Uncertainty, the “age of immorality”, Brené Brown, AI (again), talking with strangers, and Japanese snack bars.
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To Lead Through Uncertainty, Unlearn Your Assumptions
- Harvard Business Review, Anni Peshkam, February 13, 2026
I am ridiculously excited about this article.
A level of excitement that might suggest my being a bit delusional and believing that this article was written about the coaching and leadership development work that I am doing at the Courageous Leaders Project.
While I want you to read the whole piece, just take a look at a handful of bits from the article and you’ll know what I’m getting at.
- “What differentiates leadership now is the capacity for inner steadiness and shared sense making when the path forward is unclear.”
- “Competence equips a leader to manage and organize people so the business runs smoothly. Capacity equips a leader to remain present in the (many) moments when the business and the people in it are unsettled.”
- “Unlearn the urge to find quick fixes; learn how to take a reflective pause.”
- “Unlearn superficial reassurance; learn how to name the difficulty.”
- “Unlearn the impulse to avoid conflict; learn how to stay with tension.”
Competence in the skills of strategy and execution, in the delivery of predictable results, and in management efficiencies is no longer good enough for navigating uncertainty.
In the spirit of not throwing all the rubber ducks out with the bath water, see Musings on Expertise.
Want more confidence, ease, and enjoyment in your leadership role?
Curious about leadership coaching for yourself or the team?
Email me at [email protected] for a chat about how we can take your work to the next level of courageous leadership.
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BBC Reith Lectures with Rutger Bregman
Bregman shines a light on what we desperately need, the courage to be ethical in an “age of immorality” and rigorous and earnest against the “trend for unseriousness”. While it is always the right time and place for these ideas, now is the shockingly brilliant right time and place.
“I’m deeply honoured to give this year’s Reith Lectures. Across history, moments of decadence and decay have often been followed by movements of renewal, times when people redefined what it means to live with integrity and ambition. I believe we are at such a crossroads today. These lectures are my attempt to explore how moral ambition can help us face the challenges of our age.” Rutger Bregman
3
- Brené Brown, 2025
I give Brené Brown full credit for reenergizing my leadership coaching practise some years ago with her work on vulnerability and those who have worked with me will be familiar with the nod I give to Brown as I ask, “what is the story we are telling ourselves?”.
And so I was quite keen to get my hands on her latest publication, Strong Ground. I’ll be generous and say that perhaps she felt an urgency, as I do, fuelled by the authoritarian threat to liberal democracy and the accompanied swing back to command and control organizational leadership (before you push back, this is very different from situational leadership) to yell, “folks we have a problem here that you all need to stop ignoring”.
However, I expected more than reactive yelling from a credible academic and persuasive communicator like Brown. The book is filled with barely connected anecdotes, self-aggrandizement (feels more like she is selling herself and her business than providing a convincing argument), and statements of research without a fulsome sharing of data, thinking, and meaning.
Yet, I hear her. We do have a problem and it is urgent. But unfortunately this latest body of work from her is only going to add so much to the way forward for healthy, wise, and courageous leadership.
Having said all that, if you have a few minutes, this video from “The Interview” may prompt some thinking about the need for us to reconsider how we are doing leadership development. I’ll have more on this in an upcoming series where I poke at the triumvirate of leadership institutes, publishing industry, and dime a dozen gurus to which we have handed over our personal responsibility and accountability to do the hard (really, really hard) work of attaining the privilege of being a leader and behaving ethically, wisely, and courageously as a leader.
Note to self to borrow the term “predatory grifters” from Brown (see video at 28 minute mark).
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- Eight Leading Thinkers Share Their Visions. Opinion, New York Times, February 2, 2026.
Why do I keep bringing AI up? Because ignoring AI, or feeding unhealthy and useless dystopias, or unquestioningly embracing the possibilities, is a failure of leadership. How we talk about AI, sit with the discomfort of the complexities and uncertainties, and lead through, not just what is coming, but what is here now, is critical, both in process and results, for our organizations. (see How We Talk About AI, and Leadership, AI, and Writing Lousy Poetry)
For this New York Times opinion piece the “eight leading thinkers” were asked, “What advice would you give a high school student about how to think about A.I. and prepare for the future?”
My favourite answer came from Helen Toner, an AI policy researcher.
For anything you might work on, ask yourself: Is this like a construction site, or like the gym? On a construction site, machines are amazing — you can lift heavier things and build better buildings with an excavator and a crane. But at the gym, the whole point is to increase your own capacity.
With A.I., the analogy is that we now all need to figure out where A.I. can help us do bigger, cooler things, like building personalized software, and where we need to build our own cognitive abilities first, like learning to write.
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Uncommon Leadership: Walking Where Others Cannot See
- Vicki Phillips, Forbes, February 10, 2026
Cool article about Robert B. Ballard, the oceanographer and marine geologist who discovered, among other more science-y things, the Titanic.
Too often, leadership is framed as command and certainty. But in reality, the future belongs to leaders who can:
- Navigate ambiguity
- Trust intuition when data is incomplete
- Build tools that expand human capacity
- Invite diverse ways of thinking
- Hold steady in darkness long enough for new light to appear
- Hold a wider definition of success
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Extras
- A coaching client pointed me to this video tutorial (fast and easy!) on neurographic art (see photo above from a February leadership team retreat) and now I’m an enthusiastic learner at Andrea Nelson Art. I’m tapping into my refined Edwardian lady-self and seeing flora, sunsets, ponds, and a room with a view through a water colour lens. Easy to clean up water colours are a huge bonus for my creative energies, which tend to be messy.
- The Stranger Secret: How to talk to anyone – and why you should (Viv Groskop, The Guardian, February 24, 2026). This has nothing to do with me just getting back from my hometown Vancouver – well maybe a bit. While on the Skytrain from the airport to downtown, I watched (yes I am snoopy and am failing at the social etiquette of when in public stare at the phone) as a woman loaded down with suitcases kept looking at the transit map then at the people around her. She finally saw me and made her way over to ask which stop she needed for her hotel, which of course led to a chat about why she was in Vancouver, her hopes for her family, and how she is feeling about a new job. As mentioned in other posts, I love talking with strangers.
- When Story Loses the Plot (Hannah H. Kim, Los Angeles Review of Books, December 20, 2025). Storytelling is part of my work: the stories we tell about ourselves, others, our organizations, society, and the perennial existential of why we are here. Storytelling has been how we create meaning, sometimes wisely and sometimes not so wisely. But if the stories we are telling are becoming more focused on individual identity, experience, and mood, rather than a larger shared plot, where do we create shared meaning? This dense essay concludes with:
If the early 21st century considered storytelling the answer to every problem, the current moment asks what comes after. Whether our new forms can offer the same depth of connection and understanding—or whether they signal a long-term narrowing of the role narrative plays in our collective lives—is a cultural narrative that’s still unfolding.”
- Inside the Secret World of Japanese Snack Bars (Michelle Gross, BBC, January 19, 2026). If I didn’t already have my dream job …
Thank you for inviting me into your inbox and your day.
Babs
You can find out more about me and my work at the Courageous Leaders Project, a coaching and leadership development firm that sparks courageous conversations.
If you are curious about how we might work together, email me at [email protected].