Thoughts Unlocked – Managing Uncertainty

* Website

00:00 Introduction
01:17 Understanding the Nature of Uncertainty
04:02 The Impact of Uncertainty on Leadership
07:02 Navigating Uncertainty Effectively
09:25 Building Confidence Amidst Uncertainty

Skot Waldron (00:05.00)
I’m Skot Waldron, and when I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the globe, helping leaders and teams communicate better, build trust faster, and actually enjoy working together. I know, who would have thought? I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot, I’ve spoken at national architectural firms, at their sales trainings, off sites for major pharmaceutical companies, and industry associations.

A thousand of attendees who have read my sessions. With 99% of them saying they found the sessions valuable. 97% saying they’d actually attend again. I’ve had caterers come up to me afterwards and thank me because they actually got something they could use when they went home or when they went back to their own jobs. I mean, if every keynote delivered those types of numbers, nobody would secretly be refreshing their email under the table. And let’s be honest, that’s a little bit of my nightmare, maybe a little bit of yours. Yeah, something that keeps me up at night.

If you’re an event planner, looking for a speaker who’s easy to work with and delivers actual value that people can take away and use on Monday. Let’s make your event unforgettable.

Welcome back to Thoughts Unlocked. Let’s talk a little bit about uncertainty. That’s the topic today, uncertainty. And let’s admit it, everybody kind of hates it. Everybody kind of hates uncertainty. We as humans, our brains, they definitely hate uncertainty. I mean, your employees hate it, your clients hate it, your kids definitely hate it, the stock market also hates it. And, you know, we hate it as leaders. It’s just not fun all the time. We’d love to just be certain all the time about everything that’s going to happen because that’s what creates security. And we love security.

Uncertainty feels like when you’re standing in the middle of a lot of fog. Like it’s just kind of foggy. You can’t really see what’s in front of you. But that’s the thing about uncertainty. And is that you know, you have these like headlights that lead you just far enough to make it to the next thing. You can’t see the whole road and the whole journey, but you have just a little bit more in front of you that you can see. You can’t see that far ahead. You don’t know what’s around the corner. And so, what does your brain start doing when you’re in the midst of this fog or in this sheer blackness of whatever the future holds? Well, your brain does what it does best, it creates worst case scenarios. It loves worst case scenarios. I don’t know why, but it does. It loves those things.

So, have you ever noticed that uncertainty is a little bit exhausting? Not because of what’s happening in the moment, because of what might happen. The future is a little bit quirky, a little bit funny that way. Nothing has actually even happened yet, but somehow, we’re already tired. We’re already exhausted from imagining what could possibly go wrong. I’ve spent enough time coaching leaders and thinking about what uncertainty could show up. And most people instinctively do one of two things. They either freeze completely or they try to control everything. They just back off completely, or they try to do everything they can to control.

Neither one, though, is usually that effective. I mean, I remember coaching this one leader during a major re-org, and there were new reporting structures, there’s new leadership in place, there’s new priorities. Nobody knew really what the future was going to look like. And every meeting really sounded the same. You know, kind of like, well, what if this happens? And what if we change that. And what if we lose people? And what if we lose funding? And what if I mean all types of scenarios are coming out? And those aren’t bad questions. I mean, we need to prepare for those things as leaders.

We need to understand the scenarios and so we understand how we’re going to address them when they do show up. They’re just questions nobody could really answer. And that’s the trap that we fall into when we start asking questions and “preparing for the thing or the future.” We spent all of our time in this mode. And the more uncertain things become, because we don’t have answers to all these things, the more we obsess over the things we can’t control. And this is not fun because that leads to hopelessness, it leads to a scarcity of mindset, leads to frustration, guilt, anger, and all types of things is what happens when we exist in that we can’t control area. Okay.

One of the most powerful leadership lessons I’ve learned is this. Uncertainty grows when attention leaves the present and lives entirely in the future. Okay. We’ve got to get rid of a little bit of that uncertainty right now and let it live in the future because that’s where it belongs. I mean, think about think about this. Most anxiety, it’s really future focus. It’s rarely about what’s happening right now. It’s about what might happen tomorrow. That is where anxiety really comes from.

I was talking to a family therapist, a friend of mine years ago, I used to do a lot of different trainings with him. And I said, “what do most people come to you for?” And he said, “people come to me for anxiety and depression. And the anxiety is worry about the future, and the depression is worry about the past.” And those two, that stuck out to me, and it always has.

Years ago, Stephen Covey, he talked about what he calls that circle of concern and the circle of influence. And I think that’s exactly where leaders get stuck. The circle of concern is everything you’re worried about right now: the economy, competition, interest rates, AI, political changes, job fulfillment, market shifts, all these things are important. Okay, all largely outside of your control. The circle of influence, though, is much smaller. It’s what you can actually affect. And that’s what great leaders spend their time and energy on.

I work with a construction company, one that was really worried about market slowing down. And they were right; the market was slowing down for them. But after about 20 minutes of discussion, we realized something. They had spent hours discussing interest rates. And we were like, oh my gosh, guys. Okay, interest we get it. Almost no time discussing their sales process or internal training or what they can do to help supplement some of the income right now. One was outside of their control completely, and one was not. Guess which one we should spend more attention on. That’s what uncertainty does. It tricks us into focusing on all the wrong stuff.

One exercise I often give teams is really, really simple. I draw a line down the middle of the page, and on the left side, I write things we can’t control, and on the right side. I write things we can control. Okay. And then I have one additional column. And this is things we can influence. And I start filling this out too. Market conditions, we can’t control those. Customer experience, we can control that. Economic forecasts, can’t control it. Quality of the onboarding, we can control that one. Competitor actions, we can’t do that. All these things, right? We can control some. We can’t control others and we can influence some. We don’t have full control over them, but we can influence them.

Suddenly the room feels a lot lighter. We feel a lot more empowered. We feel a lot more optimistic because we stop trying to carry all the responsibility of the thing that we were never there to carry anyway. Like we don’t need to carry all that weight of all the things we can’t control. We have enough things that we’re trying to carry. One of the healthiest leadership habits I want you to work on is shrinking your time horizon. When uncertainty is high, people will always ask you, what are we going to be doing next month or next year or in six months? And sometimes that’s the wrong question. Instead, let’s ask, what do we need to accomplish this week or what is the next right step? The future will ultimately get built one decision at a time.

Now I’m not saying don’t do strategic planning. I’m not saying don’t plan for the future, but worrying so much about those things all the time is what bogs us down. Nobody’s guaranteed tomorrow. What you are guaranteed is today. And the decisions you make today are that much more important because they will affect tomorrow and all the things that you do. That’s one of the biggest misconceptions, I think, in leadership. People think great leaders can see the future. And most great leaders, they can’t. They have intuition, they have a gut feel, they have some things that they can gather, they just make guesses, they just respond better when the future arrives because they’ve anticipated those things. And that’s really the difference I see.

Think about the leaders that you trust the most. It’s probably not because they always know what’s going to happen next. It’s because really, they remain steady when nobody knows what’s going to happen. They remain steady, calm, collected. They create confidence without pretending they have certainty. I mean, that’s a rare skill, y’all. And people desperately need it. Creating confidence when they don’t know the future. Those are the people we want to follow.

Your team doesn’t expect you to predict the future. Okay. And if they do, we need to correct that a little bit. Like set the reality of what it is. They do expect you to create some clarity, though. Those are different jobs. When you’re predicting the future, you’re going to say, hey, this is what’s going to happen. That, you know, you’re dumb dumb. Don’t say that. You’re going to get yourself in trouble. Clarity says, here’s what we’re focused on right now. One is impossible, the future to predict that, and one is actual leadership.

And here is what I want you to understand and kind of take away from this whole idea that uncertainty doesn’t automatically mean danger. Our brains often treat those of the same thing. We’ve got to convince our brains that they’re not. Sometimes, you know, that uncertainty you feel is simply possibility that hasn’t been revealed yet. It’s possibility that’s out there, possibility of things that could happen. And every opportunity you’ve ever had started with uncertainty. Every opportunity.

You didn’t know how this job was going to work out. You didn’t know how your marriage was going to work out. You didn’t know how this kid was going to work out. You didn’t know how this new car purchase was going to work out. Every opportunity you’ve ever had started with uncertainty. Every relationship, every breakthrough, none of those came with guarantees.

The challenge is building confidence while uncertainty exists. And confidence comes from action. Confidence doesn’t just come by just sitting there and thinking about it. It comes from action. The next conversation, the next proposal, the next meeting you have, the next step you take.

If you’re leading through uncertainty right now, I want you to think about this. Stop and ask yourself: what can I control? What can’t I control? And what can I influence? Because momentum is the thing you need. It is the antidote to anxiety, not frantic activity, not panicking, not giving everybody the answer and trying to calm everybody and trying to make up things because we don’t really know what’s going on, but that’s what people want is answers, so we just make up stuff. No, no, no, no, no. Please, please don’t do that.

Meaningful movement. Okay. Meaningful movement.

Thank you for joining me on another episode of Thoughts Unlocked. This week I want you to take ten minutes with your team. And this is really, really great exercise, y’all. What can’t we control? What can we influence? And what can we control? And then spend your energy on those things. Cross out the ones you can’t control. Understand what they are, what that they exist, but let’s pour our energy into the things we can because uncertainty is not going away. And your brain is going to continue to catastrophize certain things. That’s what our brains do. But let’s learn that hey, we don’t have to catastrophize uncertainty. We become more confident as we take action.

So, build your ability to navigate uncertainty, it can absolutely improve.

And until next time, focus on what’s in front of you, influence what you can, and keep unlocking what’s possible.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay on Unlocked.