Creating Certainty From Uncertainty
One of the hardest parts of leadership is leading when you genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen next.
People often assume that good leaders create certainty by having the right answers. In reality, good leaders create certainty by: naming what is known and unknown; naming what is staying the same; and naming when the next decision will be made. There is a fourth piece that matters just as much: naming the strengths already in the system that will help you handle whatever comes next.
I often use the early days of the pandemic as an example. In March 2020, everything shut down for “two weeks.” I was watching Northern Italy closely at the time because I had family there; I knew there was no way we were opening up again in two weeks. I didn’t know it would be a year and a half, but I knew it wasn’t going to be brief.
No one had a playbook. No one really knew what to do. So leaders did the only thing they could do.
They broke the uncertainty into smaller, more manageable pieces. “We’re closing for two weeks, and then we’ll reevaluate.”
That statement didn’t solve the problem, but it did something very important. It created a moment of certainty inside a much bigger unknown. It also told people, someone is trying to figure this out, and there is a next decision point.
I was lucky to be coaching people around the world, which gave me intimate insight into what was happening in different countries. What struck me is that in the summer of 2020 before the school year started, many of us received remarkably similar messages from schools: “We are evaluating three options for the fall: fully in person, fully virtual, or hybrid.”
On the surface, that didn’t add much information. Of course those were the options. There were only so many paths available.
But naming them mattered.
It took the swirling mess in people’s heads and put parameters around it. It made the uncertainty visible, structured, and shared, which reduced private anxiety, and brought comfort and a sense of collective understanding. And it signaled that leaders were actively thinking, weighing, and planning, even without final answers.
This is something I coach leaders on all the time. When everything feels uncertain, it isn't about projecting confidence or pretending you know more than you do. Your job is to create structure around the uncertainty.
Four simple practices help:
Name what you know and don't know
Name what is staying the same
Name when the next decision will be made
Name the strengths that already exist in the system, the past experiences, capabilities, or ways of working that show that even if what's coming is new or different, you can handle it.
Here’s what that can sound like in a very practical business setting:
“We’re introducing a new software next quarter to meet the demands of our biggest client. What we don’t yet know is how stable it will be in the first 60 days, or where the biggest friction points will show up.
What we do know is that our core procedures are staying the same, and we’ll continue producing our regular monthly reports, along with two new ones that are becoming standard in the industry.
We’ve successfully integrated new software before. Last year, a phased rollout, peer training, and regular check-ins worked well, and we’re using that same approach again, supported by training sessions and on-demand IT support.
We’ll reassess progress every two weeks and adjust as needed. All of this tells me we have the experience and adaptability to make this successful, even if there are bumps along the way.”
That’s it.
Those things create more calm than false reassurance ever will.
Because uncertainty isn’t what makes people anxious. Uncertainty without leadership is.
If you’re leading through uncertainty right now, what have you found most helpful in steadying you or your team?