Picture this…the executive team is stuck.
Sales are flattening, a new competitor is circling, and the Board wants a plan by Monday. Around the table, the senior leaders are doing what many of us do under pressure: reaching for certainty.
“We just need to back Option A and move,” one executive insists. “We’ve done this before. It will work.”
The room nods, grateful for the clarity.
Only one leader hesitates: “I’m not sure we understand the risk profile yet. I don’t know enough to be confident that’s the best way ahead.”
The courage to say, “I don’t know,” shifts the room, and ultimately, the trajectory of the conversation and decision. The team pauses. They dig deeper into what they actually know and what they’re assuming.
That moment captures something essential: wise leadership sits with the discomfort of uncertainty. Overconfident leadership rushes past it.
Why our brains love certainty
From a neuroscience and psychology perspective, our preference for certainty is a feature of how our brains are wired.
Research1 on the “need for cognitive closure” reveals a crucial insight into how we make decisions under pressure. People vary significantly in how comfortable they are sitting with ambiguity and uncertainty. Those differences shape everything from leadership choices to team dynamics.
When someone has a high need for closure, they crave firm answers and clear-cut judgments. Uncertainty feels uncomfortable, even threatening. They’ll seize on the first plausible solution and freeze on it, even when fresh evidence suggests a different path forward. It’s a pattern that can derail strategic thinking, stifle innovation and limit your ability to navigate complexity with wisdom.
Additionally, when you experience uncertainty as threatening, you are more prone to anxiety, indecisiveness or an overreliance on behaviours that make you feel safe, such as delaying decisions or clinging to familiar options, even when those options are sub-optimal.
Put simply, our brains like the cognitive ease of the well-trodden path.
As Professor and Nobel Prize-winning economist, Daniel Kahneman explained, the fast, intuitive brain (what he called ‘System 1’) is efficient and necessary, but also prone to biased shortcuts and overconfidence.
In leadership roles, your brain’s wiring meets a powerful social expectation: that as a leader, you should be confident, decisive and certain.
Admitting you don’t know can feel like a personal and professional risk.
The risk of over-certainty
While certainty can feel comfortable, it comes with a cost.
The classic work2 on groupthink by Social Psychologist Irving Janis revealed how cohesive teams can slide into “concurrence seeking” where dissent is muted, alternatives are not adequately evaluated, and warning signs are ignored. The impact of excessive comfort and certainty is overconfidence, defective decision-making, and, in some cases, catastrophic outcomes.
More recent research3 continues to highlight the downside of premature closure. Leaders who are strongly driven by the need for closure are more likely to favour simple, familiar solutions, minimise ambiguity and sideline information that complicates the story they want to tell. They rely heavily on cognitive shortcuts rather than exploring alternatives, conduct narrower information searches, and quickly lock in initial judgments, even when new data suggests pursuing alternative options.
In fast-moving contexts, that pattern can feel reassuring in the short term while quietly eroding decision quality.
Consequently, the line from 18th-century philosopher Voltaire still holds: “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
Over-certainty narrows attention, reduces curiosity and makes it easier to:
- Discount data that does not fit the preferred narrative
- Silence or ignore dissenting voices
- Overestimate how much control the organisation really has
When you defend certainty at all costs, you raise the risk of exactly the strategic blind spots you are trying to avoid.
Discomfort as a signal, not a threat
I often encourage leaders to flip the lens.
Rather than seeing discomfort as a bad thing, recognise that it is a sign that you are learning. When you are confronted with challenging information or divergent perspectives, it is not a sign that something is wrong. It is often evidence that something important is happening.
Studies of team diversity and performance show that task-relevant diversity (for example, different functional backgrounds, experiences and perspectives) is associated with more comprehensive information processing and better decision quality, particularly when teams work through that diversity constructively.
Diverse teams often feel less comfortable and less confident in their choices, yet they are more likely to identify risks, challenge assumptions and arrive at robust solutions.
The power lies in combining diversity with psychological safety.
Without psychological safety, diverse perspectives stay silent. Without diversity, psychological safety risks becoming a comfortable consensus. Together, they allow leaders to use discomfort as data rather than something to push away.
How to say “I don’t know” without losing credibility
Leaders often worry that acknowledging their uncertainty will undermine their credibility.
Emerging research suggests the opposite when it is done well.
Studies4 examining authentic leadership during uncertainty show that when leaders are transparent about what is known and unknown, while simultaneously clarifying the bigger picture, purpose and direction, they can foster trust, engagement, and psychological safety.
You build trust when you pair honesty about uncertainty with clarity on the path ahead. Tell your team what you know, what you don’t, and what you’ll do next. Set realistic expectations about the process and how you’ll learn together, test solutions, and adjust accordingly.
That combination of transparency and clear direction reduces ambiguity and strengthens confidence, even when the outcome isn’t certain.
For example, there is a meaningful difference between:
- “I have no idea what to do”, which elevates uncertainty, lacks confidence and sounds disempowering; to
- “Given the complexity here, I don’t yet know which option is best. Here is what we do know, what we need to learn, and how we will decide.”
The first abdicates leadership. The second demonstrates leadership amidst uncertainty.
Bringing confident uncertainty to life
Recognising the value of uncertainty is only the first step.
The real work lies in how you conduct meetings, shape decisions and respond when the room looks to you for definitive answers. That requires you to deliberately counter the brain’s love of easy answers and familiar paths.
Here are a few practices to consider:
- Name the uncertainty explicitly – Rather than pretending ambiguity is not there, label it. This reduces the unspoken anxiety in the room and invites colleagues and team members to engage thoughtfully with what is unknown, rather than quietly filling the gaps with assumptions.
- Slow the rush to the obvious answer – Use Kahneman’s language with your team. For example, “This is a System 2 problem.” Being explicit about the context helps the team identify that the situation warrants slower, more deliberate thinking, even under high pressure. Ask: What would we see if our favourite option were wrong? What are we not considering?
- Design for dissent, not just agreement – Do not rely on the loudest voices. Intentionally seek out the outlier view, the quiet voice and the uncomfortable data. Rotate a formal “devil’s advocate” role, invite junior or peripheral stakeholders into key conversations, or ask each person to argue against their preferred option before the group decides. This helps counter groupthink dynamics.
- Build psychological safety on purpose – Set expectations that thoughtful challenge is part of each person’s role, not a career risk. Respond to bad news with curiosity before judgement. When someone raises a concern that creates discomfort, thank them first, then explore it. Over time, this signals that speaking up about uncertainty is not only safe but valued.
- Reframe discomfort as growth – When a new idea, piece of data or dissenting view makes you uncomfortable, notice that reaction and treat it as a prompt to dig deeper. Consider what you might be learning and what assumptions are being challenged. From a development perspective, learning sits at the edge of your comfort zone. That uneasy feeling is often the indicator that you are stretching into new learning territory.
Our working world is often volatile, interconnected and unpredictable. In that context, clinging to the illusion of certainty is not just unrealistic; it is risky.
Influential leaders accept that leading today is less about having the right answer and more about creating the conditions in which better answers can emerge. For example, having diverse, informed perspectives, thoughtful challenge, transparent discussion of risk, and a shared willingness to make decisions under uncertainty and adapt as new information arrives.
So, next time you feel tempted to project certainty that you don’t actually have, pause.
Notice the urge to rush to closure.
Invite a different voice.
Name what you do not yet know.
Treat your discomfort as a signal that you might be about to learn something important.
Doubt may stay uncomfortable. But in a complex world, it is also one of your most powerful leadership tools.
For more on leading with courage and influence when uncertainty is high, see Leading with Courage in Uncertain Times: Why Insight, Integrity and Influence Matter Now More Than Ever
Getting you ready for tomorrow, today®
Award-winning author and global workplace expert, Dr Michelle Gibbings, helps leaders, teams and organisations unlock strategic influence to accelerate progress.
- References
- Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103(2), 263–283. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263
- Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascoes (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin.
- Roets, A., Kruglanski, A. W., Kossowska, M., Pierro, A., & Hong, Y. Y. (2015). The motivated gatekeeper of our minds: New directions in need for closure theory and research. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 221–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2015.01.001
- van Dun, D., Hicks, J. N., & Wilderom, C. P. M. (2022). Authentic leadership, trust (in the leader), and flourishing: Does precariousness matter? Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 798759. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.798759