You’ve likely been in this room. You’re discussing next year’s priorities when someone asks whether the funding will be there to support them. The decision hasn’t come through yet. Service demand is rising and staffing is already stretched, yet planning can’t wait indefinitely.
The room goes quiet and everyone looks to you.
You understand why people want an answer. They need to make decisions, reassure their teams and know where to put their effort. When you feel responsible for helping everyone move forward, it can be tempting to offer more assurance than your information supports.
Even when you don’t have the answer, you can help people understand where things stand and how to proceed. You can be uncertain about the outcome and clear about how you’ll lead.
What Clarity Looks Like When the Answer Is Uncertain
Some urgency comes with a particular crisis or deadline and eases once it has passed. Many leaders now experience pressure that persists as new demands arrive before earlier challenges have been resolved.
In her recent Harvard Business Review article, Karen Walker calls this this ambient urgency, which she defines as “the chronic, low-grade sense that everything is urgent, has to keep moving, and nothing can wait.”
Under these conditions, saying “we don’t know yet” can feel inadequate. You might reassure people that the funding will come through, hoping to give them enough confidence to continue. Your reassurance can become someone else’s planning assumption. Staffing plans or service commitments may then depend on an outcome you cannot guarantee.
Taking action can also relieve some of the discomfort of uncertainty. When that relief influences your judgement, an untested assumption can become the basis for a plan that needs considerable rework later.
In an HBR article, The Mindsets Leaders Need as AI Accelerates the Pace of Business, Jacqueline Carter and her colleagues report on a Potential Project survey of more than 100 CHROs and heads of talent and learning across global organizations. Only 32% felt their leaders could sustain the performance today’s complex environment requires.
The authors emphasize how leaders’ mindsets shape their responses to change and pressure. One shift they recommend is from certainty to clarity, where “the goal is a clear mind rather than clear answers.”
Recognizing your own impulse to reassure or act gives you room to examine your assumptions and judge what you can responsibly say and do. Here are three ways to put that clarity into practice.
1. Acknowledge What Remains Unresolved
Sometimes everyone knows a key question remains unresolved, but the meeting proceeds as though the answer is settled. People debate timelines or targets while privately wondering whether the plan is viable.
You might say: “We haven’t received funding confirmation yet. Which parts of this plan depend on approval?”
Naming the uncertainty and its implications makes it easier for people to raise concerns and examine options before commitments are made.
Ask yourself: What uncertainty do we need to honestly acknowledge now to avoid a blind spot later?
2. Be Clear About What You Can Commit To
You may have limited control over a policy change or an external decision, but your responsibility still includes anticipating the implications and preparing a response.
Explain what is confirmed, which assumptions you are using and what you are committing to do. You might say: “Based on what we know, I recommend proceeding with this part of the plan. The expansion depends on approval, so we’ll defer that commitment and review it next month.”
People can then understand your judgement, including where you are prepared to act and where the evidence does not yet support a commitment. You remain accountable for the recommendation without promising an outcome you cannot control.
Ask yourself: What can I responsibly commit to, and what remains conditional?
3. Help People Find a Way Forward
Some questions can be resolved by gathering more information. Others will remain open while decisions still need to be made.
As part of assessing the risks, ask which missing information could change your decision and whether it can be obtained in time. This helps the team judge when further analysis is worthwhile and when it needs to proceed with clear assumptions and a plan to review.
People closest to service delivery may see pressures or practical consequences that have not reached the executive table. Invite their perspectives into the discussion, including where a proposed response could create additional strain.
Help the team connect that knowledge, weigh the tradeoffs and understand where they have authority to act. Together, identify what can proceed now, who will take responsibility and what new information would require a review.
Ask yourself: Whose perspective do we need, and what can we move forward together?
When people understand the basis for your decisions, they can act without treating every assumption as a promise. They also know when to bring new information forward and when a change of course is warranted. Your clarity helps the organization keep moving while remaining willing to reconsider.
If you’d value a thinking partner as you work through decisions like these, my Executive Coaching offers space to test your assumptions and clarify your next step.
