The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 332 - Tolerance of Uncertainty

Transcript:

Pete: G'day, Jennifer.

Jen: G'day, Pete.

Pete: So last week, I co-facilitated the Real Skills Conference, the annual Real Skills Conference, with our friends at Akimboand our friend Marie, who you know. And you and I have facilitated this in years gone by.

Jen: We have a couple times, yeah.

Pete: And it was so much fun. And there was a bunch of leaders from around the world, and we had this open discussion essentially around, "What do you think are going to be the most important leadership skills, real skills of 2025?" And the discussion was fascinating. I thought it would be worth sharing with you what we came up with. Maybe we can unpack if we agree with it, what we might do about it, and any other random threads that we come up that relate to it.

Jen: Love it, let's do it. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So I guess the context, the Real Skills Conference, at its core, is a conference designed for, I think the tagline is, "For people who care about the work they do." And the rationale, the branding of real skills we've talked about, I guess, in almost every episode in some way. But to spell it out, it's this idea that skills that have traditionally been called "soft skills", we believe should be rebranded. We, I say, me and the collective "we" in this little community that I was working with, that real human skills are the most important skills of leaders, and this idea of them being soft is unhelpful, unproductive, and not relevant anymore. And that technical skills, hard skills, especially at the moment, are becoming less of a differentiator and becoming more democratized, so we should be focusing on bringing the human skills of being a leader to our work.

Jen: Yeah. And something that just came up for me as you were talking is, one of the things that makes real skills (which some people call "soft skills") challenging to direct resources toward is that they are harder to measure than hard skills.

Pete: Right.

Jen: Like, you know if someone is able to write code.

Pete: Right.

Jen: Or in my world, you can either do the triple pirouette or you can't.

Pete: Right. Yeah.

Jen: But the soft skill, real skill, real human skill of communicating clearly or practicing empathy, those are harder to measure.

Pete: Totally agree. And it's not to say, technical hard skills are not important at all. It's more to say, how do we balance the two and recognize that telling stories, communicating clearly, to use your example, having empathy, being able to ask great questions, these are the skills that enable leaders to be more effective at making change happen. And our assertion is, as with this podcast, that most creatives and leaders are trying to make some sort of change happen, i.e. they're trying to lead in some way, whether that's lead themselves or lead other people. And that the way we do that is not by studying a textbook and mastering a bunch of facts and figures and technical expertise. It's actually about, how do we lead humans and cast a vision and get people excited about that? So, that's the premise of the conference. Now, in years gone by...and you and I had a bunch of fun facilitating this back in Covid when, you know, virtual conferences were a novelty, and we had, I think we had a thousand people show up at one point. Like, it was crazy.

Jen: We did.

Pete: It was a little smaller than that. But this particular year, it was really fun because rather than sort of put our own hypothesis forward about what we thought and think are the most important skills (because I have my own thoughts about that in 2025), we actually kind of crowdsourced it and sort of treated it as a, "What do you think? Like, you tell us. What are you observing and noticing in your worlds, and your organizations, and your businesses that you run? And how do you think about what is the most important?" We created a poll where we had like fifteen or so different options.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And we had a discussion about the options. And so, I'm stalling. The one...

Jen: Yeah. I'm like, what? What is the one that won the poll?

Pete: Get to the point. It was, "Get to the point, Pete." No, it wasn't really. The one that, I think it had 65% of the votes, was tolerance of uncertainty, whoa,

Jen: Whoa...not what I thought you were going to say.

Pete: I know, that's what I thought too. And so, I loved it because it wasn't what I suspected people would vote for. And the more the conversation went on, the more I started to nod my head and go, "Of course, this is such an important skill." And I still have a bit of an unresolved thread in my head, which is what I want to discuss with you or part of what I want to talk about with you, is, what does it look like to focus on and practice tolerance of uncertainty? How do you even do that? Can you do that?

Jen: Oooh.

Pete: Why are things uncertain? What is tolerance? All those things. So this is what I bring to you, Jennifer, tolerance of uncertainty in 2025.

Jen: It seems to me that this answer is so clearly a product of the aftermath of Covid, where something so outrageous and unbelievable happened. And when we first went into it, we all...well, I can only speak for myself, but I definitely believed the rumor that we were just shutting down for two weeks.

Pete: Yeah. "Just flatten the curve for two weeks, it'll be fine."

Jen: "Yes, it's going to be fine." And then, the uncertainty kicked in, and it lingered and lingered and lingered and lingered for a very long time.

Pete: Right.

Jen: And maybe what I'm learning from this conversation is that it's still there.

Pete: I think that's true. I think that was perhaps a real catalyst or a real eye-opening for people to go, "Huh. There is so much more uncertainty than perhaps I realized."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And that was a really strong example of that being the case. The other one at the moment, and this came up again and again in the discussion, was technology-related. And with the rise of generative AI and large language models that people are using, you know, almost every day at this point, where does that lead in twelve months? Because twelve months ago, I bet most people didn't even know what ChatGPT was. All of a sudden, it's like, it's become a verb. "Did you ChatGPT it? Did you google it?" You know, like what we used to say is "google it". "Oh, just ask ChatGPT. It'll help." So to think about what that looks like in twelve months time is, in my mind, can be overwhelming because it's so uncertain. So like, who the hell knows? And so, shrug your shoulders and like what do you do about that, other than be kind of scared and overwhelmed?

Jen: Mmm. I'm staring at my notepad here and seeing the word "tolerance", and that is like really kind of shaking me. Had I been the one to come up with this language, I would have used a different word. And maybe I'm scared of the word "tolerance". I don't know. I would have called it "capacity", or something like that. But tolerance feels like something else entirely, and I just want you to unpack for me, how this is the phrase: tolerance for uncertainty.

Pete: Well, it's a great question. I mean, I wasn't the one who created this sentence or these three words put together, but I think what we were getting at when we had the discussion was, I worked backwards. Uncertainty is usually something that people don't like, and is a reality that we all face every day.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And so I think, I mean, I speak for myself, I use the word "tolerance" as it relates to things that perhaps I don't love that I recognize are necessary, so I tolerate them. But I think you raise an amazing point, which is, what happens if we change that word to like, I wrote down "acceptance".

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: And already, in my mind, that feels more optimistic and empowering. Maybe that helps me even change my relationship with uncertainty, just by the way of how I frame it to myself.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Like, tolerance feels like, "Oh god, it's going to happen, but we just have to deal with it anyway." Whereas acceptance is like, "Alright, it's going to happen, and I know it's going to happen, so what am I going to do?"

Jen: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm really falling down the rabbit hole here. I'm looking for a skill to be something I can activate and apply.

Pete: Right.

Jen: So I'm now wondering, what is a more active, rather than passive, word I could put there? So like, maybe the skill is the ability to navigate through uncertainty, or thrive in uncertainty, or handle, negotiate with...

Pete: Show up in.

Jen: Yeah. Show up in uncertainty. I'm looking for something that makes me feel like I am open and able to move forward. And I think maybe, now that I'm...all of these are completely brand new thoughts. I think my reluctance for "tolerance" is that when I activate in my body right now, I'm like...listeners, you can't see this, but I'm trying to act out "tolerate", and I'm like pushing something away from me as opposed to bringing it toward me.

Pete: Mmm, yeah. Interesting. I mean, that alone, I feel like, is a reason to think about this as a skill. Because, well, in the conference, what we acknowledged and accepted and agreed is the last word, the "uncertainty" part is unavoidable.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: And so, if that's constant, to your point, the skill that we practice, that we can embody, that we can lean into and pull towards is kind of the skill of our choosing. Is it that we want to thrive? Is it that we want to tolerate? Is it that we want to show up in? Is it that we want to lead through uncertainty? And so, yeah, I feel like the skill comes in that word at the start.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Because the uncertainty is just, they're the condition. Like, uncertainty is the constant, the reality.

Jen: Ooh, Pete. I'm like, if you could see inside my brain right now, I'm so far down the rabbit hole. Okay.

Pete: Okay.

Jen: Here's where my brain went next...macro to micro. Like you were talking about, "How do I practice this?" There is macro uncertainty, like we do not know what is happening at any moment on a grand scale. Like, where are we headed? Existential crisis, right? But then, there is like the moment to moment certainties that sometimes are defied by reality. Here's a super basic, not in any way catastrophic example. You log onto the Zoom call, and you're certain your mic is on so you start talking, and then everyone goes, "You're on mute. You're on mute."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: How do you tolerate that?

Pete: Yeah. I was thinking of, for some reason, I was picturing you walking down the steps to the subway, certain that you're about to get on the 7:16am subway car. And the train is late by ten minutes because of whatever reason, technical fault. And all of a sudden, you are uncertain as to whether you're going to make it to the office in time or to your studio in time. How do you respond to that? How do you tolerate that?

Jen: Okay, so this goes back to the capacity piece for me.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: I take public transportation. Uncertainty is part of it. If you have a low capacity for uncertainty when it comes to public transportation, you will always be late. And in the twenty-one years that I have been teaching at my studio, I have only ever been late because of public transportation one time.

Pete: Oh my gosh, wild.

Jen: Because I have quite a capacity for uncertainty when it comes to public transportation, I just always get places early...except our recording sessions.

Pete: I was going to say, "You sure about this?"

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Oh, that's interesting. So it's like you are aware of the constraints or the realities of taking public transport, and so you make accommodations.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: I mean that, to me, is activating the skill that we're talking about. Right? It's like, "I recognize that there is uncertainty in public transport. And so, I'm not going to be a victim to that. I'm not going to throw my hands up in the air every time and go, 'Well, I got here at the same time, and once again, it was late.'" You go, "Okay, I'm going to," I mean, in the language we're using, "I'm going to tolerate that." But I think a better word is like, "I'm going to work with that. I'm going to create the conditions for me to navigate that. And as a result, hopefully get the outcome that I want, which is I'm always on time."

Jen: This is making me wonder...again, listeners, 100% of these ideas have never been thought in my head before. This is so fresh. Is slack necessary to be able to function well within uncertainty?

Pete: Hmm. Yeah. Or what is required for us to be able to function well within uncertainty? I wrote down like "grace".

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And you know, your word "slack". What are the postures or the things that we need to put in place or remind ourselves of that enable us to thrive in, deal with, tolerate uncertainty? Is it to give ourselves grace? Is it to give ourselves slack? Is it to give ourselves permission?

Jen: Yeah. And you talk about this all the time, that one of the most important things a leader can have is humility. I do think being able to tolerate, move through, work with uncertainty, you need to be humble.

Pete: Right. I looked at this and went, "Okay, what's the skill behind the skill?" Because that's what my brain wants to do. My confirmation bias always leads me to something like humility, or empathy, or curiosity. Because at the moment, I think those three are particularly important. They were the ones I would have voted for, if I was doing the poll. And so, I take your point. I agree. There's humility that sits behind this. And the other thing I've been thinking a lot about is, while for me, I can see that humility, empathy, and curiosity are the most important skills and they sit behind the skills, I think what's interesting and what this poll articulated to me is how that shows up for people isn't, "I need to be more humble."

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: It's actually, "I need to tolerate uncertainty. Or I need to get better at tolerating uncertainty." And so like, the label we apply to the skill and the language we use to define the skill might be different to how other people relate to and define the skill. Like you said, "tolerance" isn't necessarily the word you would use. And it was a multiple choice question, so I guess people didn't have a choice. But that, yeah, the way that we relate to challenges and skills may differ depending on the context we have.

Jen: Hmm. Okay, my brain just took another turn, which is that when you create a poll like the one you administered, what are people using in order to find the answer? And so, I'm thinking that what people are using is recent experience, what they have seen in others. It's hard to see it in ourselves. What they wish their leaders had, what they wish there was more of on their teams, what they wish they were feeling more in collaboration, like what they want from others. And so, for leaders listening to this, you might not be getting this feedback from the people you work with. But I think one of the threads to pull here is that people want their leaders to express more tolerance for uncertainty.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: Rather than it just being an inner acceptance, how can leaders communicate, "We're not certain."

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And it can be scary to say that, because as the leader, you also want people to feel safe following you where you're headed.

Pete: Right.

Jen: But I'm just, I'm sort of struck that people could only answer that question if they had experienced the opposite.

Pete: Mmm. That's such a profound point. Because I think if I was to zoom out and go, one thing I hear from leaders all the time in the workshops that I run and the work that I do is that whatever organization they're in, they get so into it and so into their team that it becomes a bit of a bubble. And hearing from other parts of the business, let alone other businesses, becomes really hard. And so, just using this example, we had fifty-seven leaders from fifty-seven different companies, from something like thirteen different countries. And the way it presented itself was this idea of tolerance of uncertainty. To your point, as a leader, you might not know that, and you might not be giving language to that. And so, how would you know to say, "Here's where I think we should go. I'm a little bit uncertain as to where it's going to land, but let's try it anyway." Well, it's like, this is what people are saying is a critical thing that they lack, or a skill that they wish they or their leaders were focusing on. So yeah, I think that's brilliant.

Jen: And then, to just bring that out even further, this is a cultural thing within the confines of an organization. If you don't have a culture of creativity or a culture of experimentation, then how could someone tolerate uncertainty? Like, it has to be baked into the whole pie. It can't just be the topping.

Pete: Mmm. Wow. The ol' pie and topping metaphor, just to close off. I love it. I feel like I've tied myself in a knot, but I'm glad I did as it relates to this topic. I hope, like I hope this has been sensical to our listeners.

Jen: I feel like all tangled up about it too. But like you said, I think it's actually a good knot to have to figure out what all the threads are.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: I'm uncertain where I will land on tolerance of uncertainty.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.