This guest blog was written by Amanda Neely of Wealth Wisdom Financial.
In uncertain times, leaders are taught to look for certainty… in forecasts, in strategy, in the right next move, or in all of the above.
We tell ourselves that if we just had better data, clearer signals, or a more reliable model, the tension would ease. The decision would reveal itself. The risk would become manageable.
But after years of working with purpose-driven business owners, as both an entrepreneur and a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Professional, I’ve come to believe something different: most leaders aren’t stuck because they lack certainty. They’re stuck because trust has quietly eroded. It could be trust in themselves, trust in their teams, trust in their ability to navigate without a map, or often all of the above.
Uncertainty creates discomfort. And discomfort creates demand. Entire industries exist to meet that demand with promises of clarity:
Some of these tools are genuinely helpful. I use many of them myself. But there’s an unspoken assumption beneath the search for certainty: that leadership requires knowing… knowing what will happen, the right answer, and how it’ll turn out.
Yet most meaningful leadership decisions, especially in small and mid-sized businesses, have never been made with certainty. They’re made with incomplete information, competing values, and real human consequences. When leaders confuse certainty with competence, they begin to outsource their authority.
I see this most clearly in financial decision-making. Business owners come to me with spreadsheets, dashboards, and advice from half a dozen professionals. On paper, everything looks sound. And yet, something feels off. They hesitate. They second-guess. They delay decisions they already understand intellectually. What’s happening isn’t ignorance. It’s erosion.
Over time, many leaders are subtly trained to distrust their own judgment:
Eventually, they stop asking, “What do I believe is right here?” And start asking, “What am I allowed to choose?” That shift has a cost. You can’t build a resilient organization on borrowed confidence. I think of Sam (not their real name), who knew how to increase profitability for their private medical practice but couldn’t move forward because it wasn’t an industry standard. They wasted years and plenty of money on reimbursements because they lacked the confidence to build for resilience rather than take the easy road.
Years ago, while running our social enterprise café, I read Everybody Matters by Bob Chapman. It didn’t teach me something entirely new. It named something I already sensed but hadn’t fully trusted myself to act on.
I already believed that my team cared, wanted to do good work, and could be trusted with more responsibility.
What that book gave me wasn’t certainty. It gave me permission. Permission to say out loud: I trust you. Permission to lead as if people actually mattered… not just rhetorically, but structurally.
Then, something shifted. Not because my team suddenly became perfect, but because trust moved from an internal belief to a relational practice. Trust stopped being an idea and became a reality. From the newest hire to my co-founder, we all mattered, and every voice was welcome, even the most hesitant.
That experience taught me something essential: Trust doesn’t fully exist until it’s expressed.
Trust is often talked about as a soft value or a cultural nice-to-have. But in practice, trust functions like capital.
Economist Kenneth Arrow once noted what many business owners feel intuitively: trust is a critical lubricant of economic systems. When it’s absent, friction increases everywhere. A lack of trust means more rules, more enforcement, and more monitoring.
The same is true inside organizations. Low-trust environments demand certainty because people don’t feel safe navigating ambiguity together. Most founders start their business by breaking a few “rules.” I can’t imagine they want to increase rules and friction just because the world is becoming more certain.
Confidence says, “I know what will happen.” Trust says, “I can respond to whatever happens.” That difference matters. Confidence is brittle. It depends on the outcomes cooperating. Trust is adaptive. It grows through experience, transparency, and follow-through.
During moments of shared uncertainty (economic volatility, market shifts, organizational change) leaders often believe they need to project confidence. But teams don’t actually need certainty about outcomes. They need certainty about intent.
Those questions are answered not by certainty, but by trust. That trust built slowly, and often quietly, over time in times of greater certainty and in uncertain times.
As a financial planner, I want to be clear about something: trust doesn’t replace sound financial practices. It’s supported by them.
Leaders who understand their financial reality (cash flow, obligations, margins) tend to trust themselves more in decision-making. Not because the numbers eliminate risk, but because they reduce noise. Financial clarity creates space. When leaders aren’t constantly bracing for financial surprises, they’re less likely to overreact, defer responsibility, or hide behind false certainty.
Financial transparency, when paired with values, becomes a trust-building tool.
Many leaders assume trust must be rebuilt outward first: with teams, customers, and stakeholders. But trust usually erodes inward before it erodes externally. Rebuilding it starts with smaller moves:
Trust grows when leaders stop trying to outrun uncertainty and start relating to it differently.
If you feel stalled right now, there’s a good chance you’re not waiting for more information. You’re waiting for permission to trust yourself again. Permission to choose what’s sufficient, not maximal. Permission to lead humans, not just outcomes.
Uncertainty doesn’t ask leaders to be fearless. It asks them to be trustworthy. And that begins not with certainty, but with the quiet, disciplined act of believing your own intuition, knowledge, wisdom, and drive again.
I’ll leave you with this, straight from page 6 of Everybody Matters: “Everybody Matters is about what happens when ordinary people throw away long-accepted management practices and start operating from their deepest sense of right, with a sense of profound responsibility for the lives entrusted to them.” Now, go read the book, especially if you’re facing uncertainty.