The Decisiveness Crisis in Senior Leadership Teams: Sam Conniff

Two thirds of leaders say they would rather be seen as decisive and get it wrong than appear uncertain and get it right. It may sound illogical, but it's actually the result of decades of organizational culture training leaders that decisiveness equals strength and that not knowing is a liability.

In this episode, Mina Seetharaman talks with Sam Conniff, founder of Uncertainty Experts and author of The Uncertainty Toolkit, about the data behind what he calls the decisiveness crisis, why senior leadership teams are the most likely layer in most organizations to get uncertainty wrong, and three learnable questions that help leaders make better decisions without pretending to have answers they don't have.

This is part of an ongoing series of conversations about uncertainty on the Creative Confidence Podcast. Subscribe to catch them all.

Related Resources:

The Uncertainty Toolkit: How to Feel Calmer, Happier, and More Confident in an Uncertain World, by Sam Conniff — https://www.uncertaintyexperts.com/the-uncertainty-toolkit

Sam Conniff on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/samconniff

Uncertainty Experts — https://www.uncertaintyexperts.com

How to Stop Fighting Uncertainty & Start Working With It (Simone Stolzoff episode) — https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/how-to-not-know-simone-stolzoff

Read the blog recap — https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/the-decisiveness-crisis-uncertainty-toolkit-sam-conniff

In This Episode:

(Timestamps are approximate due to ad breaks)

(00:00) Sam on changing your relationship to uncertainty

(01:09) Introducing Sam Conniff and the decisiveness crisis

(02:08) What drew Sam to studying uncertainty and the personal story behind the research

(05:14) The Q-test warm-up: a simple exercise that reveals how your brain handles uncertainty

(10:36) The false brief: why trying to eliminate uncertainty is the wrong goal

(11:24) The top five uncertainty safety behaviors at work and why they feel so familiar

(13:27) Why the best leaders don't try to eliminate uncertainty—they navigate it

(17:00) Fear, fog, and stasis: the three ways uncertainty shows up before it reaches the boardroom

(20:58) What makes Sam and Catherine's research different from the books on your shelf

(21:37) The data: 20,000+ participants, six years, three sources

(24:41) Career is the number one uncertainty every year since 2021

(26:15) The decisiveness question: a binary choice that reveals everything

(29:04) Why two thirds of leaders choose the negative outcome

(30:04) The hierarchy finding and where the numbers go off the scale

(36:41) The decisiveness crisis as an identity problem and why transformation programs keep failing

(39:00) The uncertainty-ready leader: knowing which mode to be in

(40:00) Altitude, horizon, and agency: three questions that transform the pressure

(43:36) Why setting a deadline is actually a decisive act

(44:04) Turning a decision into a hypothesis

(44:12) Obama and Ardern: what saying "I don't know" with authority actually looks like

(46:59) The unlikely experts: what gang leaders, refugees, and recovering addicts know that most leaders don't

(54:13) Lightning round: The Walking Dead, Catherine Templar Lewis, nail polish, and more

(58:20) Mina's takeaways

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