Leading through uncertainty requires a different kind of confidence. When you can’t predict the outcome, you can still acknowledge the difficulty, make the next step concrete, and show people how you’ll support them along the way. That approach helps your team move forward even when the summit—and the path to reach it—aren’t yet clear.
Right now, we are surrounded by AI uncertainty. How can I get everyone on my team to start using AI? What if it harms humanity? How do I personally feel about my kids using AI?
Others can pick up on that uncertainty. When we communicate, the hesitation in our minds comes out in our voice in the forms of awkward language, excessive pauses, or filler words like “um” or “ah”.
This situation puts leaders in an uncomfortable position. Your team wants to hear that you know where things are going, and you don’t. You can’t manufacture confidence in an outcome you can’t see, and if you make it up, people can tell.
What do you do when the summit feels impossibly far away and the path to get there is full of complexity?
I faced a physical version of that challenge two weeks ago when I summited Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest freestanding mountain in the world.
It was the most challenging physical endurance test of my life: 7 days on the mountain, 6-8 hours each day of steep walking or rock scrambling, going from an elevation of 6,100 feet to 19,300 feet.
I’m not an avid hiker or climber—I’m a sailor. Most of my adventures take place at sea level and within a 50-foot space. This was definitely a stretch for me: the endless elevation, the poor sleep, the persistent cold. I significantly underestimated how physically uncomfortable I’d be for most of the time. For most of those seven days, the summit seemed impossibly far away.
Confidence in the next hour
What made it possible was not confidence I would reach the summit. It was confidence in the next hour. I joined my good friend and Harvard Kennedy School classmate Flavian Marwa, along with his friends in the Kili Summiters, a group of Tanzanian climbers who make the ascent nearly every year. They had walked this route before, so I put my faith in them and their guides.
What I learned from this experience has direct relevance to your challenge of handling uncertainty.
On such a monumental journey, don’t look up and definitely don’t look down. You’ll get too demoralized by how far you have to go. Look straight ahead, putting one foot in front of the other. Trust in your guides, support each other, and keep your spirits high. The only decisions you need to make are: stop or continue. I chose to continue. That’s how you reach the summit.
In my new keynote on Believability, I share that credibility isn’t just about what you know, it’s also being transparent about what you don’t know.Even if we lack confidence in the outcome, we can express confidence in the path we take to reach our goals.
How to lead through uncertainty
Here are three ways to communicate when your team’s goal feels daunting:
1. Acknowledge the difficulty.
Name the uncertainty instead of glossing over it. People need to know you recognize what they’re facing.
2. Make the next step concrete.
Give people something they can act on now, even if the entire path isn’t clear.
3. Make support explicit.
Explain how you’ll help, and create space for people to raise concerns or ask for a pause.
Then, put one foot in front of the other. Stop to rest, to recharge, to “pause and breathe” as I teach my executive coaching clients.
What are you leading your team through right now that you can’t see the end of? Fill out my contact form and tell me what you’re navigating.
Until next time,
~Allison
Allison Shapira
Harvard Lecturer. Executive Advisor. Hall of Fame Speaker. Bestselling Author.
PS – What I did to pass the time on the mountain was pretty geeky: I crafted new stories for my keynote, The Believability Gap. I thought of new analogies and life lessons. If your leaders are navigating uncertainty and need to communicate in ways people can believe, fill out my contact form. I’d love to discuss bringing this keynote to your next leadership event.
A few moments from the journey
