#467 Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty: Why Niels Brabandt Argues for Direction, Exploration and Emotional Intelligence - Article by Niels Brabandt
Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty: Why Niels Brabandt Argues for Direction, Exploration and Emotional Intelligence
Article by Niels Brabandt
Uncertainty has become the defining condition of contemporary leadership. Volatile markets, technological disruption, geopolitical instability and shifting workforce expectations mean that decision makers are required to act with confidence in environments where outcomes can no longer be predicted with precision. In his latest episode of The Leadership Podcast and The Leadership Videocast, leadership expert Niels Brabandt addresses this challenge directly and develops a framework for how executives can lead credibly when the future cannot be planned in linear terms.
At the heart of Brabandt’s argument lies a simple but uncomfortable truth. The promise of certainty is an illusion. Strategic roadmaps, long term visions and multi year forecasts often create the impression of control, yet in complex systems they can quickly become outdated. Leaders who present themselves as possessing a crystal ball risk not only making poor decisions, but also losing trust when reality diverges from their projections.
From Prediction to Direction
Brabandt makes a critical distinction between prediction and direction. Leadership in uncertainty does not mean offering guarantees. It means providing a credible orientation while explicitly acknowledging that developments may take different paths. When executives declare that no jobs will be lost, that a transformation can only lead to improvement, or that revenue growth is assured, they expose themselves to a reputational risk that is entirely avoidable. The moment events unfold differently, their authority is questioned and their integrity is challenged.
Instead, Brabandt advocates what he calls guidance with tolerance. Leaders define the strategic direction and the rationale behind it, while also communicating possible deviations and risks. This creates psychological safety and preserves trust, even when unexpected developments occur. Admitting misjudgements, he stresses, does not weaken leadership. On the contrary, it reinforces credibility and demonstrates accountability.
Culture Is Not an Excuse
A recurring theme in debates on uncertainty is the invocation of national or organisational culture. Some environments are labelled risk averse, others innovative, as if behaviour were predetermined. Brabandt dismantles this assumption through practical examples from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. A highly conservative region can produce bold investment decisions, while a supposedly entrepreneurial ecosystem can display extreme caution. Reactions to uncertainty, he shows, cut across hierarchies and functions rather than following simple cultural stereotypes.
The implication for senior leaders is clear. Culture explains tendencies, but it must never be used as an alibi for inaction. Organisations that refuse to experiment because “this is not how we do things here” will eventually be overtaken by competitors who are willing to explore new paths. Sustainable leadership requires an active choice about the organisation’s appetite for experimentation and first mover behaviour, supported by clear governance and risk boundaries.
Exploration as a Strategic Capability
Brabandt places particular emphasis on what he calls a culture of exploration. This does not imply reckless behaviour or tolerance of misconduct. It means institutionalising learning through structured experimentation. New technologies, business models or organisational designs should be tested, evaluated and, if necessary, discarded without stigma.
Such a culture rests on two pillars. Successes must be visibly recognised and rewarded, signalling that initiative and courage are valued. Failures, provided they are not the result of negligence or malpractice, must be analysed for learning rather than punished. Organisations that only celebrate success and blame failure create defensive behaviour and suppress innovation. Those that systematically learn from both build strategic resilience.
The Emotional Dimension of Uncertainty
One of the most underestimated aspects of leading in uncertainty is the emotional response of employees. Change triggers fear, loss of control and identity threats. Brabandt warns against the rhetoric of toughness that dismisses such reactions as weakness. Leaders who ignore or invalidate emotions create informal coalitions, erode engagement and ultimately damage employer reputation in increasingly transparent labour markets.
Professional leadership, in his view, requires anticipating emotional reactions and addressing them openly. Not every executive must be a natural empath, but every executive must ensure that emotions are acknowledged and processed, either personally or through capable leaders in their organisation. Crucially, in moments of high impact change, accountability cannot be delegated entirely. Employees expect the person responsible for the decision to also be present in the dialogue.
The Role of Top Management Commitment
None of these principles can be implemented without unequivocal support from the top. Brabandt underlines that management buy in at board and C suite level is non negotiable. A strategy that encourages experimentation and openness to uncertainty collapses the moment senior leadership retreats to traditional control reflexes when pressure rises. Consistency between declared intent and actual behaviour is therefore a core test of leadership credibility.
Uncertainty as a Leadership Competence
The central message of Niels Brabandt’s analysis is that uncertainty is no longer an exception to be managed, but a permanent condition to be mastered. Leadership competence today is measured less by the ability to predict the future and more by the ability to create orientation, trust and learning capacity in its absence.
For business decision makers, this represents a shift in mindset. Authority is no longer derived from the promise of certainty, but from the capability to navigate ambiguity with intellectual honesty, strategic clarity and emotional intelligence. In an economy defined by rapid change, those who develop these capabilities will not eliminate uncertainty. They will, however, transform it from a threat into a source of sustainable competitive advantage.
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.
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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.
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
You know these people who tell you, "I always plan my whole week on Friday," or people who during the annual general meeting tell you, "Oh, we're going to tell you the vision 2040." And I'm always very impressed by that because I often wonder, where do these people have their crystal balls, and how do I get access to one of them? Because I want to have the fortune cookie that exactly tells theright truth as well.
Niels Brabandt
However, often it turns out that these people aren't tooright with what they do. However, we need to handle one aspect, and that's theright thing about this: we need to handle uncertainty way better. And that is not only a part of what people contacted me about via email; it's also a part of what science actually is now getting a grasp of more and more.
Niels Brabandt
So we are going to talk about leadership and uncertainty. Let's face it, the future is going to be more uncertain than it ever has been before, at least in most industries. If you are not working in some sort of field where you say, "Change is almost inevitable and nothing ever changes," then most likely you're facing uncertainty almost on a daily basis.
Niels Brabandt
Very important here, press pick this up, and before I show you what I'm talking about, there's of course the disclaimer. There's the Fair Use Act, which I'm referring to in the UK, and there's the quotationright, that's Zitiere Recht in German. So everything I show here is in full compliance with the law.
Niels Brabandt
It's Harvard Business Review, and they said that leaders need to build more tolerance towards uncertainty. And of course, very quickly, especially the German listeners will now say, "Well, you know, Niels."
Niels Brabandt
It's cultural. It's cultural. Cultural.
Niels Brabandt
That is the excuse that always comes up. It's cultural. So the Americans are totally open for uncertainty, all of them. And the Brits are a bit open, half of them. And the Germans are not open, none of them. That's what often comes up, and that of course is far, far away from the truth. I know that Geert Hofstede, that research on different cultures and how open they are, and there are cultural differences. I'm not ignoring that. However, simply saying, "It's cultural," and then not changing anything is something which is not going to make you survive on the market in the long run. So we need to talk about leadership and uncertainties.
Niels Brabandt
Three examples I have for you. Example number one, and example number one is a German company. It's an events company based in the south of Germany, and they had one issue. The expo ground, which they rent out four times a year, had maximum capacity, yet they still wanted to grow because investors also expected them to grow. And what happened is someone suggested, "We can build an extra building, basically on the front plaza, which we build up before the expo begins, two days before the expo everything is built up, and then afterwards, two days they take everything down again." We're talking about seven-digit investments here.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, you will now say, immediately people turn up and say, "You know, this kind of tent, they called it tent, and this is just cultural." You know, Germans will say, "We are not open for this." Yeah, and here the news, this did not happen. People immediately said, "Amazing idea. We are going to sell this either to different vendors or to one big vendor or to three or four mid-sized ones." No one said, "We shouldn't do this." So don't come up with the, "It's cultural thing." Bavaria is as conservative as it gets, politically as much as it is personally. Of course, the big cities are a bit different, but when you look into scientific evidence, a very conservative area in general. And they are very open in this organization. And by the way, it's a German company run by Germans, founded by Germans, German employees. So it's nothing where you say, "Oh, it's an American company and they brought the Americans over." No, it's not. So don't come along with the, "It's cultural thing." That is not an excuse.
Niels Brabandt
On the other hand, we have a London-based company. I'm now recording this in Londonright now, where there's a new product in the financial services world, and immediately people jumped and said, "Oh, we shouldn't publish this product. We shouldn't bring it to the market because it's cannibalizing others." And then I like my sales goal here, and my colleague does, and we don't know if this new product is really working, and maybe we lose all of the products because that one isn't working. So suddenly, in a culture where you would usually assume they are more open-minded about this, people were very conservative about changing anything.
Niels Brabandt
And then of course, we had the reorganization, which is quite common. You probably also lived through reorganization sooner or later during your life. And the reorganization was an American company where, of course, you might now jump to the conclusion, "Oh, they will be very open because Americans know this." And this did not happen. Basically, the organization split in half, 50% saying, "Finally, it's happening. It's more than overdue," and 50% saying, "We don't need this. Everything is going to be worse from here."
Niels Brabandt
And of course, you will now probably assume and say, "Yeah, you know, 50% are the leaders. These are the doers, the makers. These are the hunters." And then you have 50% of, you know, collectors, people who just don't know what to do, people who are not very good. So basically, the employees are not that great. They don't like change. That's why they never make it to leadership. News flash, you're wrong. It basically split across all levels. From highest level, except C-suite, C-suite was very convinced, at least they communicated that they are. On every other level, you had basically half saying, "We need this, overdue," and the other half saying, "I don't think we need this."
Niels Brabandt
And now the question is, how do you handle these situations? Number one, as soon as you face uncertainty, you need to be, and that is something you have to offer, and that is guidance. Guidance means, and of course people say, "Well, we just talked about not having the fortune cookie or the crystal ball, so how do I know?" Guidance means you address, this is the path we are walking, and you also address that there might be diversions in one or the other direction because you have to prevent that people can call you a liar afterwards.
Niels Brabandt
When you, for example, make absolute statements, which we have way too often, where people cannot predict if something's happening or not. So when someone, for example, says, "I guarantee you no one is losing their job." If anyone loses their job, they will say, "My manager's a liar." When you say, "Everything will be better afterwards," and they say, "Well, I looked at it and I think it's worse," they will say, "You are a liar." When you say, "Oh, everything is going to be so much better on the market, more revenue, more sales," and for whatever reason this does not happen, people will say, "You lied."
Niels Brabandt
So the guidance always means you give a direction. You always say there might be diversions in due course of the change. And when something happens which no one could assume in the first place, which no one could anticipate, then you can still say, "Look, it's either force majeure or I simply overlooked it. We had it on the agenda and we thought the risk is basically non-existent. However, it turned out to be differently. Sorry, that was our mistake. We are sorry." And by the way, admitting that you were wrong strengthens leadership, not, and it does not weaken it. That is extremely important.
Niels Brabandt
But when you give guidance, and we often have this very, very convinced guidance where you often have people who have lots of opinion, but they do not have a single bit of scientific knowledge to their name. And that does not make anything better. So it's very important that when you have any kind of guidance, be aware that you need to have tolerances in a couple of directions. And also tell people, "This is the guidance, so you are aware and you can be sure this is the way with a couple of pathways left andright."
Niels Brabandt
And by the way, this is how you plan any kind of trip. When you say, "Oh, we're going to have a summer vacation of two weeks in, let's say, Spain," you will have a plan, at least when you do vacations properly and you don't want to end up with surprises and ruin your two weeks' time. You will say, "This is what we can do when the weather's amazing," and then you probably also have a time, "This is what we're going to do when the weather's not so amazing."
Niels Brabandt
When I fly to New York City, I always plan a couple of private activities if I have the time for it. Not always do I have, but I hope that I have. Then I say, "These are good weather activities. These are bad weather activities. These are activities with friends who I probably meet by coincidence or who are there by coincidence during the same time who are culturally interested or interested in party or interested in seeing Bushwick, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, New York, Manhattan, New York City in general, Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, I don't know, upstate New York." So you always have plans because then you can give people safety and security.
Niels Brabandt
When you say, "I go by the ear," then face the consequence that you most likely will not end up well with that approach because you will have something overlooked. And as soon as you overlook something, people will not react in a nice way towards you. As soon as you then say, "This is the guidance," be open for experiments. And experiments might end up with that someone says, "Well, we could do this with a new piece of software. There is an AI. I don't know if it works too well, but we could try." And then you give them budget and they come back and say, "Look, I tried. It's actually not that great." The result is, "It's good, but it's not good enough." Probably it will be there in two years' time. We now have the piece of software, so probably we can use that in a year's time or maybe in two, but notright now. Sorry, I tested.
Niels Brabandt
But if you are the first mover and you are the first one in the market suddenly having the AI, so you can do everything way quicker, you probably say, "Well, amazing. We are now way ahead of the market." And experimenting always means, and you have to decide in your corporate culture or company organizational culture, do you want that? Do you want to be part of the first movers? Regarding AI, my organization, we are usually not one of the first movers because I know that in my industry, trainers, speakers, coaches, name it as you like, they are often falling victim of the shiny new object thing.
Niels Brabandt
I was told a million things that you need to have or you are, as they say, out of business. And usually they sell something to you afterwards. "Oh, you must have a one-pager." Well, I never had one, so here we are, still in business after 25 years. "Oh, you must have an up-to-date showreel every year." Never had any of that. I'm publishing scientifically. That's where you see what I can do, and you see me in public events, so there we are. So there's never just one way how to do things.
Niels Brabandt
One of the worst things was where someone told me, "Oh, you have to be on BLAP with video. You have to be on BLAP and on Periscope." Remember BLAP and Periscope? By the way, they're both off the market. So both of these pieces of software don't exist anymore. But someone says, "Oh, you need to be on there. You need to be on there." Nonsense. The time for experiments also means you can be open to try something, but you can also evaluate aspects and say, "Look, I took a deep look into this, and by scientific evidence, this is most likely either not that relevant or it's going to be relevant in a very slow way so we can still jump on the train later."
Niels Brabandt
By the way, if you say, "I'm the first mover," and you wereright as one of the very few ones, you have a massive competitive advantage. However, if you're a first mover and you were wrong, the money's almost gone. That is a decision you have to make, but you have to stay open for experiments. And with AI, I used AI, especially in due course of my activities and work with Microsoft New Horizons Computer Learning Centers, where it wasn't even called AI. So that's how long I already know what they call AI today. And I was a first mover there, and that paid off royally well. And still, I'm writing articles by myself and not do it by AI. So very important is the experiment that you have. The experimental factor is something that needs to be determined so people know what they can do and cannot do.
Niels Brabandt
However, one of the most important aspects where most managers struggle is how to handle emotions. You can, of course, always say, and you probably also know these managers who say, "Yeah, look, look, look, look, look. Some people just aren't strong enough for free enterprise. You know, they're just doers and makers, and they're the good people, people who are open for change, people who see the opportunity, people who don't see the criticism, people who don't see problems. They only see challenges, and they grow with the challenge because every challenge is an opportunity to grow." You know, good, grave, the next motivational, inspirational speaker somewhere in management. This is the living hell.
Niels Brabandt
If you have any kind of these leaders, I am very sorry for you, and please tell your leader to go to a leadership workshop, how to learn leadership properly. Handling emotions means, and I can tell you, I'm working in interim management. There are enough moments where I see emotions where I really cannot relate to them, where I say, "The change isn't that bad. What's your problem? Why are you making such a big fuss about that?" However, I'm not telling them because that's not very motivating; that's not really motivating them to do anything. So I sit down with them, I talk to them, and then we address the issue as good as I can.
Niels Brabandt
Any emotion either needs to be anticipated or dealt with. When you say, "I ignore the emotion," the first thing people do is they form coalitions, they talk to others, and in worst case, they leave and then go on the internet and say, "Look, that kind of organization doesn't treat their employees very well." And that is an expensive learning because then you have to spend more on recruiting and employer marketing, employer branding, etc., etc., etc. Handling emotions is a must-have, not a nice-to-have.
Niels Brabandt
And very important here is also that when you say, "I can't handle emotions very well," no one says that you always have to do it by yourself. Maybe you are on C-suite and you have an executive below that or a manager or a team lead, and they are way better with that, then you can delegate. However, you cannot delegate forever. When there are very crucial moments, people want to speak to the person who is not only responsible but accountable for the change, and then you cannot step away. So learn how to address emotions.
Niels Brabandt
I can tell you, as a born-and-bred Northern German who now lived in multiple countries traveling the world, sometimes I'm sitting there and think, "Really? That is the issue you're now opening up? You really think that's the point here? Really? Do we need to do this?" But that's nothing I show to the outside world. I know that emotions have to be either anticipated or addressed and dealt with, but never ignored. If you cut off emotions, by the way, that's even worse than ignoring them. You're telling people, "I cut them off. Your emotions are wrong." Then things get worse from there. And by the way, when these people are opinion leaders and you have a go against them, they will make you fall as a leader. You will leave within a year's time or less then.
Niels Brabandt
So the question now is, how do you implement all of that in your organization? Of course, number one is, and you can be as open towards uncertainty as you like, number one is management buy-in. The highest level of leadership needs to accept that you want to go down that route. When you say, "We need to be more open for uncertainty, we want to do this and that," and then suddenly C-level says, "Nope, we're not doing this. We are doing it the classical way. We just do the same as always." Yeah, so here we are. So do as always. Thank you. Then you will lose your own credibility. So you need to have management buy-in, be sure that highest-level leadership executive C-suite is going to support you.
Niels Brabandt
And then you need to have a so-called culture of exploration. Culture of exploration is very important. Does not mean that anyone can do anything wrong without facing consequences. However, it also means that when things go wrong, you do not immediately come up and say, "You know, I don't want to say I told you so, however, I informed you thusly." And by the way, that's what Sheldon Cooper said in Big Bang Theory. And that's exactly how you come across when you do anything like that. Culture of exploration means you try things, and now it's very important that usually there are two outcomes. Either you're successful or you fail. And the question is, how do you deal with it? Unfortunately, what I usually see is when someone fails, blaming, blaming culture, and when they are successful, taking the money and saying, "Thank you." And both of these are simply wrong and not enough.
Niels Brabandt
So number one, when you have a culture of exploration, always be sure that when you did somethingright, celebrate it and celebrate it properly. And the people who had the idea and brought this forward need to have something which is in for them. Give them something. Can be days off, can be money, can be gifts, can be anything. We're not going to discuss that one here, but it's extremely important. People need to see, "When I invest in this organization, what is in for me?" And then they say, "That is in for me." So from your point of view, always look at the wee fee. What's in it for you? W-I-I-F-Y. What's in it for you?
Niels Brabandt
And when someone did somethingright, celebrate. When someone did something wrong, and I do not mean that they deliberately did something wrong or sabotaged you or violated the law, I'm not talking about that. But when they did something wrong, learn from it. What have we learned from it? So for example, with my company, I stepped into the e-learning space very early, online learning. I came from a US background, US corporation, and I was way too early in the German market and lost the money, by the way, twice. And we learned from that that we are not an e-learning company.
Niels Brabandt
There are specialized large vendors who are working in a very, very low-paid space and also tough margins and extremely price-driven competition and often standardized training, which are not too much scientifically sound, but often just ticking the box for compliance, something like that. You probably know these kinds of online trainings which have basically no point, but you have to tick the box. And we learned we are going to stay out of that sector. And by the way, there's tons of money available in there. You can say, "When we have a huge server farm selling these online classes where people just tick the box, compliance training, and a million people do this, we only support the video, supply the video." Cool. You make money with it. No question about it. It's not my market space. I am not acting in that space, at least not as of yet. And I do not plan to do so at the moment.
Niels Brabandt
So when you do somethingright, celebrate. When there's something wrong, then learnings and learnings lead to them doing it better in the future. When you implement it the way that we just discussed, you are dealing with uncertainty as a leader will be way better, and I wish you all the best putting that into your organizational and personal leadership practice.
Niels Brabandt
And when you now say, "Look, I really have some more questions," feel free to. So first, of course, when you are now watching me on YouTube, like this video, subscribe to my channel, leave a comment here. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. When you are listening to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, review this, five stars, thank you very much, and recommend this podcast amongst friends, family, share it on social media, anywhere you like. Thank you very much for doing so.
Niels Brabandt
Or visit me on my website, nb-networks.biz, and then you see what I do for a living as a professional service provider. When you now say, and this is still a significant amount of people who say, "I have something to discuss, but it's not public because it is really about my organization. I can't put it into any kind of comment section," feel free to leave me an email, nb@nb-networks.com. Send me an email, and then we discuss it from there.
Niels Brabandt
When you think, "Are there live sessions?" Yes, there are. expert.nb-networks.com. As soon as we have live sessions available, you only get it via the leadership letter. And we have one live session every month, at least, sometimes even more. So when you go to expert.nb-networks.com, put your email address in there. No worries, you only receive one email per week, every Wednesday morning, one email, 100% content ad-free guarantee. And in there is full access to all the blogs, all the articles, all the video casts, podcasts, anything in the English and German language, and more than 400 online as of yet. So I'm looking forward to seeing you there. And in addition, in this email, you see the date, the time, and the access link to get to our live sessions. We only publish our live sessions on this medium. So I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
Niels Brabandt
Of course, you can also follow me on social media. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't do the follow thing. Connect with me properly. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Follow me on Instagram. Like me on Facebook and subscribe to my channel on YouTube.
Niels Brabandt
By the way, it really pays off to put the notifications on so you don't miss on new videos, miss out on new videos. And we also have YouTube Shorts. And these YouTube Shorts are basically a couple of leadership tips per week so you don't miss out. Put the notifications on so it really pays off to subscribe to my channel. Thank you very much for doing so as well.
Niels Brabandt
The most important thing, however, is all, by the way, if you contact me on any means, I answer any message within 24 hours or less, meaning if you don't get an answer within 24 hours, I most likely haven't received your message. So feel free to reach out to me again. But usually, I answer within 24 hours or less. So I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels Brabandt
The last thing I always say is the most important thing I always say at the end of this podcast and video cast. Apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast because only when you apply what you heard in this podcast and video cast, you will see the positive change that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so.
Niels Brabandt
Contact me anytime. Looking forward to discussing anything with you that you'd like to discuss from just having a couple of questions or discussion or when you say we need something very specific, training, speaking, coaching, consulting, project, interim management, mentoring. Let me know. I'm open for absolutely anything. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels Brabandt
At the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this video cast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.