What’s Next? How Uncertainty Defines Leadership

In the face of uncertainty, it is understandable to ponder “what’s next?” It may seem entirely logical to want to emerge from uncertainty and move forward deliberately to a place you might be certain is better than where you are now.

But things are not always as logical as they seem. If you view uncertainty as a bad thing, it makes sense to move away from it. But what if uncertainty is a good thing? What if being uncertain is actually a gift? You might be heading away from where you ought to be headed. You might be aiming in the opposite direction of where you want to be.

Being effective as a leader amounts to being effective in dealing with uncertainty.

Rather than attempting to avoid it – which is likely futile anyway — leadership at a minimum requires accepting uncertainty as unavoidable, and ideally learning to embrace uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a human fabrication. It is a construct of wanting things to be predictable and manageable. Nature will have none of that. The only certainty in nature is that things are constantly changing. At best, any sense of certainty ought to be understood as temporal.

Absolute certainty is a luxury. Pursuing competence suggests that we strive to be reasonably certain to the fullest extent it may be possible. While we may approach total certainty, continued exploration often yields exceptions to the rules we hold to be true. The fact that water boils at 212° Fahrenheit is only “true” at sea-level. It is actually conditional on atmospheric pressure.

Having certainty in most facts requires some situational awareness. There is hard-earned wisdom in understanding that it is often the exception that makes the rule.

Things we are certain of today may make fools of us tomorrow. Mark Twain humorously observed that “What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.” It is why science is best based on working theories, and scientific inquiry amounts to exchanging existing so-called facts with new ones. How long was it believed that the earth is flat? Or that the earth resides at the center of the universe?

Uncertainty is the basis for all discovery. The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus points out that “a person cannot learn that which they think they already know.”

Curiosity is an expression of uncertainty that motivates exploration.

Uncertainty, in and of itself is a neutral position. It is neither good nor bad, it just represents a challenge to us when we must or feel we must make a decision and having certainty would make doing so easier. It is a self-imposed constraint that impacts how you think about things – without having any impact what-so-ever on the things you are contemplating. Uncertainty is a function of how you choose to interpret the feelings you have about the circumstances you face.

Uncertainty can be a source of anxiety or even terror. Fear of the unknown can be all consuming. Children's furtive imaginations cast monsters lying beneath their beds and hiding in closets. As adults we tend to outgrow fear of such monsters – yet allow the fear of the unknown block you from venturing beyond your comfort zone and hold you back from realizing your real potential.

At the same time, uncertainty is also a source of great pleasure. Curiosity about what’s hidden beneath wrapping paper, ribbon and bows is often a greater source of pleasure than discovering what’s actually within the package. We learn to savor the journey rather than focus just on our destination. The journey is often full of surprises - and the destination may well be disappointing.

Some aspects of fear and excitement are the beneficial result of biological triggers. Your sympathetic nervous system protects you from danger without your needing to intellectually understand the source of the threat. It is a non-thinking aspect of brain function, that along with other functions that control your heartbeat, body temperature and respiration are basic requirements for life. These are the necessarily mindless aspects of being human.

The mindful side of life is shaped by how you think. Your perceptions of the world are a matter of interpreting the information that your senses detect. It is also a function of your imagination. Imagination feeds perception to create what you define as your own reality. Reality is a combination the natural phenomena that surrounds us and the imagined realities that are constructed by purely human constructs that are made real by shared agreement and then often by imposed enforcement. Laws, systems of currency, political boundaries and religion are all examples of imagined realities – and are all every bit as powerful in shaping our lives as the natural force of things like hurricanes, volcanoes and earthquakes.

Beyond the instinctive responses driven by your survival instincts, most fear and delight tend to be products of your imagination. In other words, it is your creativity that dictates how you respond to uncertainty.

There is common saying that whether you believe you can or cannot accomplish something – you are right. Elite athletes learn to visualize their success by imagining beforehand how they will perform. We benefit from practicing tasks in advance of needing to be successful in performing them. Surgeons, pilots and military leaders use simulation to sharpen their ability to execute to their fullest potential when it really matters. These exercises all make use of your ability to imagine the actual scenario you are preparing yourself for.

The Relationship Between Uncertainty and Creativity

In their book, “Mastering Leadership,” Bob Anderson and William Adams make a strong case for developing leadership effectiveness by providing a roadmap that helps move leaders from operating on the reactive tendencies that have long been engrained as a core competency for leading others to operating more with creative tendencies. This comports with the Harvard University research conducted by Robert Kagen and Lisa Lahey that correlates successful leadership qualities associated with operating in a VUCA world (defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) and why reactive or traditional command-and-control leadership approaches fail.

Creativity is vital to effective critical decision-making. Rather than relying on knowing what to do in response to a challenge, instead you act in accordance with what you imagine the outcome might be. When there is a great deal at stake, you imagine how to anticipate or eliminate surprises and to the extent you make possible, prepare for the unexpected.

When you allow fear to take hold of your thinking you limit your ability to employ creativity. Fear stimulates the production of adrenaline and blocks your thinking from interfering with how your body physically acts. At the extreme you react without thinking and find that your actions are purely guided by the force of instinct. Under extreme duress this might save your life – or enable you to save the lives of others. But this power comes at a cost.

The word “decision” literally means to cut off. At the moment of the choice you make you cut off all other options. Being fully committed is often critical to effectively executing whatever it is you do. Acting tentatively decreases your potential for success.

When you allow your mind to operate reactively and choose to rely on functioning in autopilot mode, you eliminate choices that might improve the outcome of your actions. You may get a good result, but perhaps at the expense of a better result.

There are times when it’s best to not allow the pursuit of perfection to interfere with needed progress. But there is also the risk of accepting mediocrity when you default into operating in autopilot – and loose the capacity to engage your curiosity. In the absence of curiosity you find yourself operating in a mode of knowing rather than learning. You cease to be creative and lose the capacity to be innovative.

Choosing to be in this knowing-mode can be appealing because it allows you to remain within your comfort zone. It may feel less risky in the moment, but it actually poses an enormous risk to opportunity if a better answer to a better question might get you a better outcome. Operating in the learning-mode requires getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Learning is form of growth. Learning doesn’t just contribute to the library of knowledge you have access to, it actually transforms your ability to perform.

Real learning changes who you are. What you learn informs your values, impacts your beliefs and enables you to think differently. Collecting data and acquiring information may be a necessary part of how you learn, but it is not sufficient for real learning to take place.

Epictetus also noted in “The Art of Living,”, “Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”

The art of learning is complicated by the imperatives of standardizing education and the task of teaching. You are expected to learn whatever your teacher is expected to teach you. But learning isn’t a result of teaching – it is the internal process of choosing to learn and understanding how employ your learning in ways that are valuable and relevant in order to enable you to accomplish your aims.

It isn’t just the difference between being “book smart” or having common sense. It is what determines whether or not you are competent in your pursuits; whether you accomplish the things you find or make necessary. It is not about what you can or should so, but what you actually accomplish that counts.

A degree is nothing but a worthless piece of paper. It is what you do with what you have learned that determines the value of your education. Those among us who are most accomplished in life are not those who have learned what others have deemed necessary to teach them, but are those who have figured out what it is that they must themselves learn in to accomplish what matter most.

Learning is not about finding the right answers, it is about framing the best available questions. The quality of the questions you ask is the determinate of the value of the answers you find.

The best questions are borne of uncertainty. In positions of prominence, control or leadership, admitting outwardly that you do not have the answers isn’t a sign of weakness. It takes some real humility to demonstrate genuine uncertainty and courage to express genuine curiosity.

Pretending to have answers or to know how to solve problems might be fine or even desirable to a point, but in critical situations it is risky or even outright dangerous.

Poor leaders reach for false certainties in order to assuage the discomfort of not knowing – or of allowing people to see that this is so.

It may seem sensible to guide others by being confident and steady, but your source of control and power dissipates quickly when your uncertainty becomes visible and your confidence turns into a liability.

It turns out that the opposite is true. Leaders who exhibit the courage to show themselves capable of embracing uncertainty – even at the risk of showing that they are also fallible – win the respect of others by demonstrating the power of curiosity. The most powerful leaders are those who ask the best questions.

Questions are not just the genesis of learning and discovery, they are the product. The pursuit of continuous learning suggests that everything you uncover, everything you learn gives way to the next question. Things like, “why is this true?” or, “what if this isn’t true?” Wondering what you missed or what biased what you observed brings your interrogation of reality to higher and higher levels – where you can see beyond your assumptions and self-imposed limitations.

Uncertainty is the soil in which you plant the seeds of brilliant inquiry – whether that means the rigors of scientific research – or pushing the boundaries of art and human expression. Uncertainty is what expands your horizons and drives you to learn, improve and grow – elevating your potential to perform.

The best way to leverage uncertainty is to embrace it – and use it to create the future that cannot yet be known.

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln wrote, “The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”

It may be obvious, but when competing with capable adversaries there is always a certain outcome available. You can determine the outcome of anything by eliminating the possibility of success. You can always quit or surrender.

Choosing to win in any fair fight always involves uncertainty. It is the risk of failure that makes the fight fair.

For winning to be meaningful and significant. Being guided by a powerful sense of purpose is what causes you to be conscientious in your preparation and your execution – and cultivates the ability to get comfortable being uncomfortable in order to realize your real potential – and strive to elevate it.

When emerging from a crisis, if you can see what’s next, it means everyone else can too. There may be some comfort in a shared sense of destiny – but settling for where it crowded is the opposite of being exceptional.

Exceptional leaders are those who create the future they want to see – and exercise the courage to separate from the crowd.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

So, what is the thing you think you cannot do? And what would change if you went ahead and did it?

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