Curiosity is Your Swiss Army Knife for Leading Through Uncertainty

Curiosity is your Swiss Army knife for leading through uncertainty. Because leading in the style of a general commanding his troops from atop a horse on a battlefield just doesn’t cut it anymore. We need something new. We need to not feel the pressure of having to have all the answers.

Articles about uncertainty and change usually start with overused old clichés, followed by some brain-twisting acronyms, and then end with a call to action. This one is different: here we donate the clichés, give a brief nod to one acronym, then find ourselves a shiny new Swiss Army knife. There is a call to action though.

To begin, let’s get those clichés out of the way. And by out of the way, I mean let’s gather them up the way you would old, rusted tools that are just not good enough to use anymore. First up, Change is the only constant. That one used to work when we had to remind ourselves occasionally that things change. Doh. Gather, and place into the museum donation box. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Try telling that to a Republican. Gather, and place in the box. If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Maya Angelou. Well, them progressives ain’t buyin’ that no more. Gather and box. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Wayne Dyer. We’ve all read the Stoics and we’ve all done mindfulness. Box.

No, we need something new around here. Do I even need to say why? Just look around you. Open an app. You probably don’t even have the latest update. You certainly haven’t read all your messages, let alone the news. You used to forecast for five years, now you struggle to stare down two. You used to call it overtime when you worked ten hours, now you’ve just come out of meetings. There’s a new face in your team, it feels like, every few weeks.

The business lexicon is full of military jargon—like VUCA.

Now let’s get the acronyms out the way. Uncertainty provides the U in VUCA and we all know what that means. It was coined by the American military to describe the kind of unpredictable world order that they found after the Soviet Union collapse. No longer one predictable, giant superpower, they now faced a fragmented, unseen, complicated web of forces. And it applies to us because? Well, we’re at war with reality. At least according to the Power of Now guy Eckhart Tolle—and don’t dismiss him as some New Age weirdo, we need all the help we can get, and we’ll be drawing on him later in the series.

At war with reality. Now that’s something to consider. As it turns out, the business leadership lexicon is full of military jargon. Two researchers, Joel Amernic and Russell Craig, analysed the speeches of a number of CEOs in the early 2000s and found that the language those CEOs used in those speeches painted a picture “of a super-manager, a hero, and a warrior chief”, someone who can “engage successfully in the war of business … and who can effect miracles of financial performance and reinvention”. In their book on the subject, they went on to point out that the way they speak, you’d swear those CEOs were “the equivalent of a great military leader of yore”. That was before the financial crash of 2008, before Covid-19 and the hybrid workplace, before Donald Trump as president of the USA, before the ANC losing its majority in South Africa.

Every leader feels the pressure of having to know, of having to have all the answers.

But it’s still expected of us. At least that’s what leaders believe. Every leader feels the pressure of having to know, of having to have all the answers. They lie awake at night fretting. They present a brave face to their team. They grab at articles like this and scan them for answers. Decision-making frameworks. More acronyms to cram into that tiny space already so full of information and worry. Finding none, but suspecting there may be something of interest, they save for later.

Are we there yet? Do you have a point? What can you tell me that can make me certain? Nothing, I’m afraid, and that’s the point. Leading in the style of a general commanding his troops from atop a horse on a battlefield—have you seen Napoleon?—just doesn’t cut it anymore. There are drones. You can barely see them and then whoosh, you’re in a box.

Here’s what you need to know instead. But beware. It’s not a technical answer, wrapped up in an acronym. We have enough of those. Some are already in the donation box. Ready for it?

Curiosity is your Swiss Army knife for leading through uncertainty.

You need to know how to admit not knowing. Never, I hear you say. (It’s what I hear my clients say whenever I present it as a possibility.) It would be the end of me as a leader. I would be chucked in the leader donation box. The question I ask is, have you tried? What evidence are you basing that on? Because if you haven’t tried, then it’s an assumption, and we know what they say about those.

Seriously, I have this conversation with almost every one of my clients and to a man—and woman—they are nervous, if not downright afraid, to try it. However, when they do, they invariably find a whole new world of possibility opens up. They hear things from people in their team—who are often closer to what’s happening on the ground, or who are simply sitting on great ideas but were never asked—that surprise them. Armed with that evidence, unboxed, they try again, and suddenly they become the leaders they were always meant to be. Leaders willing to ask the questions, willing to not know and explore and find out, with their team beside them.

It’s called curiosity, and that’s what a leader is supposed to know in uncertain times. How to be curious. How to feel safe with not knowing. (There’s a touch of vulnerability in there too.) Curiosity is your Swiss Army knife for leading through uncertainty.

Now here’s the call to action: if you’d like to engage more on the theme of leading through uncertainty, click on the link in my profile to make an appointment. I had to say that.