What Does Steadiness Mean in Uncertain Times?
Photo credit: Bennie Bates via Unsplash
Why do leaders tighten their grip when things feel uncertain?
It is hard to know what to make of the upheaval moving through our workplaces right now. Layoffs arrive, or worse, the rumor of them lingers for months. This summer, an autonomous AI agent being tested by OpenAI slipped out of its testing environment and spent days breaking into Hugging Face’s systems, a story that still feels baffling to read. Scientists reported last fall that warm-water coral reefs have crossed the first climate tipping point, a threshold we cannot walk back across. And through all of it, most of us keep showing up at our desks and answering the next email, which is its own quiet kind of strange.
Earlier this year, we named six leadership trends or themes for 2026, but the one that keeps resurfacing is steadiness: how leaders can keep their feet under them during hard times. It makes sense. When it feels uncertain, people yearn for answers, clarity, and order. We are drawn to leaders who appear steady.
Steadiness in leadership is a leader’s capacity to stay grounded in their values and present with their people while the path ahead remains unclear, and it rarely depends on having the answers.
For leaders, that longing creates its own pressure. Research going back more than four decades describes what tends to happen next: under threat, people and organizations narrow the information they take in and concentrate control in fewer hands, a pattern organizational scholars Barry Staw, Lance Sandelands, and Jane Dutton named the threat-rigidity effect. Many of us know it from the inside as the urge to tighten the reins and speak as though we already know how this ends. It is showing up in the data, too. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report found that manager engagement fell from 27% to 22% in a single year, a reminder that the people we count on to steady everyone else are often running low themselves.
Recently, several members of the Henley team sat with a simple but challenging question: When have you seen steadiness mistaken for certainty, control, or having all the answers?
What followed were reflections that were personal, practical, and sometimes surprising. Stories of leaders learning to sit with ambiguity, letting go of control, and discovering that steadiness often has less to do with certainty and more to do with a leader’s vision, wisdom, presence, and relationships with others.
On Living with Ambiguity
On nearly every job application, there’s a line that says “ability to deal with ambiguity,” which is honestly funny to me. For many leaders, myself included, that often means finding answers when there aren’t any. The truth is, we move through ambiguity every single day. And there is very little certainty right now in the workplace, in the headlines, in our communities.
I had a boss once, the head of the company, who couldn’t stand uncertainty. When there wasn’t an answer, they’d make one up. They’d try to control the outcome, and when the result wasn’t what they wanted or expected, they’d fudge the numbers or hide them or move quickly to the next flashy thing.
It was rare to have a meeting with them where we took time to let things unfold, brainstorm, or use intuition to help find a solution or an answer. Their inability to deal with ambiguity led to a tightening of their grip, a command-and-control style of leadership.
In response, I noticed myself getting defensive and competitive, constantly feeling pressure to produce, and wanting to shield my thoughts and hide possible solutions from the team so that no one would steal my ideas.
The tighter their grip became, the more everything around them began to contract. We moved far away from any sense of collaboration. It became clear and tangible in the year-over-year revenue and number projections that the business was declining.
Over time, it clicked for me. We can move forward without all the answers. We can trek on a path that isn’t fully lit, and in fact, it often makes work more enjoyable, more fruitful, and it even brings unexpected solutions. Steadiness can bring ease and joy and grounding into the conversation, something control could never do.
— Sam Crawley, Director of Marketing, Henley Leadership Group
Leaders in the Eye of the Storm
As an evolving, growing leader, I’ve watched myself move through several phases of what it means to be a good leader or manager. At first, it meant simply “produce the results”, or have my team “produce the results” that we were accountable for, using whatever means it took. For example, micromanage if that’s what was needed. Or be kind, be harsh, be firm, be inspiring, work super hard, on and on. This approach to being a leader and manager led others to be fearful, uncertain and diminished.
Then, I moved toward an approach of finding out what my direct reports needed and trying to provide that for them, while still holding them to account for the results. This, in hindsight, was an improvement, but still wasn’t all it needed to be. My latest iteration of leadership includes aspects of the prior methods and other added dimensions. It’s something like attempting, as much as possible, to be the calm center in the eye of a storm.
The age we are in now is fraught with uncertainty, and we are encountering unpredictable headwinds. It reinforces the truth of the phrase, “Humans plan, and God laughs.” So what is one to do and be as a leader?
For me, steadiness means being a values-based, mission-driven leader. For that to become actualized daily, I take time to connect deeply with my mission and values and ask myself what it looks and feels like to live true to them and stay on course. Over time, this practice helps me become a steadier presence for others, allowing them to stay connected to what truly matters and makes a difference.
— Alan Cahn, Executive Coach & Facilitator, Henley Leadership Group
Befriending Uncertainty
My relationship to certainty has changed dramatically over the course of my life and leadership journey. That arc can be described simply as becoming increasingly comfortable with uncertainty.
Early in my career, I believed I could see and consider all the variables. Short and long-term goals, both personal and organizational, tactical and operational necessities, employee satisfaction, the quality of products and services, and plans for contingencies to ensure success. There were inevitable pitfalls, failures, and learnings. We all accept that as part of the process. What remained constant in me, however, was the striving for improvement and the expectations and attachments to outcomes that often left me, as a leader, frustrated and disappointed. In my best version of leadership, those emotions no longer lurk just beneath the surface.
It was when I befriended uncertainty that everything changed.
Learning to be comfortable with discomfort, committed yet unattached to outcomes, flexible in my vision, willing to communicate my vulnerability in not knowing, and open to unanticipated change all strengthened my ability to navigate the rushing river of change like an expert kayaker running rapids.
Wu Wei is a term I learned about recently that I found helpful. It translates roughly to “effortless action”. When we act in alignment with the river’s flow, we practice eliminating friction. We then sail with the current, allowing it to do the heavy lifting. Now, in a business environment of constant uncertainty, I can keep my boat steady and move with the current. My orientation to the process has changed, allowing me to bend with what is without losing sight of where we are going.
— Melanie Cossette, Coach and Facilitator, Henley Leadership Group
Leadership Learnings from Ancient Cultures
Afghanistan is a country dear to my heart, and I would be hard-pressed to find a culture that has experienced more upheaval or uncertainty. And yet when I visit Kabul and talk with Afghans who have endured decades of war and drought, a collapsed banking system, and a harsh authoritarian government that has taken away education, legal rights, and personal freedom from half the population, I encounter a resilience, sure-footedness, and even humor that defies explanation.
How can this be?
People seem to reorganize around one another to find creative ways to educate women and girls in their homes and to create economic programs where women can sell their goods, bringing money into their families and supporting one another as they pursue passions like learning physics or playing chess. With each loss or collapse of a structure, or each new edict from a mullah that removes a crucial lifeline or freedom, they readjust. This should not be confused with giving in.
These ancient cultures have seen it all: cycles of poverty, abuse by their government, corruption, violence, sickness and death, loss of family land and all of their belongings, the collapse of crucial systems, and general turmoil. And yet many remain reflective, grounded in their community, loving and loyal to one another, and working together toward a better future, as best they can. There is a sort of freedom in not expecting to know what will happen next. They count on nothing and are grateful for everything that is good. They are flexible, adaptive, and consequently, resilient. In ancient cultures, we may find clues on how to move gracefully through hard times, rooted in community, honoring our values, and knowing that the only thing in life that ever stays the same is change.
— Fran Nunes, Thought Leadership Coordinator, Henley Leadership Group
The Discipline of Steadiness
To me, steadiness connotes solidity, stability, and strength. I imagine the whipping winds of change, the rumble of doubt and fear, the darkness perceived in the unknown. I see legs firmly planted, arms at the ready, face soft and prepared. Steadiness does not necessarily mean firmness or rigidity. Rather, it speaks to the ability to adapt to what is at hand, knowing that whatever comes will be dealt with thoughtfully and with self-confidence. Calm demeanor seems part of steadiness, too. No flying off the handle or histrionics. Able, willing, undaunted.
The bridge of an aircraft carrier is a quiet place. Watch-standers speak softly to one another, if at all. Orders given crisply and succinctly in a cadence that might belie the concern associated with catapulting planes and navigating the rough sea. Of course, being surprised by external forces while maneuvering a hundred thousand tons of ship is not allowed.
Thus, seeing possibilities allows one to be steadier, assured that what is coming, while possibly unknown, is within a manageable range.
— Jon Mullican, Coach & Facilitator, Henley Leadership Group
What does steadiness ask of leaders?
Read side by side, these reflections suggest that steadiness draws on something deeper than having the answers. It shows up in a leader’s willingness to stay present when things are unclear and to keep moving when the next step has not yet come into view. Amy Edmondson’s research at Harvard Business School suggests this matters most exactly when it feels hardest, since the more uncertain and complex the work becomes, the larger the role psychological safety plays in how a team performs. A leader who can say “I don’t know yet” and stay in the room gives everyone else permission to think out loud.
What also comes through is that the source of steadiness looks different for each of us. Sam found it in learning to walk a path that isn’t fully lit, and Alan returns, day after day, to his mission and values. Melanie found it by moving with the current of the river, Fran in Afghan communities who keep reorganizing around one another, and Jon in the quiet preparation of a ship’s bridge.
Perhaps this is the quiet gift of steadiness. None of us knows what the next season holds, and we can still stay present with one another and meet what comes with care.
What does steadiness look like in practice?
Sitting with ambiguity without rushing to an answer
Returning, again and again, to what matters most
Letting go of control to allow better thinking to emerge
Trusting the process even when the path is not fully visible
Staying connected to others and moving forward together
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Steadiness is the ability to stay grounded, thoughtful and present when circumstances feel uncertain or changing.
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Steadiness describes how a leader carries themselves while the outcome is still unknown, so it can grow even in seasons when certainty is out of reach. Leaders who chase certainty under pressure often end up gripping more tightly, which tends to make the people around them more guarded.
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By staying connected to values and purpose, resisting the urge to over-control and becoming more comfortable with not knowing exactly what comes next.
How steady is your leadership when things get uncertain?
If this season has you carrying more change and ambiguity than you expected, you are in good company, and you don’t have to find your footing alone. For more than two decades, Henley Leadership Group has walked alongside leaders and teams from our home in Seattle - we see something real and irreversible tend to happen as leaders learn to stay present with what they don’t yet know.
If you’d like to bring this work to your team or organization, we’d love to begin with a 30-minute conversation. Let’s talk.