Why Great Leaders Learn To Sit With Uncertainty

Forbes

15-06-2025

In a business culture that prizes quick wins and decisive action, comfort is often mistaken for competence. We idolize clarity, reward speed, and celebrate leaders who appear unflappable. However, in today's volatile world, this mindset may be holding us back, uncertainty and discomfort can be our friends.
Leader with Uncertainty
What if discomfort—intellectual, emotional, even interpersonal—is not a threat to be managed but a resource to be mined? What if leaning into uncertainty is exactly what allows the best ideas, deepest collaboration, and most authentic leadership to emerge?
Leadership today is less about having the right answer and more about asking the right question—and being willing to sit with it. While traditional management models emphasize control and confidence, the leaders shaping the future are those who can hold space for ambiguity.
This concept has long been explored in Zen practice through 'koans'—seemingly paradoxical riddles like 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' Their purpose isn't to be solved, but to disrupt linear thinking and provoke deeper insight. Frustration is part of the process—and part of the breakthrough. This is elaborated on by Manfred Kets de Vries in The Path to Authentic Leadership. Whether navigating an evolving market, managing team resistance, or wrestling with internal doubt, the impulse is often to resolve tension immediately. But discomfort, when handled with intention, can be a gateway to reflection, innovation, and stronger relationships.
Walk towards uncertainty
Breakthroughs don't come from what we already know. They come from venturing into unfamiliar terrain—and resisting the urge to fill the silence too soon.
A growing body of research supports this idea. A meta-analysis published in the Journal of Management (Frazier et al., 2017) found that psychological safety—the feeling that it's safe to speak up, ask questions, and make mistakes—is a key driver of team learning and innovation.
In short: It's not about having the answer. It's about staying with the question.
Top-down directives rarely inspire real commitment. Employees don't want to be told what to do—they want to be part of something they believe in. This is where discomfort becomes strategic. Leaders who resist the temptation to dictate, and instead create space for dialogue, build buy-in through co-creation.
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, creators of self-determination theory, emphasize that people are most engaged when they experience autonomy, competence, and connection—not compliance. Meaningful participation begins when people are invited into the tension of decision-making, not shielded from it. Some of my clients feel the need to lead by example and show the way rather than including their team in the process, which misses the opportunity to align and discover together.
Vulnerability Builds Credibility
There's a persistent myth that leadership means always knowing the way forward. In reality, pretending to have all the answers can undermine trust. When leaders acknowledge complexity—and admit they're still exploring—they signal strength, not weakness.
Writing in Harvard Business Review, Herminia Ibarra and Anne Scoular argue that modern leadership is increasingly about coaching rather than commanding. The most effective leaders today are those who guide through inquiry, learning, and empathy—not through charisma alone.
People don't need perfect leaders. They need real ones.
Staying in the Tension
In a world of complex challenges—climate disruption, AI-driven change, geopolitical instability—there are no easy fixes. The pressure to move fast is real. But speed without clarity leads to shallow solutions. The leaders who will thrive in the years ahead are those willing to linger in discomfort long enough to let complexity reveal its deeper truths. This doesn't mean paralysis. It means choosing curiosity over reactivity, humility over bravado. It means recognizing that discomfort isn't a failure of leadership—it's often the first sign you're leading in the right direction. The takeaway… If you're a leader facing uncertainty, don't rush to resolve it. Ask better questions. Create space for others to engage. Trust that discomfort, managed wisely, is not a weakness to overcome—but the very crucible in which real leadership is forged.