My company is being hit right now. A war in Iran is affecting oil prices, customer behavior is shifting, and my employees are asking me questions I do not have answers to. How long will this last? Are there going to be more changes? Am I going to be okay?

That last one is the one underneath all the others. And as the CEO, people expect me to have the answer.

What I keep wrestling with is how easy it is to slide from optimism into false reassurance. You want your people to sleep at night. You want them focused on their work, not sitting in anxiety. And so you say things you are not fully certain of, and eventually you have made a promise reality may not allow you to keep.

I have done this. I am talking about it because I think most leaders have, and the pressure to perform certainty is real and almost never discussed honestly.

What has helped me is a distinction I keep coming back to. Certainty says I know what is going to happen. Confidence says whatever happens, we will face reality and respond to it. The first one I cannot offer my team right now. The second one I can.

And that, I think, is what talking with trust actually looks like when there is no clean answer. Just telling the truth about what you know, what you do not know, and what you will do when things change.

My new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH

To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com

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