Sitting With Uncertainty

Our entire professional training system is built on the assumption that competence means having answers. From school through graduate programs and into the workplace, we’re rewarded for knowing things. So it’s no surprise that when uncertainty arrives — real, unresolvable, sit-in-your-stomach uncertainty — most leaders instinctively reach for a plan, a framework, or a decisive statement. Anything to restore the feeling of knowing.

But some of the most important leadership moments require a different skill entirely: the ability to not know, and to be okay with that. To sit with uncertainty long enough to see what’s actually emerging, rather than jumping to premature conclusions. This is different from indecisiveness. It’s a deliberate choice to stay open, to keep gathering information, and to resist the seductive comfort of false certainty.

This capacity is genuinely difficult to develop through conventional training methods. You can’t learn it from a book or a lecture, because it lives in the nervous system, not the intellect. Your body wants to resolve the tension. Your mind wants to close the loop. Training yourself to stay present in that discomfort requires practice — repeated, experiential practice in a supportive environment.

That’s exactly what applied improv provides. Every improv exercise puts you in a moment of not knowing. You don’t know what your partner will say. You don’t know where the scene is going. And the only way through is to stay present and respond to what’s actually happening. Over time, this practice rewires your default response to uncertainty. Instead of panic or premature closure, you develop a calm readiness. You learn to trust yourself and your team even when the path isn’t clear.

The leaders who’ve built this capacity describe it as one of the most valuable skills they’ve ever developed. Not because uncertainty goes away — it never does — but because their relationship with it changes. They stop seeing it as a threat and start seeing it as information. And that shift changes everything about how they lead.