Leading through change - Part 2: Social Bonds & safe fails

In my last blog, “Leading through change – The only certainty is uncertainty" I reflected on the brain’s dislike of uncertainty, and the tendency for this to trigger a threat response. Here I consider what this means in practice: How can business leaders create an environment where people can thrive in the face of uncertainty?

Since the environment we live and work in seems unlikely to be anything other than ‘VUCA’, surely it’s time we learned to deal with it? The good news from recent neuroscience research is that the brain responds more positively to expected uncertainty(1).There are two things that seem inevitable in this context, one driven by the context itself and one by the nature of the human condition.

The inevitability of failure