A CEO called me late one evening last week.

We got talking about the Iran situation — what it could mean, how it might play out. After a few minutes, he said, almost in passing, “I don’t quite know what to anchor on right now.”

We went back and forth for a bit. Scenarios, second-order effects, what could move quickly, what might take time.

Then he sighed, “There are just too many moving parts”.

Leaders today aren’t short on data, tools or frameworks. What they’re short on is certainty. As the world plunges deeper into volatility, the ground beneath our feet is constantly shifting. Trade rules shift overnight. Oil prices spike on the back of the Iran conflict, and with them, freight costs and input assumptions. Supply chains that felt stable a quarter ago suddenly look fragile again. AI rewrites job roles mid-strategy. Business confidence swings wildly from one extreme to another.

In the midst of this tumult, teams look to leadership for clarity that doesn’t exist – and our instinct is to answer the call. To make decisions that relieve pressure, eliminate uncertainty and allow forward movement.

And yet, today’s environment doesn’t reward leaders who always have answers. It rewards those who can stay in the question, resisting the compulsion to resolve things too quickly. This is what’s known as negative capability, an invaluable leadership skill.

This week, let’s explore the relevance of negative capability. How can this underrated capacity strengthen your leadership? And what are some practical ways to develop it?

The case for negative capability

In the past two decades, we’ve lived through a global financial crisis, a pandemic and a slew of tech disruptions that keep compounding. And that’s before accounting for geopolitical volatility, climate change and AI.

Given these realities, the traditional model of leadership – quick, decisive, action-oriented – falls short. A Deloitte survey of thousands of global leaders reports that organisations need to go beyond efficiency and predictable outputs, and instead prioritise resilience, adaptability, and the capacity to function amid instability.

This is exactly what negative capability refers to: being able to hold steady when the data is incomplete, the outcomes unclear, and the usual frameworks stop working. Leaders who develop this capacity don’t rush or freeze in the face of shocks. Instead, they’re able to tolerate the absence of clarity, allowing meaning to unfold over time.

The term comes from an unexpected source, coined in 1817 by poet John Keats, who described it as the ability to remain “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts”. Despite its creative origins, however, negative capability is no longer a philosophical luxury but an operational necessity.

The bias against negative capability

Negative capability is widely undervalued for a simple reason – it contradicts the dominant image of leadership. Most organisations still reward:

• Quick answers over reflective pauses
• Certainty over nuance
• Rigidity over exploration

When uncertainty rises, leaders often default to one of two patterns:

• The first is excessive control– adding structure, tightening process and forcing execution even when clarity is missing. This creates the illusion of progress while narrowing options.
• The second is withdrawal– stepping back, delaying decisions and losing momentum. Recent research shows leaders increasingly feel their agency eroding, leading to avoidance.

Both these responses are defensive strategies, triggered by psychological discomfort in the face of seismic shifts. Negative capability sits somewhere in the middle. It asks us to neither act nor retreat, but to engage with the not-knowing – while resisting the urge to collapse it. To do so successfully, leaders must let go of deeply held assumptions about their role and learn to manage the anxiety that doubt sparks.

What we lose without it

When leaders lack negative capability, the consequences show up in several ways:

• Shallow decisions. Premature resolution often leads to incomplete thinking. Critical perspectives are closed off. Decisions feel good but unravel later.
• Change fatigue. Frequent pivots, reactive strategies and constant restructuring create exhaustion rather than alignment.
• Suppressed innovation. Ambiguity is where ideas are born. When leaders shut it down too quickly, they limit the potential for creative solutions.
• Eroded trust. Artificial reassurance creates a gap between words and reality. Teams become cynical when they feel complexity is being glossed over.
• Reactive cycles. Leaders see-saw between control and avoidance – tightening rules one moment, withdrawing the next.

The competitive edge

Drawing on his work with teams navigating major changes, leadership coach Michael Hudson outlines in his article for Forbes several markers of organisations where negative capability is embedded:

• Sustained innovation pipelines even during disruption
• Adaptation through incremental shifts rather than big swings
• Resilience fostered by continued employee engagement
• Cross-functional solutions that embrace diverse perspectives

It’s also worth noting that decisions made more slowly at first are faster later, reducing rework since they’re grounded in a deeper understanding.

Developing negative capability

Here are eight practical ways to build negative capability into how you lead:

1. Sit with the lack of clarity.

The next time a difficult situation surfaces during a meeting, resist the reflex to reframe it into a solvable problem. State what feels unresolved, perhaps something like: “I think there’s something here we haven’t understood yet.” or “We need to think this through further.” Then stop talking. Curbing the compulsion to simplify gives complexity the space it needs to reveal itself fully.

2. Bring reality into the room.

Instead of smoothing things over, clearly name what’s unclear. For example: “We don’t yet know how this will impact Q3.” Transform your private anxiety into a shared understanding, creating the trust and context your team needs to navigate the situation.

3. Make sense of things – together.

From the acknowledgement of uncertainty, move into sense-making. Assign people to monitor and interpret events as they unfold. Ask what signals they’re seeing, what feels solid, what feels unstable. Move from individual overload into collective insight.

4. Interrogate the need for speed.

In his research on high-performing companies, Jim Collins found that the best decision-makers pose a question most leaders never pause to ask: “How much time do we actually have before our risk profile changes?” That pause – a refusal to default to haste – is a form of negative capability. As Collins puts it:

One of the most dangerous false beliefs is that faster is always better, that the fast always beat the slow, that you are either the quick or the dead. Sometimes the quick are the dead.

5. Audit your anxiety habits.

Most leaders have a go-to move when uncertainty spikes – the sudden restructure, the micromanaging, the passive check-out. These aren’t thought-out decisions; they’re instinctive reactions driven by anxiety. Keep a two-week log of moments when you feel the strongest urge to act quickly, impose certainty or withdraw. The pattern will tell you a lot about where your negative capability is most underdeveloped.

6. Don’t speak in absolutes.

Replace binary language with a more layered vocabulary. Instead of “we know” or “we don’t know”, say: “Here’s what we’re confident about, here’s what’s evolving”. This signals to your team that sitting with open questions is part of how your organisation thinks – while also maintaining momentum.

7. Hold the tension.

When polarities arise, don’t instantly pick a side or try to find a synthesis. Psychologist Robert Kegan’s research drives home a critical point: to make better decisions in complex scenarios, we must develop the capacity to hold competing perspectives. This brings underlying assumptions to the surface and prevents shallow compromises. Stay with the tension long enough to extract insight.

8. Filter out distractions.

Not all uncertainties warrant equal focus. Discipline your team’s curiosity by listing ambiguities and ranking them in order of priority. Ask: “Which ones genuinely affect our strategy?” This prevents teams from chasing every unsettled question and directs their capacity for tolerating doubt towards the issues that matter most.

At almost every leadership conference, somebody eventually asks what the future of leadership looks like. The honest answer is probably unwelcome: it looks less certain, less heroic and less in control than most of us were trained to be.

The fact is that uncertainty is no longer a phase we need to get through. It’s the environment we operate in. In this brave new world, the edge comes from knowing when not to act – when to remain in the not-knowing just a little longer.

Negative capability doesn’t feel great in the moment. There’s no immediate output, no quick win. But it’s what ultimately makes decisions durable, separating leaders who cope with turbulence from those who adapt and thrive through it. In times like these, that distinction is everything.