Uncertainty is an integral and unavoidable part of organisational success (O’Connor, Becker, & Fewster, 2018). Most leadership interventions address it indirectly, building capabilities like resilience, strategic thinking, or agility. These help people withstand uncertainty but don't address their relationship with it directly. This is a missed opportunity. How leaders perceive, tolerate, and respond to uncertainty directly impacts decision quality, communication clarity, and capacity to lead others through ambiguous situations (O’Connor et al., 2018; Hoffjann, 2021; Sitorus, 2025). This experiential half-day workshop introduces an evidence-based approach to develop leaders’ capacity to work with uncertainty more skilfully.

Humans have a complex relationship with uncertainty - some argue that fear of the unknown is the only fundamental fear all people share (Carleton, 2016). Hirsh, Mar and Peterson’s (2012) psychological Entropy Model for Uncertainty suggests that overwhelming uncertainty triggers a threat response that narrows perception and drives certainty-seeking behaviour. For leaders, this can be costly – organisations rely on leaders who can make considered decisions, drawing from a range of strategies and skills, in highly uncertain contexts (O’Connor et al., 2018). Two complementary skills are likely to increase leadership effectiveness: leaders must build uncertainty tolerance to remain perceptive and responsive (rather than reactive) and have strategies to navigate it.

Griffin and Grote’s (2020) uncertainty regulation model advocates a dynamic response in uncertainty - applying ‘opening’ strategies to encourage exploration and ‘closing’ strategies when convergence is needed. Whether to open or close is shaped by the operating context and how tolerant leaders and followers are of uncertainty (O’Connor et al., 2022). Strategies to build tolerance and respond to effectively include goal setting (Hirsh et al,, 2012), reframing (Cole et al., 2025), and improvisational theatre training (Felsman, Gunawardena, & Seifert, 2020).

This workshop moves participants through three phases. First, participants encounter genuine uncertainty through a facilitated experience, developing recognition of how uncertainty, and their tolerance for it, shapes perceptions and decision-making. Second, participants learn strategies to make sense of uncertainty and determine the need for opening or closing behaviours. Third, participants build a structured, evidence-based practice for developing tolerance for uncertainty in themselves and for their teams.
Participants will leave with a diagnostic lens to recognise uncertainty responses in themselves and others, practical tools to calibrate their approach, and a method to build tolerance over time. The workshop supports attendees directly and provides frameworks they can adapt to use with leaders and teams at work.