#452 Disrupt Everything and Win: How Leaders Can Take Control of an Uncertain Future - Dr. Patrick Leddin and Niels Brabandt
Disrupt Everything and Win: How Leaders Can Take Control of an Uncertain Future
By Niels Brabandt and Dr. Patrick Leddin
In every industry, leaders are confronting the same message: disruption is no longer an event. It is a constant condition. Whether the trigger is AI, restructuring, mergers, economic shifts, or customer expectations, today’s executives must navigate a world where the ground moves beneath their feet with accelerating speed.
But disruption does not need to be a threat. It can be a strategic advantage, if leaders learn how to use it.
This is the central message of Dr. Patrick Leddin, professor at Vanderbilt University, bestselling author, former army officer, entrepreneur, and expert on leadership in times of crisis. In conversation with Niels Brabandt, Leddin explains how individuals and organisations can reclaim control, build resilience, and turn disruption into a source of opportunity.
The insights below are drawn directly from that dialogue.
The Leadership Myth: Stability First, Change Second
For decades, many organisations have romanticised the idea that strong leaders stand above the fray, immune to uncertainty, confidently guiding teams through turbulence.
Yet this ideal is increasingly unrealistic. As Leddin argues, leaders can no longer define themselves by control. Instead, they must excel at navigating instability.
Whether you lead a multinational corporation or a small department, your team is facing the same anxieties:
Will AI replace my job?
Will restructuring remove my role?
Will the skills I have today matter tomorrow?
Can I trust the future the organisation describes?
When fear becomes the dominant narrative, leadership must shift from projecting certainty to showing clarity.
Disruption as a Strategic Tool, Not a Threat
Leddin’s research with James Patterson, the bestselling author and former CEO of J. Walter Thompson, explored how people respond to crises over a three-year study with 350 interviewees.
From that work emerged a defining insight: positive disruptors do not wait for stability before acting. They use small but intentional moves to shape their own future.
Some of these moves are deceptively simple:
Saying the “scary yes” when an opportunity feels both promising and intimidating.
Owning the day before it begins, defining priorities before digital noise consumes attention.
Choosing a role such as trailblazer or torchbearer to lead a movement rather than resisting change.
Disruption, in this view, is not a battlefield. It is a landscape for growth.
When AI Arrives: Fear, Opportunity, or Both?
AI remains the most universal disruptor in business today. For many employees, it introduces profound uncertainty.
Leddin argues that the fear is understandable, but paralysis is optional.
He shares the example of a corporate writer whose CEO delivered a ChatGPT-generated speech. The employee feared elimination. Yet the reframing changed everything: instead of resisting the inevitable, he decided to become the organisation’s AI trailblazer, learning the tools, mastering the domain, and helping others adapt.
In disruption, relevance is not given.
It is created.
How Leaders Build Confidence Without Pretending to Have All the Answers
One of the most striking insights from Leddin is the admission that leaders do not always know what will happen, and pretending otherwise erodes trust.
Teams do not need leaders who are certain.
They need leaders who are honest.
Leddin recommends a balanced approach:
Acknowledge what you know.
Admit what you do not know.
Clearly state your intent.
Show the team where their strengths matter.
This moves leadership from a performance of infallibility to a practice of partnership, the foundation of resilient culture.
The 16 Behaviours of Positive Disruptors
Through extensive research, Leddin identified 16 behaviours common among leaders who thrive in disruption. Not every leader possesses all of them, and that is the point.
Leadership is a team sport.
Your strengths compensate for mine.
Mine compensate for yours.
Some leaders excel at casting vision.
Some at confronting brutal reality.
Some listen deeply.
Some act decisively.
Resilient teams combine these capabilities instead of demanding that one person embody them all.
The Tension Executives Cannot Avoid: Perform Today, Transform Tomorrow
Executives face a paradox:
They must deliver quarterly results.
They must prepare the organisation for a future that is uncertain and volatile.
Lean too far toward performance, and innovation stalls.
Lean too far toward transformation, and the organisation fails to execute today’s expectations.
Leddin argues that leaders must hold both simultaneously.
Resilience is not built in quiet classrooms.
It is built by attempting difficult things, learning from obstacles, and gradually expanding the capacity to face the next challenge.
Every team must define:
Which goals deliver performance today?
Which develop capability for tomorrow?
And the balance will differ by context, market pressure, and organisational maturity.
Where to Begin When Everything Hits at Once
When disruptions converge, AI, restructuring, shifting customer demands, project pressure, and team insecurity, leaders often wonder: Where do I start?
Leddin offers a three-step starting framework:
1. Define a vision for the disruption.
What opportunity might emerge?
What could success look like?
2. Identify the obstacles.
What barriers exist now?
Which are predictable?
Which require preparation?
3. Run small experiments.
What can we test immediately, without risking the organisation?
What hypotheses can we validate?
Small experiments build confidence.
Confidence builds resilience.
Resilience builds teams capable of navigating transformation.
Disruption Is Not Chaos, It Is Leadership
In an era when the future cannot be predicted, leaders must shift from seeking certainty to enabling capability.
As Niels Brabandt and Dr. Patrick Leddin emphasise, disruption does not determine outcomes. Decisions do.
Disrupt everything, not recklessly, but consciously.
Take control of your future, not by avoiding disruption, but by shaping it.
And lead your team not with guarantees, but with clarity, honesty, and courage.
This is the new leadership mandate.
It is not easy.
It is necessary.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com
Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.