Uncertainty is Uncertain

An Insight from In the Room

“My business is in a state of change at the moment, and the uncertainty is killing me.”

Understanding how people think and operate is handy when managing a business, family or ourselves.

And this is very true when we find ourselves in the position of leading people through uncertainty.

The research into uncertainty is fascinating. Initially, I thought that people hate uncertainty and it is kinder to give people bad news than no news at all. However, it turns out that this is only half of the story.

One of the ways that we deal with emotional events is:

we react to the event,

create an explanation for it,

and then recover.

React - Explain - Recover.

Breaking this flow stalls the process and maintains the emotion. This is true for bad events and good events.

Uncertainty breaks the flow; there is no explanation or closure and so people linger in dissatisfaction.

For example, if a company announces layoffs it creates anxiety. People can’t move on from that until they know the outcome. They linger in the state of distress.

The flip side is it also works for happy emotions. Give someone a gift with no explanation and they linger in the happy place for longer. Do random acts of kindness and it affects people more than if they understand the reason for the kindness.

A good leader knows how their team feels and sets up the conditions for them to thrive.

Having some idea of how people think allows for more empathy, which is generally a good thing.

My takeaways from learning this are:

1. Break bad news fast with good explanations.
2. Be vague about the story behind good news and events to let people linger in their surprise and happiness.

Wisdom from Out the Room

“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” - Seneca

“Empathy is feeling WITH people.” - Brené Brown

“Hope has a major downside and can prevent happiness.” - George Loewenstein, in a study following people post colostomy.

Resource

Explaining Away A Model of Affective Adaptation

https://dash.harvard.edu/entities/publication/73120378-8613-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b