41 Leading Through Uncertainty

What does leading through uncertainty actually require of you as a leader?

In this episode of Joyfully Unstoppable, Becky Hamm explores how experienced women leaders can navigate change with clarity, steadiness, and strategic intention. From budget cuts and mergers to AI disruption, cultural volatility, and political pressure, uncertainty shows up in every organization. The question is not whether change will come. The question is how you will lead when it does

You’ll learn how to:

• Understand why your brain experiences uncertainty as threat
• Regulate your nervous system so you can lead with composure
• Shift from reacting to change to leading through it strategically
• Anchor your team in core values, mission, and decision-making principles
• Become the “thermostat” who sets the tone instead of absorbing anxiety

Leading through uncertainty is one of the greatest tests of leadership maturity. It is also one of the most powerful opportunities to build trust, resilience, and team confidence

Becky shares practical strategies to help you regulate your own response, communicate clearly with your team, and create the psychological safety necessary for creativity and performance during disruption. When adversity is handled well, teams grow stronger. Trust deepens. Confidence expands.

If you are navigating restructuring, shifting priorities, or organizational change, this episode will help you lead through uncertainty with strength and intention.

🎁 Download the free resource: Leading Through Storms 

If this episode resonates, share it with a colleague, subscribe to the channel, and leave a review to help more women leaders discover the show.

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Transcript

0:46

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to succeed without the stress. Whether you are leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead Well. Each week we'll explore what it means to lead joyfully, sustainably, and authentically. Even in a world that tells you to hustle harder and prove your worth, you carry a lot. Let's help it feel lighter. Okay, friends, we are gonna talk about what, to my mind, is probably the greatest test of your leadership. And I'm gonna argue it is also your greatest opportunity as a leader. We are gonna talk about leading through change and uncertainty. Well, what do I mean by that? Well, I mean, budgets get cut. Corporate priorities change. Relationships change over time. Relationships with coworkers and peers and colleagues, relationships between organizations and just relationships between people. And so how do you as a leader, navigate that uncertainty, that change in a way that enhances your team's performance? And, um. Positions you to take strategic advantage of the opportunities that are inherent always in change and uncertainty. And so that could be restructuring is happening, right? Maybe there's a merger between two companies, maybe, as I have experienced in the past because of budget shortfalls, you've had to make some difficult organizational decisions internally. Maybe it's cultural volatility, something that we're seeing a lot right now. Trends are changing and that can shape your organization's behaviors and priorities regardless of whether you're public or private sector. Something all of us have dealt with over the last three years is the disruption that comes with artificial intelligence and how that is reshaping the way. All of us, every one of us do our jobs, whatever that job might be, and how we relate to one another in terms of workflows. Maybe it's political pressure, small p, political pressure internal to an organization or for folks in the United States right now. You know, the big kind of political challenges that we are facing as a country. It can very easily find its way into your boardroom or into your meeting table as you sit down with your colleagues and your team. So I wanna say a couple of things. I wanna say one, y'all. It happens like this is very normal when change comes. That is life, right? That is, that is just a natural part of life. Change is inevitable. And another thing that is virtually inevitable, some people don't experience this, but overwhelming majority of people do, and that is that we resist change or we want to avoid uncertainty. And the reason for this is obvious. If you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you have heard me talk about your big, beautiful brain, and it's one job of keeping you alive. Well, in an uncertain environment where you don't know what's coming, you know that something is gonna change, but you don't know how things are changing yet, or you don't know how your organization or your section, your division, your part of the organization is going to look going forward. That uncertainty, that change is threat to your brain because again, your brain's one job is keep you alive and keep you safe. And it doesn't know how to do that in an uncertain environment naturally, because the uncertain, it doesn't have a track record of having done it. Right. And so I wanna say one, when change comes in our personal lives, but here we're talking about our professional lives and you have that. No, like just rejection feeling, and maybe it's a panic feeling, maybe it's an anxious feeling, whatever that feeling is, again, overwhelmingly, most of us experience that as a negative reaction, a hard no. How do I stop the change from happening? How can I prevent it? How can I find certainty as quickly as possible so that I feel safe? And it might not be conscious. You might not think those thoughts, but that's what's going on in your brain. And so I wanna say if that has been your experience, that's normal. That is overwhelmingly all of us. Again, there are some people who are super risk acceptant, and so psychologically they thrive in that environment, but they are the outliers. If that's you, yay, great. You might not need to listen to this podcast episode, but for the 95% of the rest of us, this is for you. So I wanna, one, I wanna normalize that feeling of yikes when change or uncertainty comes up because it's not just for you the individual, but it's you leading your team and helping them because they are also feeling that, yikes, this is unsafe. How do I protect myself? You as the leader, have a responsibility and an opportunity. To shape that experience for them so they feel safe enough to take advantage of the opportunities that always come with change and uncertainty. And so that is what we're talking about today. Today we are talking about sifting through the feelings and emotions to find the pockets of clarity where they exist. And think strategically through those pockets of clarity in order to inform quality decisions, and then things you can do as a leader to show up with a presence, to have a presence that is, um, comforting and motivational to your team. So as they are going through their own emotional process of dealing with the change and the uncertainty that you are setting them up for success as well. So what can you do to set yourself up for success? The team as a whole, up for success and the individuals on that team. Let's start by redefining how we look at uncertainty. Again, your brain, natural, biological, your brain is gonna see uncertainty and change as threat. You might interpret that. As some kind of a weakness or a failure on your part that you couldn't prevent the change or that you couldn't find the solid ground, right? You couldn't overcome the uncertainty to to create stability. And I am gonna say, okay, again, feelings are feelings. Feel your feelings. All your feelings are real. They are not necessarily true. And I'm gonna tell you that, that this is one of those feelings that isn't necessarily true. Change uncertainty. That's just a condition. It's a part of the human condition. It's not a failure on your part, it's not a lack of an or an inability on your part. It just is. It just is. So leadership. Has always required decision making where you don't have full information, and so in this moment, if there is a realignment or a merger or budget cuts or whatever, whatever those conditions of change and uncertainty are, well, you have plenty of experience making decisions with imperfect information outside of those change conditions. Why? Because we never have perfect information. Pretty much every single decision you've ever made in your life has been outside of perfect information. You have made it in an information degraded situation where you don't know what's gonna come next, and so you've probably got more experience leading through change and uncertainty than you're giving yourself credit for. But the second piece is, is super important as well, and that is this. And we've talked about the team already today, but I'm gonna say this, your team is looking to you to be the thermostat for the group. What do I mean by that? I mean, and this is a great, I don't remember where I learned this, but it is so, it has been so helpful to me. Um, so I will share it and I apologize that I'm not sharing it with attribution. But that is this. You can be the thermometer or you can be the thermostat. What is the difference? The thermometer will tell you what the temperature is. The thermostat will set the temperature. You wanna be the thermostat. You do not wanna project out to the group. The fear and the anxiety that everybody is feeling when it comes to change and uncertainty. You don't wanna like vomit that anxiety and fear and panic into the group. That would be you being the thermometer. You were just reflecting the temperature. You're telling the temperature of the room. No ma'am. You, you set the temperature of the room. You are the thermostat, and so let's talk about how you do that. you start with you. You start by regulating how you are experiencing this change, and so it's gonna, we're gonna go woo woo for just a minute, but stick with me, right? Because your body is very likely experiencing the change of uncertainty as threat. Your body is gonna shift into some variant of fight flight, fawn or freeze. And what that means is that you are gonna be hyper fixated, maybe not consciously, could be subconscious, but still your brain is gonna be hyper fixated on getting you the individual, not the team you to safety. And that's gonna be fixating on what we can control, maybe resisting the change. Which probably isn't gonna serve you as an individual, but your brain is just looking to, to make things safe again, it doesn't realize you're undermining yourself, but so step one, if you wanna be the thermostat, is you regulate your response. And so that means that you signal intentionally and consistently to your body that you are safe. That could be that you get real serious before any meetings where you're gonna talk with your team about what's going on, or if you've gotta talk with your boss about what's going on or any of it. You spend 60 seconds, maybe two minutes, three minutes. If you can swing it, and you do those deep breathing exercises that we know regulate the nervous system, you flood the body with a signal of safety. Maybe it is before one of those meetings, or maybe as you come out of one of those meetings, you get super intentional to spend 60 seconds doing bilateral movement. Those big arm swings like the running man where your arms are going up and down. Um, you can do jumping jacks, anything that has the two sides of your body working in consort, but independently. It also helps to regulate your nervous system. If you've got the ability to do this, submerging your hands in cold, cold, cold water, running your hands under cold water at the sink in the bathroom. I've got one of those, um, facial rollers that you leave in your freezer. You just buy'em online and so I can roll my cheeks or roll my neck with something that's super cold. That will help regulate your nervous system. And so step number one is you start with you and you intentionally and consistently. This is not do it once and be done. This is, you do this potentially multiple times throughout the day. Over over the period of uncertainty. Could be months, right? But you start with grounding your body. And once you've done that, then you can then move into conversations with members of your team and help frame the uncertainty or frame the change in a way that allows them to feel safe and supported through the change. Can't ferry dust it away and the change might not be good. I mean, again, we shut down entire programs at an organization I was part of because of, because of budgetary changes we had to let people go. It was very, very painful. But regulate yourself first, and then you can engage with your team to help them feel safe through the process. And the way you can do that is by, first you wanna identify what the solid foundation is, right? What do we know that is given, right? What's not changing or where do we have certainty? And these can be anchors. You anchor in your core values, have those changed because the situation is changing? Probably not if they're core values. And so what are those core values that remain the same and can serve as guideposts as you navigate the change or uncertainty? Maybe it's long-term vision. Your strategic plan for the organization might have to change in response to some, um, of the uncertainties or some of the shocks that we can deal with. But, but the long-term vision, the long-term mission of the organization probably isn't gonna change much. The how you might accomplish it or what is possible might change. And so keeping people focused on the mission so they can then get creative about how they might accomplish the mission. Within these new constraints, whatever the change brings or whatever the uncertainty is, how they can navigate that. You're giving them the North Star by giving them their core values or reminding them of their core values, reminding them of the core mission, and then you as the leader. Articulating any decision making principles that you want to communicate. And so that's gonna depend on your individual context, but a decision making principle, I come out of the higher education space, and so what I would often tell my teams is we were navigating change and uncertainty is that, that our mission is to provide a world class educational opportunity to our students. And so as we are trying to navigate. What are we gonna let go of? What are we gonna keep? How are we gonna shrink programs in order to meet the reality of the budget cuts? I would tell them as you are thinking through what is vital, what is essential, what we absolutely must have, what's a hard requirement versus what is very valuable educationally, but maybe not a hard requirement. Is to to think about how do we best prepare our students, our future graduates, for the environment that they're gonna face. And if whatever it is, if that thing is truly vital to our students' future success. Then we're gonna, we're gonna work to make sure that we can accomplish that. If the thing is nice to have, it adds true educational value. There's no question of the merit, but it might not be required for our students to be successful. Well then that's something that we need to think about more deeply and we might need to make some difficult decisions about. And so think through in your context, in your situation, what are the decision making principles that you want to give your team? Is it. Greatest number of people, right? You wanna have the biggest impact possible, or maybe you wanna have a smaller impact, but a more profound impact. Whatever those principles are, you can offer that to your team. So as they are navigating change and uncertainty in their particular role, in their position, they've got some, some ways to think about it. That is anchored to the core values and the mission and your guidance, which just helps them to feel safe and protected, which allows them to get curious and creative, which is gonna make them more productive and effective. So I would invite you to consider, as you are thinking through change or uncertainty, what remains true about your mission? What values endure regardless of circumstance, what standards. Guide your decisions and what standards do you want to guide your team's decisions in ambiguity when they don't have all the information that they need. All right. And I've got a ton more to say about this, about how you communicate effectively with your team through uncertainty. And so, um, we might come back to this in a future episode. If you would be interested in more on leading through uncertainty or leading through change, just shoot me a DM or drop a comment. Let me know. Um, because I would be. Delighted to to do more episodes on this. I think it's so important. I really do believe that it is one of the greatest tests of your leadership, and I had said at the outset that it is one of the greatest opportunities for your leadership too. And so let me spend a minute here at the end making that case. Why I find leading through change and uncertainty so powerful for you as a leader and for your team. Is that nothing builds trust faster on a team than well handled adversity. And so when you as the leader, you as the woman in charge, when you are the thermostat, and when you set that thermostat to productive, collaborative, motivated, action oriented focused, you help your team. Rise to a challenge that they probably didn't know they were capable of. You are building their resilience. You are building their confidence in their own abilities, and you are building their trust in you as a leader who can take them through a scary, challenging, threatening time. That team is unstoppable. And so, no, it is probably not fun to lead through those moments. You have got to be intentional and consistent about keeping yourself regulated and being mindful to how you are setting that thermostat. You have got to help your team stay anchored in their core values, in the mission, on whatever guidance that you give them about how you want them to think through the changes that are coming. But my friend, as you do that, you are leveling up your team in a way that you just can't do when you're leading through normal times. And so I commend you, I exhort you. I encourage you. Don't shy away from the change. Don't try to just lock it down and make it go away so that you, so that you can feel safe. Don't be reactive. Be strategic in how you approach the change that is inevitably coming in every organization. And if this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend. We need powerful women who are effective at leading their organizations in teams through change and uncertainty because 2026 is showing itself to have plenty of both. Please don't forget to like and subscribe, and if you could leave a review, I would deeply appreciate it. It really does help a little podcast like mine. Reach new listeners And you guys know that I am here to support your growth as leaders and support your leadership. So I have got a, I think it's 10 or 12 page free downloadable PDF, it's called Leading Through Storms. That gives you scripts for how to talk with your teams, as you're working through change mindset shifts, how to deal with the heavy, significant emotional responses that team members can have, and just quick. Quick, encouraging little things you can share with your teams as you lead them through transitions. I will link that in the show notes below, or you can access it on the free resources page of the Women Lead well.net website. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership. Is possible and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Hamm and this is joyfully unstoppable.