Certainty: The Most Dangerous Illusion in Leadership

“The one sin I have come to fear above all others: certainty.” 

 

This line from Cardinal Lawrence in Robert Harris’s Conclave struck me deeply as I watched its recent film adaptation on a warm summer evening overlooking Berlin’s ever-changing Potsdamer Platz.

Up until then, I never thought of certainty as sin. In fact, certainty had always been something that I craved. For business as usual. For people to just be happy. For the confidence of knowing what comes next.

Yet Harris, the Cambridge-educated novelist whose book underpins the film, challenges us to look again. In Conclave he writes: “Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.”

That made me pause. Was this the same certainty I longed for? The evolutionary drive toward predictability that once protected us from danger? The same predictability so many leaders yearn for today as they guide teams through turbulent times?

Harris has a point. Certainty often creates a false sense of security. It breeds over-confidence. And over-confidence rarely leads to wisdom. More often, it sets the stage for failure. Perhaps it is fortunate, then, that in today’s interdependent world, neither certainty nor predictability truly exist, if indeed they ever did.

If not certainty, then what?

But if certainty is out of reach, how do we lead with confidence? How do we shape the future of our organizations without knowing what lies ahead?

The answer, I believe, lies in curiosity: the restless drive to seek new knowledge, perspectives, and understanding. Curiosity allows us a change of perspective, to revisit what we thought we knew with fresh eyes. It fosters tolerance, builds unity, and enables what Columbia Business School Professor Rita McGrath calls “seeing around corners.”

McGrath shows us that sudden disruptions are rarely sudden at all. They are the visible peaks of long-gestating shifts — what she calls inflection points — that slowly reshape the business landscape. Leaders equipped with the right mindset and tools can learn to spot these faint murmurs before they become earthquakes. With curiosity, with foresight, and agility, they can turn disruption into competitive advantage.

 

Creating space for curiosity

But curiosity requires time — the scarcest resource of all. In the language of adaptive leadership, this is called balcony time: the deliberate space leaders step into to change perspective, to observe, and to learn.

Balcony time is not about a lone genius conjuring brilliant insights in isolation. It is about creating the collaborative conditions that widen our field of vision, mobilize our people for emerging challenges, and spark the creativity needed to navigate what’s next.

Collaboration amplifies curiosity. It pushes leaders to look beyond the boundaries of their own organization, to encourage experimentation, and to empower their teams to think differently. Because what comes “around the corner” is increasingly interdependent. No one perspective is enough.

 

The real danger

If certainty is an illusion, then what leaders should fear most is not uncertainty, but complacency. The indifference and over-confidence that assume what got us here will carry us forward.

Curiosity is the antidote. Collaboration is the amplifier. Together they create the conditions for healthy, sustainable organizations that can listen to the faint whispers of disruption long before they become roars.

Leaders must demand curiosity — from themselves, their teams, and their organizations. Because in the absence of certainty, it is curiosity and collaboration that equip us with the right tools to face what comes next.

 

Britta Posner

Founder & Director, The Collaboration Practice

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