How to Navigate Chaos and Find Solid Ground
Jan 20, 2025
It's 2:37 AM on a Tuesday and here I am, staring at my ceiling remembering not long ago a time when I was thinking about all of the complexity that I somehow need to translate into clarity for my team. Another urgent change to navigate, another test of trust with my colleagues scattered across the world.
I'll be honest with you this is about those very real moments when the weight of leading through constant change feels almost too heavy to carry. When you're searching for solid ground, not just for yourself, but for your entire team. Just because I've navigated and led change for more than two decades, doesn't mean that these moments don't still catch up to me.
A few years ago, in one of those midnight moments of doubt, something shifted for me. Instead of doing what I usually do, grab my notepad and start jotting down messaging in the middle of the night, outlining the perfect plan, trying to make everything okay – I did something different. I grabbed my phone and wrote three simple words in a note that I sent to myself:
"I trust us."
Those words became my anchor in the days that followed. Instead of trying to present a polished plan the next morning, I invited my team into the complexity with me. "Here's what I know for sure, here's where we need to start" I said. "And here's what we need to figure out together."
That moment everything changed
The silence on the Teams meeting felt eternal. In previous times, this silence would have sent me scrambling to fill it with solutions, with certainty, with anything that might make me feel like I was being the leader they needed.
But this time, I waited and something awesome happened.
One by one, team members began to speak up with real thoughts, real concerns, real ideas and demonstrating real vulnerability. One colleague in the Philippines shared how the constant change was affecting her team's morale and the ability to get deliverables done, she hadn't wanted to say anything but it had become a real frustration. Another in Scotland opened up about feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of what we were trying to achieve and not sure what he should actually be doing or telling his project team.
In our shared vulnerability, we found strength in realizing that our collective questions connected us even further and we found clarity in that no one had to this alone. Not because we suddenly had all the answers, but because we were finally creating space to find them together. It's one thing to work alone, it's another thing entirely to feel alone on a journey.
Here's what I learned that night about leading through complexity: Trust isn't built because you have all the answers in times of uncertainty. It's built in those moments when we're brave enough to say, "I don't have it all figured out, but I believe in our ability to figure it out together and create forward momentum."
This is real leadership in the face of messy change. It's about:
Creating space for honest connection
- Instead of presenting one-size fits all solutions, offer different suggestions and invite exploration
- Rather than hiding complexity, call it out together - nothing is worse than ignoring the elephant in the room
- Focus on building understanding and alignment before building plans
Finding Clarity Through Collaboration
- Ask questions that open up possibilities
- Listen for the patterns in people's concerns - if one person is thinking it, it's likely that others are too
- Look for the threads that connect different perspectives - connecting the dots is sometimes the missing piece
Building Trust Through Shared Journey
- Acknowledge the challenge of the moment
- Share your own process of finding clarity
- Celebrate small moments of collective progress and momentum
A new way forward
That late-night moment was so pivotal for me personally. It helped me to see that perhaps the greatest gift we can give our teams isn't perfect leadership – it's human connected leadership. Leadership that makes space for both strength and uncertainty, for both direction and discovery.
I've captured the exact frameworks I use to navigate these moments in my new guide: "From Chaos to Clarity: Your 15-Minute Guide to Building Trust & Leading Change When Everyone's Overwhelmed." Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that we're all figuring this out together.
Want more practical strategies for leading through complexity while building deep trust? Download my free guide [link] for the real solutions I use every day to help teams find solid ground in uncertain times.
Remember: You don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to be willing to create space where figuring it out together is possible.
-Heather