When we accept that our feelings of vulnerability, anger or defensiveness are not the result of others but a reflection of our need for safety, feeling valued, connected or informed, we can start from a different place regarding what we need to do.

Why is this knowledge so important?

Knowing where we stand on the need for closure scale helps us increase our self-awareness of our core needs in uncertain situations and how to work with others to counter the negative effects of doubling down on our comfort zone.?

For example, knowing that you have a high need for closure means you may be avoiding listening to different points of view or alternative solutions. Being on the other end of the scale may reduce your ability to commit to decisions or others.??This knowledge also has an impact on our well-being[iv] .??

Leaders across this psychological spectrum have their advantages and downsides; learning to work with our opposites produces better outcomes and more resilience in systems.?

Some organisations are starting to recognise the benefits of breaking out of the mould of conventional CEO roles and creating joint leadership positions.??I’ve coached several such ‘creative’ partnerships that have achieved extraordinary commercial and cultural success because by embracing their difference, together, 1+1 truly equals 3. In one of these partnerships, the individuals sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, having turned those attributes to their advantage in earlier roles – one known for decisive action, the other for creative thinking and the ability to form strong relationships. Together, they challenge each other to think beyond what they could do alone.?

In every leadership team, the tensions around members' tolerance for uncertainty are playing out, often unacknowledged and mislabelled as them being ‘on or off the bus.’??In the turbulent twenties, we need everyone to figure it out together.?

[i] ?[i]?Massullo C, Panno A, Carbone GA, Della Marca G, Farina B, Imperatori C. Need for cognitive closure is associated with different intra-network functional connectivity patterns: A resting state EEG study. Soc Neurosci. 2022 Apr;17(2):143-153. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2022.2043432. Epub 2022 Mar 8. PMID: 35167428.

[ii] ?Orr M, Stewart A, Grundstein A. Investigating Connections between Need for Cognitive Closure and Climate Change Concern in College Students. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Aug 4;17(15):5619. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17155619. PMID: 32759880; PMCID: PMC7432500.

[iii] ?Lillie SE, Fu SS, Fabbrini AE, Rice KL, Clothier BA, Doro E, Melzer AC, Partin MR. Does need for cognitive closure explain individual differences in lung cancer screening? A brief report. J Health Psychol. 2020 Jul;25(8):1109-1117. doi: 10.1177/1359105317750253. Epub 2018 Jan 2. PMID: 29292661.

[iv] ?White HA. Need for cognitive closure predicts stress and anxiety of college students during COVID-19 pandemic. Pers Individ Dif. 2022 Mar;187:111393. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2021.111393. Epub 2021 Nov 12. PMID: 34789957; PMCID: PMC8585594.