In my mind, I can encapsulate the last year or two and the people I know—friends, family, and acquaintances—in an imaginary sphere, personally significant, but admittedly a mere speck in the grand scheme of things.

What do I find inside that little bubble of life?

There is, of course, much that has been positive. There is beauty and wonder and awe. Yet, I also find plenty of hardship. This tiny portion of life that lives in my memories includes...

• Long marriages that abruptly ended.
• Families whose homes were lost to natural disasters.
• At least two friends who received devastating diagnoses. Others who lost children.

When I reflect on these heaviest blows, it is tempting to dismiss workplace problems as trivial, but those challenges are still real, and they still cause us stress and suffering.

For most of us, life is not at stake at work, but relationships, status, reputation, and financial security are, and as a social species, those things matter. That same tiny capsule of life contains many difficult and painful events involving business and career.

• People close to us lost jobs of decades to circumstances beyond their control.
• Critical “sure things” fell through for our clients without warning.
• Businesses we work with were sent reeling due to unpredictable shifts in the market, their long-term viability in question.

In retrospect, there was a lot to worry about in my little time bubble.

The Extraordinary Is Ordinary

Despite all these very real examples, my point is not how unusually tragic the recent past has been, nor how an unusual number of hardships seem to have clustered around me.

In fact, my point is the opposite. This is ordinary. This is life.

It’s not just me, or the people I know. It’s happening to your employees, too. It’s happening to your suppliers. It’s happening to your customers. It’s happening to your boss and coworkers.

It’s happening to you, and let’s be honest: It’s terrifying.

Struggling With Uncertainty

We simply do not, and cannot know what the future holds, and that is a very uncomfortable reality. Human beings do not like it one bit.

Yet, knowing that abyss is out there is one thing—and we all know it, whether we admit it to ourselves or not—but spending your days staring into it is another.

Confronting it can offer a healthy dose of perspective. Dwelling on it is a recipe for suffering and paralysis.

No, you cannot live from that place, and you certainly cannot lead from there.

To me, this is one of life’s most fundamental tensions, the most challenging of dialectics. The future is wildly uncertain. Terrible, life-altering things could happen at any moment.

But they probably won’t. Until they do.

Holding Opposites

A dialectic is a situation where two seemingly contradictory truths exist simultaneously and must both be held as valid. In this case:

Truth 1:

The future is profoundly uncertain and filled with potential catastrophe. We cannot eliminate this uncertainty.

Truth 2:

We must live and lead as if things will generally work out okay, because they usually do.

Dialectics cannot be managed by choosing one over the other, nor is there a “right” compromise.

Instead, we must find a way to understand how both can be true at once, and learn to navigate the tension between them.

It’s like a teeter-totter with a constantly moving fulcrum. Finding the right balancing point is an active sport, because life is always changing.

Everyone must master this dance. Leaders must help others learn to do it, too.

The Problem With Fear

In this particular dialectic, Truth #1 is hard to miss, especially now, with multiple sources of uncertainty, risk, and potential disruption making headlines by the minute.

The weight of Truth #1 makes Truth #2 significantly harder to believe. And when we lose sight of that second truth, the hopeful one, the one that keeps us moving forward, what we are left with is fear.

Leading from fear is a problem.

• Fear feels like it protects us, but in reality, it paralyzes us.
• Fear causes cognitive narrowing—we fixate on threats and overlook possibilities.
• Fear puts us into a default mode (fight, flight, or freeze) and limits flexibility (e.g., dominant leaders become dictatorial, supportive leaders avoid conflict).

Fear makes us dumb.

The Future We Don't Want

Leading from fear makes Truth #1—that the future is profoundly uncertain and filled with potential catastrophe—a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Your emotional state in the present shapes your decision-making, and your decisions shape your future.

When the dominant emotional state is fear, the decisions are likely to be bad, which creates the future you were afraid of in the first place.

That is not to say isn't is justified. Truth #1 is still true, after all.

But as a leader, you owe it to yourself and your people to learn to manage it. You must remember that Truth #2 is also still true.

How can we do this?

Finding an Anchor

As I write, the Ohio River, just two miles from my home, is rising rapidly. It is a serious situation.

Knowing the water level and how quickly it is changing is crucial, but knowing how deep the river is, on its own, does not help. The riverbed is always shifting and changing.

To deal with the river’s inherent unpredictability, engineers long ago established a fixed datum, an unchanging reference point to which they can anchor their measurements.

We don’t know how deep the river is today compared to the Great Flood of 1937, but we know where the waterline is relative to the datum, and that is enough.

Although nothing in life is truly stable, some things, like the engineers’ datum, are more stable than others.

To avoid being swept away, ground yourself in something solid. Create your own datum. It could be nature, a meditation practice, faith, working with a therapist, physical exercise, or anything that feels dependable to you. Find an anchor.

The specific anchor matters less than its reliability—something you can return to when uncertainty feels overwhelming, something that reminds you there are constants even in chaos.

Only Now Is Real

Finding a reliable anchor creates a stable reference point to which you can return, but you still have to navigate the waters.

Regardless of the forecast, leaders must captain the ship that is their organization, and for that task, it is only the conditions now—not last year’s flood or tomorrow's predictions—that matter.

Fear lives in an imagined future that usually never arrives. When you find yourself spinning scenarios of disaster, notice that right now, in this moment, today's conditions are what they are. Your team is here. The work continues. The water is exactly as high as it is.

The present moment is rarely as frightening as our anticipated future. When you think you can’t handle it, notice that you are handling it. How do you know? Because you’re still here.

Being the Anchor

As a leader, it is doubly important that you learn to be grounded and present in the face of uncertainty, because for the people in your organization, the anchor is you.

You have both the burden and the opportunity to be that reliable point of reference, the constant to which they can ground themselves. To be that for others is a gift.

Of course, this is all easier said than done.

We all get overwhelmed by uncertainty sometimes. That's part of being human. Even the most grounded leaders have moments when fear creeps in and the future feels overwhelming.

That's why we're here—to help leaders find and maintain their own solid ground so they can do the same for others. Check out our website to learn how.

Until next time,
Greg

About the photo...

I took this photo on February 25, 2018, as the Ohio River crested at 35.77 feet (as measured from the McAlpine Locks Upper Gauge Datum, of course). This was the tenth highest crest in recorded history, more than ten feet higher that the 28.40 foot crest expected later this week (which still represents fairly significant flooding).

Nothing, however, compares to the Great Flood of 1937, when the river crested at a remarkable 52.15 feet on January 27, leaving nearly 70% of the city under water. The spot on which I stood to take the above photo would have been seventeen feet of water on that day.

And in case you were wondering, although we are only two miles from the mighty Ohio, our home is a very safe 140 feet above the river!