Acknowledging uncertainty means telling the group what you know, what you do not, what you are assuming and what would change your plan, while still making a clear decision. Done this way it protects trust, because a plan that changes was announced as changeable, whereas a leader who projected certainty is exposed the first time events say otherwise.
Part of Leadership Psychology in Crisis
Acknowledging uncertainty is stating the limits of knowledge behind a decision, without turning the decision itself into a hesitation.
Uncertain Is Not The Same As Undecided
A common fear among leaders is that admitting doubt will make people anxious or push them to challenge the decision. This confuses two things. “I am not sure the route is clear” is a statement about the world. “I do not know what to do” is a statement about the leader. The first is information the group needs. The second would be alarming, and it is not what is being said when the leader goes on: “so we will send two scouts ahead and move at first light if it is clear.”
The parent article’s example does it in one breath: here is what I know, here is what I do not, and here is why I think this is the best option. It builds more trust than false certainty because the leader’s confidence is attached to the plan, not to a claim about the future.
What The Research Does And Does Not Show
Amy Edmondson’s work on teams, beginning in the 1990s, found that the hospital teams with better leaders reported more medication errors, not fewer, which she explained as better teams being more willing to speak about errors. She developed the idea of psychological safety: a shared belief that one can raise a concern without being punished. (From memory: Edmondson, a 1996 error study and a 1999 paper on team learning. I have not rechecked details.) It supports a general point that groups where it is safe to say “I am not sure” or “I think that is wrong” find mistakes sooner.
A set of experiments by Anne Marthe van der Bles and colleagues, published in 2020, tested what happens to trust when uncertainty in numbers is communicated. They found that expressing uncertainty reduced trust in the numbers only slightly, and less than people tend to fear. (From memory; I am not certain of the exact findings, and the studies used public statistics, not leaders in a crisis.) Treat both as consistent with the practice, not as proof that it will work in any given community.
Method: Stating Uncertainty So It Helps
Step 1: Separate the layers. Say which parts are known (observed), which are inferred, and which are guesses. “We saw the smoke; we think it is a camp; we do not know whether they are armed.”
Step 2: Say what you are assuming and how you will find out. “We are assuming they will not come this way. A watcher goes to the ridge tonight.”
Step 3: Name the trigger for changing the plan. “If the watcher sees movement toward the creek, we pull back to the stores.”
Step 4: Commit clearly. After the layers, state the decision as firmly as you would otherwise. Hedging the decision itself is the mistake.
Step 5: Report back. When the uncertainty resolves, say what turned out. A leader who reports correct and incorrect guesses alike gives the group a record of how reliable those guesses are.
Calibration Beats Both Confidence And Doubt
A leader who is always certain, and a leader who always hedges, give no useful signal. What the group needs is a leader whose stated confidence matches how often they turn out to be right. This is learned from the previous step. Over time people come to know that “I am fairly sure” from this leader means something.
Common Mistakes
- Over-hedging. A message with five caveats and no decision is a refusal to lead.
- Using uncertainty to avoid blame. “I did say it might not work” after the fact, when the plan was announced as certain, is dishonest.
- Hiding uncertainty to prevent panic. Evidence from disaster research is that panic is less common than leaders assume, and that groups usually respond sensibly to honest bad news (see Information Hoarding).
- Admitting uncertainty only to the council. If the council knows and the community does not, the community is working from a map the leaders know to be wrong.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Delegation & Trust — the second half of sharing a leader’s load
- Combine with: Honest Optimism — the same honesty applied to morale