Ep222: Leading Through Turbulence

David Wheatley, Judy Brown, and Rick Eigenbrod discuss the challenges of leadership in times of turbulence, emphasizing the need for new approaches. They highlight the concept of "BANI" (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible) as a replacement for VUCA, noting the familiarity and ineffectiveness of traditional terms. The conversation underscores the importance of leaders adapting to rapid change, fostering reflection and conversation as actionable steps, and encouraging a shift from seeking clarity to seeing things differently. They also explore the impact of AI on leadership, suggesting it should enhance human capabilities rather than replace them.

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Transcript

David (00:12)
Welcome to this episode. I'm David Wheatley, your host today, and I'm joined by the good doctors—Dr. Judy Brown and Dr. Rick Eigenbrod. Neither of them ever address themselves as doctor. I don't know why I always do that, but I insist. If you met them, they’re just Judy and Rick, and that works.

Today’s episode is going to be another conversational one. The question I posed was: How do we lead through turbulence?

And that turbulence is broad—it’s all the wild stuff that can be going on in your environment, your industry, or even globally. That turbulence requires a different kind of leadership. So we thought we'd have a conversation about what leadership in a time of turbulence looks like.

So Rick, I think you're going to start us off.

Rick (00:58)
Thank you. And again, thanks for the invitation. These have been great fun—conversations with you and Judy.

One of the things I realized we’ve offered over the years are one-liners—our attempts to capture in simple language very complex ideas and dynamics.

One that’s relevant here, that we’ve used on a number of occasions, is: Conversation is a fertile ground for emergence.

Without realizing it, today’s topic—Judy and I’s deliberation, collaboration, and consideration—came from exactly that. What we’re living through and demonstrating today, right now in this moment, is that dynamic: that out of conversation emerged this session on turbulence—managing through turbulence and change.

From that conversation, a number of realizations emerged. One of which is that we are experiencing—both in our personal and professional lives, and in our work with leaders and their organizations—a qualitatively and quantitatively different kind of turbulence.

And these terms—“turbulence,” “change”—have, in some ways, become clichés. They’ve lost their power to impact us. They’re so familiar that there’s a kind of “yeah, yeah, yeah” quality to them.

So we started to dig in a little bit. Even terms like VUCA have become so familiar, they’ve almost become clichés. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity—uh-huh. There's no wallop in that anymore. Rather than caution, we might even take it as exciting and fun.

So how do we capture what’s actually going on now? What language can we use—or invent—to help us truly understand, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, and organizationally, what we’re seeing on a daily basis?

The nature and rate of change are so profoundly different than before. And what we’re experiencing—personally and globally—is a full-scale assault on our taken-for-granteds.

That’s not comforting. It’s not necessarily inviting or exciting. But as we talk more today, I think we’ll reference things that demonstrate it’s true. Just turn on your TV this morning.

So that’s what we’d like to offer today: the latest in our thinking about what lies ahead, how we need to think about it, and—to quote another great one-liner—how you know is how you go.

The first job of a leader is to think about how they think about something. And that’s what we’d like to offer today—our thinking about how we’re thinking about this very familiar notion of turbulence and change.

David (06:05)
Let me just fill in a few bits. So we used the term VUCA—and for those not familiar, as Rick said, it’s a well-known framework. If you Google V-U-C-A, you’ll probably get more than you want. It stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

You also mentioned the nature and the rate of change. Launda and I were out in the woods the other day talking about how every generation has had these moments—turning a corner in age and saying, “Remember when you had to sit in the hallway to make a phone call?”

Most generations have had something like that. But it’s accelerated. Maybe it started with the steam engine, then the internal combustion engine, the internet in the last 30 years, and now AI—in the last three weeks.

It’s accelerating at such a rate. That, more than anything else—never mind tariffs or global issues—is the biggest source of turbulence: the nature and rate of change. That’s worth pulling out.

Judy (07:36)
When I was thinking about this, the first thing that came to mind was: What do we do with all this turbulence?

I found myself writing down: Fasten your seatbelt. Because otherwise, if that plane lands upside down, you’re going to be on your head. At least having the seatbelt on gives you a moment to stay in place so you can get out safely.

It’s a silly analogy, but it reminds me of Peter Vaill’s idea of leading in permanent whitewater.

That language helped us see that waiting for things to settle down was not helpful—because things weren’t going to settle down. And what we already know about the nature of waves and whitewater—which David knows a lot about from kayaking—gives us some clues on how to handle this.

David, you had a slide up that included not only what VUCA stands for, but the strategies for how to deal with it. Can you share that?

David (08:54)
Yes, I can throw it up on the screen for those watching. For those listening, I’ll describe it. It’s a slide with the VUCA acronym across the top, and then a framework called VUCA Prime, from the folks at Muoio Moro.

It’s about how to address VUCA:

• Volatility is addressed with vision
• Uncertainty with understanding
• Complexity with clarity
• Ambiguity with agility

Judy (09:29)
That’s a really useful notion. It tells us there are ways to manage this.

But there’s also a newer descriptor: BANI—B-A-N-I. Let me go through that slowly for those listening.

• B is for brittle—as in not agile, not flexible
• A is for anxious—as in how we feel in the midst of all this
• N is for nonlinear—where small actions cause huge reactions, and big efforts get no results
• I is for incomprehensible—as in, we can’t make sense of what’s going on

Rick (10:25)
I’ve got a small example of that. I just flew to Denver—two hours each way. In the old days, I wouldn’t have given that a second thought. Now, because of everything we’re seeing in the world—globally, technologically—air travel feels different.

That’s an assault not just on my sense of normal, but on many people’s taken-for-granted assumptions about something as basic as public transportation.

Judy (11:14)
Exactly.

And David has a great visual of this BANI world—things break, people feel anxious, small things cause big effects, and the world feels incomprehensible.

We’re used to figuring things out. But this is a non-figure-out-able world.

So the question becomes: What’s our stance?

Rick often asks this, and I think it’s incredibly useful: What is your relationship with uncertainty?

How do you operate when you’re in it? This isn’t fixable. It’s not solvable. It’s not even figure-out-able.

So the question isn’t “What should we do?” but “What is our way of being?”

Individually, and with each other, in the face of this kind of reality. Because we can’t tell people what to expect or what to do. Things might be topsy-turvy tomorrow.

This is the challenge. And I would say it’s not just emotional and physical—it’s spiritual. It’s about our orientation in this world and how we support each other.

I hang out with a lot of folks who are really upset about what’s going on. And the favorite activity is listing all the terrible things.

And I notice myself not participating.

David (13:55)
That’s what Facebook is for.

Judy (14:13)
Exactly. I find myself pulling back. Shifting the question. Encouraging someone who changes the energy in the room.

It’s a different kind of leadership.

Rick (14:30)
What you just described, Judy, is what we've been calling the generative stance—the intentional way of being that allows things to emerge that might not have otherwise.

And when you talked about your refusal to participate in the listing of grievances or tragedies, what came to my mind is something we’ve mentioned before: The energy that you bring into the room is the energy that will prevail.

And in today’s world, leaders must be curators of energy. The real differentiator is what energy you bring to the team, to the conversation, to the challenge.

David (15:10)
And to add to that, when we’re in this turbulent environment—when things feel brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible—it’s tempting to want to do something immediately. But what I’ve learned from both of you is that being might matter more than doing.

How you show up—calm, grounded, curious—might be more impactful than any clever tactic or solution.

Judy (15:38)
Right. And that “being” isn’t passive. It takes real discipline. It’s about being present and choosing how to engage.

That’s not easy when the world is falling apart—or at least, when it feels that way.

Rick (15:56)
I’ll bring in another one-liner: We are all living in the questions now.

We don’t have neat, tidy answers. We are living in the ambiguity. And as leaders, we must model what it looks like to live in the question without panicking.

David (16:13)
That reminds me of something I’ve seen in coaching sessions lately. Leaders will ask, “How do I stop my team from spiraling when we hit a roadblock?”

The answer isn’t to give them a magical fix. It’s to create enough space and air cover, like we’ve talked about before, so people can think and regroup.

It’s leadership as atmosphere setting—helping others breathe and refocus.

Judy (16:40)
Exactly. And that circles back to one of our favorite metaphors: leading like a thermostat, not a thermometer.

You’re not just reacting to the temperature—you’re setting it. And in turbulence, that’s leadership.

Rick (16:58)
This also means we must resist the impulse to over-control or fix everything. The desire for certainty is strong, but it can lead to false clarity.

Sometimes we need to say, “We don’t know yet. Let’s sit with this. Let’s listen.”

That’s a courageous stance.

David (17:22)
So, as we wrap this episode:

• Lead like a thermostat
• Curate your energy
• Ask, “What’s my relationship with uncertainty?”
• Embrace being, not just doing
• And live in the questions

Those are huge takeaways.

Thank you, Judy. Thank you, Rick. As always, this conversation went to a place we couldn’t have scripted—and that’s part of the magic.

We’ll see you next time. Stay grounded.