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How Uncertainty Underpins Next Tier Leadership

Safer Uncertainty

The premise of moving towards safer uncertainty is to realise that safety and certainty are not the same thing. It’s about how you can bring more safety to uncertainty. It’s a useful notion to hold in considering how you bring your leadership to your team and organisation. 

Despite a heightened awareness in recent times, uncertainty is always a constant. The future is always uncertain. There is always a crisis of some nature somewhere on the planet. Uncertainty is the way of the universe. My observation of mature leaders (who remain calm despite what is going on around them), is not that they know more about what is going on, rather they are more comfortable being in uncertainty.

Leadership Capacity

Towards Safer Uncertainty (TSU) is a useful way of describing the capacity leaders need to build for allowing more realistic and effective leadership. 

Capacity represents a leader’s ability to hold leadership in the way that a bigger glass holds more water. A more effective leader is able to hold a bigger world view, and a greater bandwidth for human experience. They have more capacity for leadership and therefore results.

Our communities, organisations and planet seem to be asking for a shift. This shift requires leaders who have made the transition from independence and competition, to inter-dependence and collaboration. I believe this is what surviving and thriving will increasingly look like.

The TSU Quadrant

The TSU quadrant is a useful lens for exploring this capacity. It is also really helpful in recognising and considering the behaviours that sit in the other windows of the quadrant. In reality you may find yourself in the various windows at different times. The TSU quadrant is aspirational. You may not be able to remain there all the time. It's like a practice... the more you do it the easier it gets.

The four quadrants serve as good monitoring and awareness lenses. They help with self-awareness and management, and they help with monitoring and engaging others.

‘The premise of moving Towards Safer Uncertainty is to realise that safety and certainty are not the same thing. It’s about how you can bring more safety to uncertainty’

Safe and Certain

Doesn’t exist (because certainty doesn’t exist). But you may fool yourself into believing it does and create a semi-conscious blindspot for it.

Behaviour turns up as:
-    Fixed on a position, a belief, a perception
-    Blocked to new thinking or evidence
-    Denying reality and what is obvious to others
-    Controlling of people and functions

Certain and Unsafe

Doesn’t exist (because certainty does not exist). Holding onto the illusion is tempting. But feeling unsafe, while trying to maintain a front, can elicit dangerous behaviour.

 Behaviour turns up as:
-    Territorial of position and functional control
-    Railroading a belief or a way of doing things
-    Protected and unavailable to new thinking or evidence
-    Damaging, both to others and as an inhibitor of business progress

Unsafe and Uncertain

This can be a scary reality. It is a threatening experience that requires care and support. The consideration here is whether feelings of ‘unsafety’ are real or perceived.

Behaviour turns up as:
-    Rudderless with a lack of clarity or decision-making
-    Neurotic and jumping from one task to another
-    Paranoid of others and possible future events
-    Vulnerable, fearful, irrational

Safe and Uncertain

This can exist and is where next tier leadership thrives. Embracing this quadrant is a choice of active engagement with reality.

Behaviour turns up as:
-    Enabling learning and growth in self and others
-    Curious and interested exploration
-    Open to possibility and emergence
-    Engaging with challenges as opportunities to learn and grow

The Who of Leadership

There is the what of leadership, and the how of leadership. Development programmes focus primarily on these. I believe what matters equally, is the who of leadership. 

The who of leadership is about what your character allows you to hold and create? What is your leadership capacity?

The Towards Safer Uncertainty approach makes being in uncertainty and change easier, perhaps even exciting and enjoyable. Leaders who operate from this space enjoy better results, and better experiences. 

Want to Know More?



Email me and I’ll send you an article I had published in The Learning Scientist Magazine. It includes:
  • The key principles of TSU
  • A framework for practice
  • 7 Mindsets of TSU
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