How HR leaders can turn uncertainty into a strategic advantage

“Leaders need to trade conviction for curiosity and create environments where uncertainty promotes insights, ideas and growth. Great leadership is not eliminating uncertainty. It’s learning to navigate it effectively.”

Self-doubt, he argues, should be treated as data rather than a defect. “Self-doubt is often a positive signal a leader is pushing at the edge of their competence,” Horsfield said. “The task isn’t to eradicate it, but mobilise it. Seeing doubt as a teacher showing you the path to where you want to go” can turn it “into a playground for potential.”

Left unaddressed, he warns, the risk isn’t dramatic failure but “the quiet hum of discontent” – cultures where people’s days “accumulate, but don’t count for much.”

Clarity is the antidote to silence

Communications expert Leah Mether says the instinct to project total certainty is the wrong one. “Leaders need to accept that navigating uncertainty is part of the job, not a problem to eliminate,” she said.

“Share what you know, what you’re doing about it, and what you don’t know yet – and keep your message simple so people aren’t left filling in the gaps.” Combining “clarity, empathy and consistency,” she says, steadies teams “even when the waters are rough.”