What Employees Need From Leaders When The Future Is Unclear

gettyOne of the more difficult leadership responsibilities is knowing how much to say when the future is unclear.

I’ve experienced it myself during periods of rapid growth, acquisitions and economic uncertainty. And we’ve got the perfect case study right now as organizations grapple with AI.

You’re trying to avoid creating anxiety when you don’t have every answer. So often the default is towards cautious communication.

Over the years, I’ve found that team members don’t necessarily need to be protected from uncertainty. They understand businesses operate in competitive markets, strategies evolve and technology changes, now faster than ever. What people find difficult is feeling that important conversations are happening around them, rather than with them.

One lesson I’ve learned is that employees are more attuned to change than leadership often realizes.

They notice priorities shifting, see investments in new areas, hear customers asking different questions and spot new competitors emerging. With AI, they can see it changing the way we work long before formal announcements are made.

By the time leadership decides whether to address something openly, people have already formed their own views.

That’s why saying less isn’t a great strategy. In practice, the absence of information doesn’t create stability—it creates vacuums and confusion.

People are usually less interested in having every answer than they are in understanding the direction of travel. They want to know what leadership is seeing, what’s being discussed and what might happen next. Even when the future isn’t clear, bringing people into that conversation tends to build more trust than trying to protect them from it.

And although many team members may think they want to be involved in the decision-making process, they don’t necessarily want ownership of strategic decisions.

When I was at AppLearn, we acquired Slovakia-based YesElf for its products and technical capabilities. In an effort to create buy-in, I went a step too far. Rather than clearly setting the direction, I asked both technology teams to work together and decide which platform we should invest in for the future.

The lack of direction meant the teams became bogged down debating technical details and trying to reach a consensus, and we lost months. Everyone knew we’d acquired YesElf for the product, but confirming that it would become our strategic platform was a leadership decision. The engineers weren’t looking to take on the responsibility of making that call. They were looking for clarity.

AI has made this particularly relevant because few leaders can say with complete confidence what their organization will look like in five, or even two years’ time.

Capabilities are advancing at extraordinary speed. New businesses are being built, existing industries are being challenged and assumptions that have held true for years are coming undone. No one can predict precisely how these forces will play out across every role, organization and market.

Uncertainty creates a temptation to wait for clearer strategies or more developed perspectives, to give greater confidence about what comes next.

The problem is that people keep asking questions while leaders wait for answers.

You don’t need a perfectly formed response every time. Being honest about what you know, what you don’t and what you’re trying to understand goes a long way.

There is a significant difference between saying “we have all the answers” and saying “this matters, we’re paying attention and we’ll keep you informed as our thinking evolves.” The latter is usually far more credible.

One thing organizations get wrong during periods of change—and this is certainly the case with AI—is that conversations become dominated by risk.

Discussions focus on how roles will change, which processes will be automated or the danger of failing to adapt.

These are important topics, and deserve time and space. But, in times of change, risk is only ever half the story. Every significant shift creates opportunity for those willing to adapt. In the case of AI, the extent of the opportunity isn’t yet clear, so, as leaders, we should be instilling an abundance mindset and encouraging people to think about the advantages it can offer them.

Throughout my career, I’ve seen businesses unlock growth by spotting changes early and reorganizing accordingly. In almost every case, success came from helping people understand what was possible on the other side, not from pretending the challenge didn’t exist.

People respond differently when they can see a future they want to be part of. Urgency created through fear is difficult to sustain. Urgency created through opportunity is much more powerful.

We have experienced this at Haiilo. Part of the product acts as an intranet, but rather than being a static destination platform, we are reinventing the intranet space—surfacing information dynamically and constructing answers from available data. Everyone here knows that we need to keep moving forward and adapting as technology advances. If we stand still, we will fail.

I’ve learned that through periods of change, most organizations are stronger when goals are clear and people are given more information, not less.

You may be surprised to find that people want to hear the bad news. They want to be involved in decisions, even if they don’t hold ultimate responsibility for making them.

I’m not suggesting you share confidential details, or that every discussion or scenario be considered behind closed doors. But you should recognize that employees are capable of engaging with complexity and ambiguity when they’re trusted to do so.

In a world where technology, markets and organizations are evolving faster than ever, one of the most important leadership skills is having the confidence to tell people what you genuinely think, even when the full picture hasn’t yet come into focus.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?