You're talking about uncertainty wrong

Key Takeaways

I always say Kevin, it's not our fault, like evolutionary times our brains were formed to view things that we can't explain or we can't understand or we can't predict as bad. But that seeps into every bit of how we lead and how we manage in our mindset. And if you listen for it, we actually talk about it in a way that frames our brain. And that when you're talking to other leaders, you might hear yourself saying things like, "Hey, how are you managing this uncertainty?" Or "How is your team dealing with this uncertainty?" Or "How are we going to overcome this uncertainty?" When we speak about uncertainty, we almost always put a word before the word uncertain that means it's going to be bad. And that frames our brain and goes into this protectionist mindset, which then completely reduces our opportunity set of what we should be focusing on. So, we've got to reframe. Uncertainty is merely a series of future events which may or may not occur. Whether or not those events are good or bad depends on what we're trying to do and how we're set up. And that becomes our job as a leader. Figure out what we want to do and then get set up to succeed in that world.