Uncertain Leadership

Intro

Navigating uncertain waters is leadership, it is business. When you’re waiting for the perfect information set, all the right answers, you’re waiting for a sign to tell you that all this makes sense and it’s going to be okay, and that you should move forward or not. Let me tell you—that stuff never happens. Yes, you get hints, your gut feel, the world may even give you some indications, but nothing decides for you. You may see signs you may get more information, but 99% of the time, if you’re waiting for perfect intel, and you wait that long, you’ve waited too long. It’s too late to make a solid decision that matters. You can make decisions that are nearly perfect when it’s too late, but you have to make them with less and less information as your position elevates. You must embrace the uncertainty, just like you embrace the problems. That’s where the business opportunities lie, and that’s where we get ahead of the crowd.

The Story

Your desire for certainty will make you too slow. It will paralyze you as a leader, it will make you look quite vulnerable without confidence to your superiors and to your people. And this isn’t the kind of vulnerability that you want to show on a regular basis, this is the type that shows people questions about your ability, questions about your willingness to step out on that ledge with enough risk, and consider the options available, survey the Intel, and make a decision and commit.

Consider from your peoples’ view—they are looking to you for answers, even though most of the answers are held within them, and they just don’t know it. That’s your job—to help extract the answers from them and show them that level of certainty or any resemblance of certainty, lies within them, within their experience and their action, not within some oracle or leader. But how do you show that? You show them that they have the ability to make these decisions, gather and assess information, by building their confidence. You build their confidence by giving them some level of psychology safety. This allows them to have more confidence in stepping out and making moves, making decisions, calling out what’s not right, or what we need more of, and building their confidence muscle to drive the business forward, and stop looking at you for every little answer. 

Uncertain leadership is particularly bad in those that procrastinate or for the perfectionist, as they are already naturally suited for delaying the inevitable, and pretending like things will get better if you give it some time. Don’t get me wrong. There is an argument to show patience in specific circumstances, and be able to navigate timing and intention with action, with timely base reactions and moves, but you have to be expressly clear as a leader on what is patient versus what are outward delays for comfort purposes.

Those comfort purposes, the more you rely on them, the more they hold your business back, and some cases will kill your business if you don’t attack them head on, and face the music early enough, because remember if you’re late to the party, and miss all the fun that has already happened, like the stories already told, jokes were already made, the drinks or food is gone, you’ve missed the party, even if it’s still going on. It’s already gone because the work that need to take place for the fun that needs to happen, it’s already happened.  

Closing

Set aside this one thing, and you will learn as a leader, the importance of not trying to be perfect because your desire for perfection is a root of many of your challenges. When leading people and leading a business, perfection is unattainable. Striving for progress with purpose, is far better a long-term alignment, compared to perfect. Yes, there are some cases where perfect is the ultimate expectation, like a safety record, medical procedure, or in every quality lane six Sigma is so organization, but it’s unattainable, because even if you find perfect today, it won’t equal perfect tomorrow.

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About the Author, Graham Peelle