Leading Well in a VUCA World: How to Cultivate Steadiness
Photo Credit: Razvan Sassu via Unsplash
This month, we opened a conversation about cultivating steadiness in a rapidly changing workplace. We named the conditions many leaders are navigating each day: sustained disruption, accelerating technology, rising expectations, and the emotional weight that often sits quietly beneath the surface of work. Steadiness lives in how we meet these moments. It grows through attention, discernment, and the capacity to remain present when the path ahead is still unfolding. If you missed that introduction, you can read it here.
We continue the exploration below, offering perspective and practices for leading well in what has long been called a VUCA world.
Nearly two decades ago, the phrase “VUCA World” was introduced at a leadership conference for people whose work focused on developing leaders. Futurist Bob Johansen described a future careening toward us, carrying with it the implicit question of readiness. The hope was that leaders would prepare. Most did not.
What has become clearer since then is not just the shape-shifting nature of the challenge, but what it truly takes to meet it.
By now, many people know VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous. It certainly sounded ominous at the time. A few in the audience actually groaned. What would it mean to live and lead in a VUCA world? What skills and abilities would serve us? And how soon would this world arrive?
It arrived. And never really left.
The Central Leadership Challenge
How might leaders respond in the face of ongoing volatility, uncertainty, chaos and ambiguity? This is the central leadership challenge of our age.
After more than 20 years of observing and working with leaders and their teams, one thing is clear. The best leaders are unflappable in the face of ambiguity and chaos. As David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work, observes, “They can observe their own thinking, and thus can change how they think. These people have better cognitive control and thus can access a quieter mind on demand.”
They keep their feet on the ground while still opening their hearts and minds to whatever circumstances are unfolding. They recover quickly from breakdowns. They do not let their mood dominate the day. They are more curious than certain. And even though they care deeply, they do not take difficulties personally.
Engaging the Inner Director
David Rock offers an idea that helps leaders ground themselves in uncertainty. He calls it engaging “the director.”
“The director is a metaphor for the part of your awareness that can stand outside of experience. This director can watch the show that is your life, make decisions about how your brain will respond, and even sometimes alter the script.”
This capacity to step back, to observe rather than react, is what allows leaders to remain steady when conditions are anything but.
Steadying the Inner Landscape
When leaders find themselves on a slippery slope, there are three simple things they can do right away to regain calm, no matter what is happening around them.
1. Label what’s happening
“Name it to tame it.” Labeling moves people out of emotion and engages the neocortex, the rational, thinking part of the brain.
Labeling, whether verbal, written, or journaling, can create calm in the body and mind. From this calmer state, it becomes possible to see more opportunities, more solutions, and more paths forward. In Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, Daniel Siegel explains, “Writing in a journal activates the narrator function of our minds. Studies have suggested that simply writing down our account of a challenging experience can lower physiological reactivity and increase our sense of well-being.”
Leaders can practice labeling emotions throughout the day, telling themselves the truth as they experience it: anxious, uncertain, bored, frustrated, disappointed. This simple practice can interrupt automatic emotional reactions.
2. Shift perspective
The most effective leaders can view complex circumstances through multiple lenses and understand paradox, knowing that two things can be true at the same time. They shift perspectives with ease. In doing so, they remain open and influenceable, even by those who hold very different views. They are willing to enter the uncomfortable space of not knowing. They are curious, open learners.
Perspective can be challenged by questioning the story being told about a situation and then creating a more empowering one. Or, for those willing to be brave, by inviting others into conversation. Sharing how things are being seen and asking others to challenge that thinking. Inviting diversity of opinion and dissent.
3. Take a breath
Taking a deep, slow breath brings attention back to breathing, thoughts, needs, and well-being. In other words, it is the act of putting on one’s own mask before helping another. This begins a centering practice that supports the return from reactivity to reality.
One or two intentional breaths can bring the mind into a calmer state, where creativity, compassion, and genuine curiosity come back online.
Through the breath, the director is engaged. This observation is known as self-awareness or mindfulness. It may also be called metacognition, thinking about thinking, or meta-awareness, awareness of awareness. Attention shifts inward. The pull of external chaos loosens.
A Call to Lead
It is easy to be swept away by the high-speed disasters of the day. The news cycle alone can trigger reactive states that lead to hopelessness. But leadership is none of this.
Leadership is the creation of a future. It is the stilling of despair.
If there were ever a time for steady, grounded, human leadership, it is now. Be that leader in a VUCA world. This moment calls for it.
Five Helpful Habits for Leading Well in a VUCA World
1. Slow Down.
When under pressure, pause before responding. Even a brief delay allows for clearer thinking, better listening and making a better decision.
2. Say What You Know, Say What You Don’t
Although this may feel counterintuitive, being honest with your team builds trust. Name what is clear, what is still unfolding and what you are learning in real time. What to share, and when, takes discernment and training.
3. Let Your Values Be Your North Star
When the path is unclear, return to mission, purpose and values. Let them guide choices when data and certainty are incomplete or hazy.
4. Normalize Not Having It All Figured Out
Model learning, genuine curiosity and the capacity to course-correct. This gives others on your team the permission to do the same.
5. Tend to Your Inner State as Seriously as Your Outer Strategy
Keeping your feet under you is a leadership capability. Build in practices that support reflection, self-awareness, flexibility and the capacity to adapt.
Continue exploring with us
Watch the webinar recording where we introduced all six leadership themes shaping 2026 and explored this first theme through the lens of the old VUCA and the emerging conditions leaders are navigating now
Join us at Henley Live, our in-person gathering on May 7 in Seattle for leaders and executives who want space to practice and grow in community
