Your leadership in uncertain times

Whether you are a manager, mom, dad or somebody who wants to lead your life, uncertain times demand leadership. If only because you have the position and power to make "the call": how do we go from here (for yourself and maybe your family or organization)?

Leadership don'ts under uncertainty

No passivity

When blindfolded experienced CEO's have acted quite similar to inexperienced teenagers: they tend to wait. Why so? 'Because I had no clue, what was going on, what was expected, where I was... nothing.' is the often heard answer.

No downplaying please

Being passive is exactly what one should not do when faced with uncertainty. In that respect downplaying uncertainty, as many leaders have done in the Covid-19 pandemic, is not the worst one can do. But it is something that can (and very often will) backfire: melting your credibility.

No passing the bucket

In an attempt to be decisive bold statements with good intentions... often imply passing the bucket. A few examples from how the Dutch education Ministry acted:

• "Universities will close down for classes effective immediately, yet education will go online for as much as possible." That passes the bucket to the universities that have to comply and deal with shifting towards online education overnight.
• "Elementary and high schools will close tomorrow (monday). Children from parents in vital jobs however should still be looked after in school, unless the child has symptoms." That passes many buckets to the schools: the communication, the organization and basically all remaining uncertainty of pupils and parents.

Leadership do under uncertainty

Leadership isn't glamorous ever, but it is going to be more simple and hard in uncertain times. What can and should a great leader do?

Understand people and uncertainty

Our minds are basically lazy: they simplify life into certainties to avoid stress. Stress is simply the mismatch of expectations and reality. No knowing what to expect is uncertainty. We suck at that (wait for the good news later on).

If you have ever been medically tested on anything or awaiting the outcome of something important and uncertain, you know the feeling. And that feeling is not nice.

As promised there is good news too: people are remarkably resilient when it comes to bad news. You know what disappointment feels like. Compare it to the feeling you had before that and you know how disappointment may be bad, but also how anxious anticipation under uncertainty is worse.

Now use this insight to first manage yourself and then lead others.

Create certainty... the honest and right way

The one thing to do, as a great leader, is to create certainty. For yourself first and then for others (remember: the firemen rule). The right way.

No, not by decisive action per se. Although we humans have this action bias (remember the hoarding of toilet paper?).

When things are uncertain the one simple great leadership thing to do is create certainty by pausing for (more) certainty. Even, or especially, when tempted to act on decisive action taken by others (but that with closer study simply is a passing the bucket of uncertainty to you).

Bosses for example should consider a break to study, think and decide and announce that: 'The situation requires for us to stay calm and think. We will take two days to do so. Meanwhile rest assured I am doing my utmost to deal with anything that could hurt you. Take two days yourself.'

School leaders (could) have done that too: 'Okay, this situation is new. We are going to suspend school activities for a week to figure out how we best can fulfil this distance learning thing.'

Moms and dads hopefully did (and still can do) something similar: "Okay, this working and studying from home is totally new to us all. Let's first spend a day or two to figure out how we are going to do that. And let's revisit that as this is new to us"

And yes, you could kindly remember and/or help the higher ups do this too.