Uncertainty Isn’t an Employee Problem
If you’re feeling uncertain right now, you’re not crazy. You’re paying attention.
Uncertainty is everywhere, and it’s not just a vague feeling in the air. It has a source. We recently came across a stat that stopped us: the average organization pushes through about ten planned changes a year. These are the initiatives that make it onto a strategy deck, get presented to the executive team, and are scheduled to roll through the business.
Ten a year. And we don’t know of a single one that gets done in 30 days.
Do the math and you realize change isn’t an event. It’s the permanent condition. Those ten initiatives aren’t arriving one at a time on a neat assembly line. They overlap, collide, and tangle with each other, and they come from every level of the organization at once.
“Planned” change is a generous description
Calling it “planned change” gives most organizations too much credit. Having a plan to introduce a change is not the same as having a plan for how that change will actually work.
What we’ve seen over decades inside organizations, and now in our work with clients, is that the details of integration rarely get planned. What happens when this change hits the place where work actually gets done? Who answers the questions that pop up? What happens when it runs into the three other initiatives already in flight?
It’s often a case of eyes bigger than the stomach. The change sounds great in the boardroom. Then it travels through the organization and snags on confusion, competing priorities, and unanswered questions. That gap between the announcement and the reality is where uncertainty lives.
The request that raises our eyebrows
This brings us to a phone call we get more often than you’d think: “Can you run resilience training for our employees?”
To be clear, resilience is a wonderful human skill. If you, as an individual, want to build it, go for it. We’re fans.
But as a prescription from leadership, it’s a problem. When leaders say, “This would all be easier if our people were just more resilient,” they’re flipping accountability upside down. It’s the equivalent of saying, “You didn’t start the fire, but we need you to put it out.”
Creating an environment where people have a real chance to succeed is the leader’s job. Leaders and employees can absolutely work on it together, but leaders can’t outsource the responsibility for a healthy environment and then complain when their people struggle to clean up the mess. It’s unfair, and it happens a lot.
What leaders can do instead: offer certainty anchors
So if resilience training isn’t the answer, what is?
We love a phrase we heard recently: certainty anchors. You can’t predict the future. Nobody can. But some things are true no matter what, and reminding people of those things gives them solid ground to stand on.
Some anchors are personal. Who cares about you? Who’s in your corner? We often encourage people, clients and our own kids alike, to look sideways and look down. Look sideways: who’s beside you? Look down: who’s looking up to you for support, and who can you take care of? When you look around your world, however big or small, you start to find opportunities to help and create value. That feels good, especially when so much else feels out of your control.
Other anchors are organizational, and leaders are uniquely positioned to name them. The world might look different, but we’re still going to be a bank. The world might look different, but we’re still going to care about our people. Fill in the blank for your organization. What’s always true here?
Acknowledge the feelings, then do it more
This may sound familiar coming from us, but it bears repeating: in times of uncertainty, leaders need to acknowledge and validate what people are feeling.
It makes complete sense that people feel scared, anxious, worried, or disappointed when things are changing in ways they can’t control. A simple “I see you. It makes sense you’d feel that way” goes further than you might think. If you’re not doing it, start. If you’re doing it a little, do it more.
Because the honest truth is that people are not okay right now. No one can run with the anxiety motor wide open all the time, and that’s the world many of us are living in.
Be the voice of a little optimism
Here’s one more anchor worth offering: the future has always been unknown. That part isn’t new. What leaders can do is help people ground themselves, feel seen, and remember something simple and true: We’ve figured it out before. We’ll figure it out again.
Why this matters to the bottom line
A recent article noted where companies are spending their merit budgets this year. Number one, unsurprisingly, is AI skills: the ability to build agents and reshape how work gets done. Number two is leadership.
We don’t think that’s a coincidence. Technology can reshape the work, but it takes leaders to help people through the uncertainty that reshaping creates. Developing leadership skills is an investment organizations are willing to pay a premium for.
Is uncertainty weighing on your organization? Let’s talk. Contact us at slingshot25.com/contact-slingshot.
