Uncertainty Is a Reality—Are You Ready to Lead Through Fog, Fear, and Change?
Exploring Four Principles for Leading Through Uncertainty
Uncertainty doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it just whispers. A vague update. A pause in communication. A calendar change with no explanation. Long before the business impact is visible, uncertainty has already started shaping behavior—shrinking people’s focus, eroding trust, and nudging teams into self-protection.
In this edition of Humanity at Scale, we’re tackling uncertainty not as a strategy problem, but as a human reality. When leaders ignore its emotional toll, they end up fighting surface symptoms—while the real damage runs deeper.
That’s why the latest edition of the Humanity at Scale: Redefining Leadership podcast is such a timely companion. In From Head Count to Heart Count: Loyalty by Design, I talk with Joey Coleman about how emotional clarity, consistent human cues, and intentional design drive real loyalty—from both customers and employees. It’s a conversation about trust, not tactics. And about the moments that matter most—especially when the path ahead feels unclear.
Which brings us to this issue’s feature: The Leadership Blueprint for Navigating Uncertainty. We’ll break down what uncertainty really does to people—and offer four practical principles to help leaders lead through the fog.
I hope it challenges how you think about your presence, your communication, and the subtle signals you send—especially when the ground is shifting.
Let’s jump in.
The Leadership Blueprint for Navigating Uncertainty
You know the signs. A cryptic calendar invite. A leadership update that’s long on words but short on answers. A sudden silence where communication used to be. Nothing’s gone wrong—yet. But something’s off.
People feel it before they name it. They pause, scan, second-guess. They replay last conversations, read between lines, start bracing for impact. That’s how uncertainty works. It doesn’t need alarms or breaking news. All it needs is a vacuum—and the human brain does the rest.
And here’s the thing: that response isn’t a flaw. It’s not overreacting. It’s how we’re wired. Uncertainty doesn’t just confuse people—it changes how they think, feel, and act. And if leaders don’t understand that shift, they’ll misread what’s really happening inside their teams—and across their organizations.
The Brain Is Built to Predict
At a fundamental level, the human brain is a forecasting engine. It doesn’t just react—it constantly simulates what’s coming next. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett calls this predictive coding—the brain generates internal expectations, moment by moment, using past experiences to guide current behavior. When reality lines up with those expectations, people feel confident and in control.
But when that alignment breaks—when information is missing or ambiguous—the brain treats it as a potential threat.
The amygdala fires up. Even mild unpredictability gets flagged as risk, triggering the brain’s fight-or-flight systems.
Stress hormones spike. Cortisol surges. The body shifts from growth mode to defense mode.
Focus narrows. Big-picture thinking fades. People zero in on immediate cues, scanning for clarity or danger.
In a 2016 study at University College London, participants who faced the possibility of receiving an electric shock experienced more stress than those who were told they would receive one. It wasn’t the outcome—it was the uncertainty that drove anxiety.
This isn’t just theory. It’s why a slightly different tone in an email can feel like a warning sign. Why people over-analyze paused meetings or ambiguous messaging. Why leaders who don't say much end up saying more than they realize.
The brain doesn’t need a crisis to sound the alarm. It just needs a break in the pattern.
The Behavioral Impact of Uncertainty
When expectations break and signals go quiet, people shift into a different behavioral state. What does the response to uncertainty look like? In these moments, people tend to:
Play it safe. Under conditions of uncertainty, loss aversion becomes amplified. People who normally lean into experimentation pull back—choosing familiar routines over bold action, even when it slows progress.
Stop sharing ideas. A 2022 McKinsey survey found that employee voice drops by nearly a third during organizational ambiguity. Without clear signals from leadership, psychological safety fades, and silence becomes a survival strategy.
Over-interpret weak cues. Ambiguity heightens social sensitivity. A glance, a phrasing change, or a skipped meeting can suddenly take on emotional weight. People begin decoding tone instead of absorbing message.
Assume the worst. Negativity bias ensures that informational gaps get filled with imagined threats. A paused initiative feels like a hidden failure. A missing update becomes evidence that bad news is coming.
Burn out faster. The American Psychological Association consistently ranks unclear expectations as one of the most corrosive forces on well-being—stronger than workload or compensation. People can’t pace themselves when the goalposts keep moving.
Shift to short-term survival. Instead of planning, people focus on getting through the day. Strategic thinking evaporates, replaced by urgency, over-monitoring, and the desire to stay out of trouble.
The Cost of Uncertainty Cuts Across All Stakeholders
Uncertainty doesn’t stay contained inside people’s heads. It seeps into relationships—shaping how employees show up, Let’s look at how the fog plays out across different groups.
Employees Feel Emotionally Exposed
Uncertainty creates an invisible, emotional tax for employees. They may look like they’re showing up the same way—but under the surface, they’re working harder to decode, defend, and protect themselves.
Psychological safety starts to erode. When people aren’t sure what’s valued—or what’s safe—they stop challenging ideas. Even high-trust teams become more cautious and deferential.
Team cohesion quietly breaks down. During ambiguous periods, employees often retreat to what they can control—their own tasks, their own silos. Collaboration takes a back seat to self-preservation.
Discretionary effort becomes more conditional. Engagement doesn’t disappear overnight. But people start conserving energy. They contribute less beyond the job description—not out of disengagement, but uncertainty about what matters.
Customers Crave Consistency and Reliability
In times of uncertainty, customers don’t just evaluate products or services—they evaluate tone, timing, and trust signals. They become more emotionally attuned, and more reactive to perceived instability.
Even small inconsistencies become trust gaps. A missed update, a confusing message, or a policy change without context can erode loyalty—especially when people are already on edge.
Empathy becomes a competitive advantage. During COVID’s early months, Delta stood out not because its policies were radically different, but because it communicated them with calm, human-centered clarity. That tone mattered.
Brand loyalty becomes more fragile. When uncertainty is high, customers tend to reevaluate loyalties. Brands that once felt dependable now feel risky if they don’t project steadiness.
Partners and Vendors Look for Cues of Stability
Partners might not have a seat at your leadership table—but they’re constantly interpreting what your behavior means for them. In times of uncertainty, they become more conservative—and less forgiving.
Ambiguity slows momentum. A vague strategy shift or leadership turnover—even without policy changes—can lead partners to pause investment or reevaluate their exposure.
They look for over-communication, not perfection. When timelines slip or signals change, what partners want most is transparency. A thoughtful check-in often buys more trust than a polished pitch.
Your internal fog becomes their external risk. If your people seem unsure, your partners feel it too. They don’t need to know the details—they’ll sense the drift.
Communities Watch What You Signal
Organizations exist inside larger social ecosystems. And in moments of uncertainty, the communities around you become more attuned to how—and whether—you show up.
Silence gets interpreted as absence. If you're not visible or vocal during disruptive moments, people assume you’ve disengaged. That absence can damage long-term reputation.
Consistency signals character. Patagonia’s clarity during economic turbulence—staying aligned with values even when cutting back—reinforced trust with employees, customers, and social stakeholders alike.
People pay attention to how you treat your people. How you handle internal uncertainty becomes an external message. Communities often judge organizations by how well they protect (or expose) their employees in difficult times.
Four Principles for Leading Through Uncertainty
Uncertainty doesn’t just disrupt strategy—it disrupts people. As we explored earlier, it rewires behavior: people stop speaking up, shorten their time horizons, misread cues, and default to fear-based thinking. And most of this happens quietly—beneath the surface of meetings and dashboards.
So the challenge for leaders isn’t just about making better decisions. It’s about helping people function—emotionally, cognitively, and socially—when clarity is in short supply. Here are four guiding principles to lead through those moments with greater intention:
Stabilize Through Empathy
Orient Through Clarity
Reinforce Through Consistency
Inspire Through Optimism
Principle 1: Stabilize Through Empathy
When uncertainty sets in, most leaders go straight into action: reshuffling priorities, reworking plans, reorganizing teams. Those operational shifts may be necessary—but they miss the deeper fault line. Uncertainty doesn’t just disrupt plans. It disrupts people. As we explored earlier, it triggers loss aversion, drains emotional energy, and shrinks planning horizons. These aren’t issues that can be scheduled or resourced away. They’re emotional disruptions—and they need emotional recognition.
What stabilizes people is empathy. Not vague reassurance, but real acknowledgment of what the moment feels like. Imagine a leader saying, “We’re revisiting priorities this quarter.” That’s useful, operationally. Now imagine the same leader saying, “I know this creates stress. It’s okay to feel off-balance right now. Here’s what I’m trying to figure out—and what I’ll share when I know more.” That second message doesn’t resolve the uncertainty. It meets people inside it. Empathy doesn’t just soften the edge. It’s what makes people feel safe enough to keep moving forward.
Principle 2: Orient Through Clarity
Uncertainty doesn’t just make the future hard to see—it makes the present hard to navigate. Without clear direction, people start second-guessing what matters now. They hesitate on decisions, lose confidence in priorities, and begin to interpret every shift as a signal to stop or wait. And as we explored earlier, the brain doesn’t handle a blank slate well. In the absence of guidance, people fill in the gaps—often with imagined
What helps is restoring focus, even in small ways. That might mean calling out a near-term goal that still holds steady, reaffirming a team’s core purpose, or simply saying, “Here’s what’s true today.” A leader might tell their team, “We’re still figuring out the full plan, but we know this customer launch is still happening in July.” That single point of orientation can reduce mental noise, ease emotional tension, and help people move forward with a bit more certainty—without needing all the answers.
Principle 3: Reinforce Through Consistency
In times of uncertainty, people don’t just absorb what leaders say—they study how they behave. As we explored earlier, ambiguity heightens sensitivity to every interpersonal signal. A delayed reply. A skipped meeting. A change in tone. When familiar rhythms disappear, people start reading into everything—and often imagine the worst.
That’s why leaders have to offer more than information. They have to offer pattern. If you normally check in with your team on Mondays, don’t skip it the week after layoffs. If you usually invite questions at all-hands, don’t rush the Q&A when the future is unclear. When those familiar actions continue, they provide a sense of coherence. People stop guessing what your silence means—and start trusting what your consistency says. Even small routines, like starting team meetings with shared wins or sending weekly updates, help create continuity. These cues show that, even in the midst of change, leadership is still present and dependable.
Principle 4: Inspire Through Optimism
When the future feels uncertain, people don’t need empty reassurances. They need a reason to keep moving. That’s what hope offers—not as blind optimism, but as a source of forward energy. It helps people lift their eyes from the immediate stress, reconnect with meaning, and believe that their efforts still matter.
That doesn’t mean making promises you can’t keep. It means painting a future that’s still worth showing up for. A leader might say, “I can’t guarantee how this will turn out—but I believe in what we’re building, and I believe in this team.” Or, “This is hard. But we’ve been through tough moments before, and we came out stronger.” In uncertainty, hope isn’t about eliminating the fog. It’s about pointing to the light still visible through it—and helping others walk toward it.
Sparking New Leadership Thinking
Once you’ve established emotional steadiness as a leader, the next step is to shape the environment so people can re-engage—despite the fog. That means creating structure, signals, and shared meaning that make it easier for teams to move forward without waiting for perfect clarity.
Define the known zone. Uncertainty creates a cognitive void—but not everything is uncertain. Draw a bold circle around what’s stable right now: customer needs, team routines, near-term goals. A leader might say, “We don’t have the full plan for next quarter yet, but we do know we’re still solving for the same customer problem—and we’re still launching this release by July.”
Build temporary scaffolding. People don’t need final answers to keep moving—they need enough structure to act without fear. That might mean a 30-day goal sprint, a provisional team assignment, or a temporary workflow. It signals that progress matters more than perfection.
Illuminate what good looks like now. In the fog, people second-guess whether they’re doing enough. Redefine what success means in the moment. One manager told their team, “This month isn’t about outcomes—it’s about learning. If you raise three issues early, that’s a win.”
Elevate sensing, not just reporting. Dashboards tell you what already happened. What people need is a way to express what they’re feeling now. Replace status updates with open check-ins or reverse town halls: “What’s feeling harder than it should right now?” Leaders who listen early prevent disengagement later.
Share how you’re making sense of the fog. Don’t just announce decisions—narrate your thinking. People feel steadier when they understand the process. Try saying, “We’re weighing three options. Here’s what we’re hearing, and what we’re prioritizing as we decide.” It doesn’t signal weakness—it signals honesty.
The Bottom Line
Uncertainty doesn’t just disrupt plans—it disrupts people. It changes how they think, feel, and act, often in ways leaders don’t see until momentum is already lost. You don’t need to eliminate the fog—but you do need to lead people through it.
Additional Resources
Here’s some relevant content that you may find interesting:
Loss Aversion – Everything You Need to Know. In this InsideBE article, Michelle Klotz explains how loss aversion—the idea that losses loom larger than gains—affects decision-making and offers practical applications in business contexts.
Don’t Let Negativity Sink Your Organization. In this HBR article, Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney discuss the universal tendency for negative events and emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones, and how this bias can impact organizational culture.
Coping with Stress at Work. This American Psychological Association article outlines how lack of role clarity contributes to workplace stress and offers strategies for creating healthier work environments.
Humanity At Scale: Redefining Leadership Podcast
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Make sure to check out my podcast, where I reimagine leadership for today’s dynamic world—proving that true success begins with prioritizing people, including employees, customers, and the communities you serve. From candid conversations with executives to breakthrough insights from experts, Humanity at Scale: Redefining Leadership Podcast is your ultimate guide to leading with purpose and empathy.
Here are some recent episodes:
From Head Count to Heart Count: Loyalty by Design with Joey Coleman. In this episode, I sit down with Joey Coleman, founder and Chief Experience Composer of Design Symphony and bestselling author of Never Lose a Customer Again, and Never Lose an Employee Again, to uncover why most organizations lose up to 70% of customers and employees in the first 100 days.
Humanizing a Legacy Brand: From LEGOs to Insurance with Conny Kalcher. In this episode of Humanity at Scale, host Bruce Temkin is joined by Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance Company, to discuss reimagining customer experience in large organizations. They explore moving beyond transactions to build meaningful, empathetic customer relationships.
Designing The Future: How to Be a Good Ancestor with Lisa Kay Solomon. In this episode, I’m joined by Lisa Kay Solomon, Designer in Residence at Stanford’s d.school, for a powerful conversation about leading with imagination in an era of disruption. We explore how leaders can actively shape the future by cultivating foresight, ethical decision-making, and human-centered design.
The Ethics of Empowerment: How AI Can Make Us Stronger with Vivienne Ming. In this episode of Humanity at Scale, I sit down with Dr. Vivienne Ming, a visionary neuroscientist and AI pioneer, to explore how technology can elevate, not replace, human potential. Sharing her inspiring journey from homelessness to innovation leadership, Ming unpacks how purpose, ethical design, and a deep understanding of human complexity should shape AI development.
Empathy, AI, and the New Rules of the Human Workplace with Erica Keswin. In this episode, I sit down with WSJ bestselling author, human workplace expert, and keynote speaker, Erica Keswin and we explore the future of human-centric leadership in a tech-driven world.
From Conflict to Connection: Rethinking Moral Disagreements with Kurt Gray. In this episode, I speak with psychologist and neuroscientist Kurt Gray, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC, Chapel Hill, to explore how leaders can navigate moral complexity and foster empathy in organizations.
Scaling with Heart: How Safelite Balances Growth, People, and Purpose with Renee Cacchillo. In this episode, Renee Cacchillo, CEO of Safelite, shares how the company became the dominant force in its industry by putting people and customers at the center of every decision.
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Humanity at Scale is a movement to inspire and empower leaders to create humanity-centric organizations