Suspending Certainty, Embracing Uncertainty

Conventional wisdom is that leadership requires strong individual vision and certainty, as expressed in this quote by Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame:

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.”

But Whole Systems Leadership offers a different orientation to certainty, one in which uncertainty is not necessarily a liability, but a critical capacity for transformative change:

"A transcendent discovery is far more possible for individuals and groups when there is a willingness to risk, or admit, not knowing - when we confront directly the full weight of our confusion or the dilemma we are facing.” 
    ~Alan Briskin et al, The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly

An Example

In the story of the origins of the Bhoodan Land Gift Movement, when Vinoba Bhave set out to walk across India, he and his colleagues did not have a vision for the future of the Ghandian movement. They were not certain about where the movement needed to go, so they set out to listen deeply to the people in the villages. The villagers stepped up and provided the ways forward. In village after village, many small acts of listening set the conditions for a broader pattern to emerge: the largest peaceful land reform movement in human history.

Suspending certainty and embracing uncertainty doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t plan, but that the unfolding reality on the ground needs to take priority and inform choices for action.

“The plan is the map and not the territory. Necessary, useful, but never to be confused with the facts on the ground, and certainly never to be given preeminence.”
    ~Harrison Owen,  Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World

Why Suspending Certainty Is Important

Suspending certainty enables you to see beyond your habitual lenses to get a broader, and potentially more accurate, view of what is going on. It also creates room for diverse views so that new or different knowledge can come forth.

Suspending certainty opens up space for creative ideas and innovative pathways to arise. Finally, it helps you avoid pitfalls that come with misguided assumptions.

Glenda Eoyang, founder of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, often quotes Mark Twain, “It ain’t what you know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  She notes, “You can’t suspend all assumptions, because without assumptions you can’t make meaning or take action. But, you can’t work well if all you have is assumptions. So hold assumptions lightly and in relationship with information that might emerge.”

Principles and Practices

Below are some practices you can use to suspend certainty and embrace uncertainty.

• Be willing to let go of the belief that “I am right.”
• Avoid jumping to solutions. Take the time it takes to understand the situation. Often we leap from identifying a challenge to soliciting answers.
• Use critical thinking to identify your own assumptions.
• Solicit a multiplicity of voices. Nothing can shake up certainty like listening deeply to many views.
• Develop a purposeful, yet flexible relationship with outcomes. Complex systems are by nature unpredictable. Attaching too rigidly to a specific outcome can prevent you from clearly perceiving and responding to changing conditions
• Expect the unexpected. You see surprises more often when you are looking out for them.

Be aware of your own assumptions and judgments. When it comes to suspending certainty and embracing uncertainty, it helps to change your assumptions into questions. Different people have described this practice in different ways, for example:

• Replace judgment with curiosity (Michael Ray) or
• Turn discomfort into inquiry (Liz Lerman)

Changing Judgment Into Neutral Questions

(Adapted from Liz Lerman Critical Response Process)

How do you take an opinion that is embedded with judgment and turn it into a neutral question?

A constructive neutral question is:

• One that the person can answer
• One that invites honest reflection rather than defensiveness
• A meaningful, authentic question for you, the questioner
• Something you don’t know the answer to
• Open ended

For example –you might reshape the comment, “This cake is too dry!” into a question such as, “What kind of texture were you going for?”

Exercises to Deepen Understanding

• Changing Judgment Into Neutral Questions
• Stuck in Neutral Game

References and Further Reading

Eoyang, G. (1997). Coping with Chaos. Lagumo.

Johnson, B. (1992). Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems. Human Resource Development Press.

Lerman, L., Borste, J. (2003). Liz Lerman's critical response process: A method for getting useful feedback on anything you make, from dance to dessert. Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.

Mindfulness practice/guided meditation - http://takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/explore-healing-practices/meditation