A few years ago, we worked with a leadership team facing a particularly messy period of change. They’d experienced significant change in their executive team, a shift in focus from retail tenancies to digital and were rapidly trying to upskill the workforce to meet the capabilities their goals demanded. There were competing priorities, shifting expectations and plenty of questions they simply could not answer yet.
There was one leader who stood out. He spoke with enormous confidence, had a view on almost everything and rarely seemed troubled by complexity. When he spoke, you could feel the room relax, almost like an audible exhalation. Finally, someone seemed to know what to do.
The problem was, he often didn’t.
Often his answers were based on assumptions. At other times he presented opinions as if they were facts. At one point he used a stat that was actually wrong. It was there in the report in front of everyone, and yet nobody cared. His certainty was a powerful analgesic. People listened to him, followed his lead and felt reassured by his conviction.
There was both a lot to learn, and a lot not to learn, from this leader.
Today’s world feels increasingly difficult to make sense of. Technology is moving quickly, economic conditions are unpredictable and organisations are being asked to respond to multiple competing pressures at once. The tides keep changing, but unlike meteorological charts, we have very little way of mapping them.
Humans generally don’t enjoy that feeling.
So when someone offers certainty, “this is what we’ll do and this will be the outcome”, we naturally gravitate towards it. It relieves stress.
The irony is that the leader making those assertions may be just as uncomfortable with uncertainty as everyone else. Being quick to fix is often a tell tale sign of discomfort in ambiguity.
Often, it is the leaders who say “well, it depends” who are showing greater adaptability.
Innovation relies on people being willing to explore ideas where the outcome is uncertain. Intelligent risk-taking requires judgement without guarantees. Adaptation depends on people noticing weak signals, questioning assumptions and being prepared to try something before they know exactly how it will turn out.
If certainty becomes the expectation, people quickly learn to hide uncertainty rather than work intelligently with it. They may stop offering half-formed ideas or wait until they have enough evidence to feel safe before suggesting something new. We start to become more interested in hearing the answer than understanding the problem.
Of course, sinking into a pit of analysis paralysis is not particularly useful either. A leader who regularly says “I don’t know”, “it depends” or “let’s give it some time” will eventually frustrate people. It’s a bit like telling a hungry toddler it’s time for bed. Technically possible, rarely well received.
Good judgement can involve honesty, delay, testing and thinking, without sounding hesitant or indecisive.
Sometimes it means confidently saying, “We don’t know yet, so here is how we are going to find out.”
It means explaining that you are weighing conflicting information, recognising where your knowledge ends and being willing to say that you have changed your mind because new evidence has arrived. It means communicating all of that with enough confidence that people still know where they are going, even if the path is not completely clear.
That is different from promising certainty. It is also far more sustainable and honest.
The goal is to hold enough confidence to move while leaving enough room for curiosity, learning and adjustment.
In today’s world, rarely can you beat uncertainty with certainty. You can, however, ask better questions confidently.
Perhaps that is one of the more important leadership capabilities now.