Leading through uncertainty is now part of the day job for senior officers in local government. Political instability, changing policy, government direction, financial pressure and rising community demand mean that ‘business as usual' is no longer the norm.
In my work with organisations going through change, I often see a burst of energy at the beginning. Plans are created, people are engaged, resources are aligned and momentum builds. Then the context changes. LGR is a recent example for many councils: a clear mandate and direction, significant momentum, staff engaged, and then a pause.
We know responsiveness is part of leadership. But prolonged uncertainty poses a different question: if we do not know exactly where an organisation is heading, how do we protect the culture we will need when clarity returns?
Psychologically, uncertainty is demanding. When information is incomplete, we try to fill the gaps. We scenario-plan and begin responding not only to what is happening, but to what might happen. Across an organisation, that can look like frustration, anxiety, excitement, disengagement or simply a desire to retreat to the day job.
One mistake leaders make is trying to manufacture certainty. Sometimes there genuinely is no answer yet. False reassurance may temporarily fill the vacuum, but it risks damaging something much more important: trust. I would argue that our task is not to create certainty where none exists. It is to build an organisation capable of functioning without it.
Many familiar approaches to change assume a journey: a starting point, a destination and a plan for travelling between the two. But what happens when the destination moves? As an organisational psychologist, I think we need to stop viewing change solely through the lens of plans and milestones. We must also pay attention to what people need psychologically when those plans stop making sense. I come back to three anchors: agency, meaning and connection.
First, agency. People need to feel they have some influence over what happens around them. At an organisational level, strategic uncertainty must not become organisational paralysis. Be explicit about what people can still decide and progress. If a major transformation is on hold, where can teams continue to improve services, solve problems or innovate?
Protect agency at all costs. Otherwise, we risk creating a passive ‘wait and see' culture that will be difficult to reverse when the organisation needs to move again.
Second, meaning. When the destination becomes less clear, purpose becomes more important, not less. What are we still here to do? What do our communities still need from us?
Local government has meaning in bucketloads. That is an enormous cultural asset. Leaders may not be able to provide a final destination, but they can keep people connected to the reason their work matters today.
Third, connection. Uncertainty creates spaces that are quickly filled with speculation. Engagement does not mean endlessly repeating that there is no update. It means leaders remaining visible, questions having somewhere to go, and information travelling upwards as well as downwards. Honesty about what is known, unknown and unchanged is often more reassuring than misplaced certainty.
For me, uncertainty is the ultimate cultural stress test. It is easy to talk about trust, empowerment, openness and collaboration when the plan is working. We discover whether those values are real when it is not.
Can leaders openly say, ‘We don't know yet'? Do we continue to trust people to make decisions, or does authority begin creeping upwards?
We should also be careful about calling every difficult response ‘resistance'. Frustration, challenge or reduced enthusiasm may be useful information about the conditions we have created. Senior leaders need to remain curious about what those responses are telling them, rather than trying to manage them away.
We cannot protect organisations from uncertainty. But we can protect the cultural conditions that allow them to remain healthy through it: agency, meaning, connection and, above all, trust.
The leadership challenge in limbo is not to have all the answers. It is to make sure the organisation still knows how to move when you do not.
Lucy Trueman is an organisational psychologist, a change and transformation specialist and the founder of Trueman Change
