Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Mike Tyson said that, and honestly, it’s the best description of leadership in turbulent times you'll ever find. Most CEOs spend their lives staring at spreadsheets that assume the world is a predictable place. Then a pandemic hits, or a supply chain collapses, or a generative AI shift upends an entire industry overnight. Suddenly, those five-year plans look like expensive pieces of fiction.
You’ve probably seen it. A crisis hits and the "boss" retreats into a glass office to look at more data. That’s not leading. It’s hiding. Real leadership during a mess isn't about having all the answers. It’s about being the person who can stand in the middle of a storm and keep everyone else from losing their minds. It's messy. It's loud. It’s deeply uncomfortable.
The reality is that most people don't actually want a "visionary" when things are falling apart. They want a human being who is honest about how bad things are but clear about what we’re doing next. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson calls this "psychological safety," but in the real world, it’s just called not being a jerk when everyone is stressed out.
Why the Old Playbook for Leadership in Turbulent Times is Dead
We used to think stability was the default state of business. You’d have a "disruption" every decade or so, deal with it, and go back to normal. That’s over. We are now in a state of "permacrisis"—a term that gained traction around 2022 to describe a world where one catastrophe just bleeds into the next. If you're waiting for things to "settle down" before you start leading effectively, you’re going to be waiting forever.
Modern leadership in turbulent times requires a total shift in how we think about authority. In the old days, the leader was the person with the most information. Now? Your interns probably have access to the same market data you do. Your value isn't "knowing things." Your value is "filtering things." It's about deciding what not to worry about so your team doesn't burn out by noon on Tuesday.
Take Satya Nadella at Microsoft. When he took over, the company was a fractured mess of internal warring factions. He didn't just change the product; he changed the "empathy" levels. He realized that in a fast-moving tech world, a "know-it-all" culture dies, but a "learn-it-all" culture survives. That’s a subtle distinction, but it’s the difference between a company that stagnates and one that hits a three-trillion-dollar market cap.
The Transparency Trap
There’s this weird idea that being a "transparent" leader means sharing every single anxiety you have. Please don't do that. Total transparency is actually a burden for your employees. If you tell a junior designer that you aren't sure if the company will exist in six months, you haven't been "honest"—you’ve just dumped your stress onto someone who has zero power to fix it.
The best leaders practice "bounded optimism." It’s a concept discussed by McKinsey experts like Jacqueline Brassey. You acknowledge the brutal facts—"Yes, our revenue is down 30%"—but you maintain confidence in the team's ability to handle it. You provide the guardrails. You tell them what the plan is for the next 48 hours. In a crisis, nobody cares about your 2030 strategy. They want to know what they should do on Wednesday.
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How to Actually Communicate When Everything is On Fire
Communication is usually the first thing that breaks. Leaders get busy, so they stop talking. Or they send out those "corporate-speak" emails that sound like they were written by a legal department trying to avoid a lawsuit. People can smell that a mile away. It breeds rumors. And rumors are the poison that kills productivity during leadership in turbulent times.
- Frequency over Polished Content: Send a three-sentence Slack message every morning. It's better than a perfectly formatted newsletter once a month.
- The "Why" Matters More Than the "What": If you're pivotting, tell them the logic. Even if they hate the decision, they’ll respect the rationale.
- Admit What You Don't Know: Saying "I don't have the answer to that yet, but I'll tell you by Friday" builds more trust than making something up.
I remember a story about a manufacturing CEO during the 2008 crash. He didn't hide. He went down to the factory floor every single day at 4:00 PM. He didn't always have good news. Sometimes he had no news. But the fact that he was there, visible and willing to take questions, kept that plant from unionizing or folding during the worst of the crunch. That’s the "boots on the ground" reality of leadership in turbulent times.
The Hard Truth About Decision Making
In a crisis, the cost of waiting for more data is almost always higher than the cost of making a slightly wrong decision. Speed is a feature, not a bug. If you have 70% of the information, you probably need to move.
General Stanley McChrystal talks about "Team of Teams" and the idea of empowered execution. You can't be a bottleneck. If every decision has to go through you, the turbulence will tear your organization apart. You have to push the decision-making power down to the people closest to the problem.
This is terrifying for "command and control" types. It means you have to trust people. And trust is hard when stakes are high. But if you’ve hired right, your job is to set the intent and then get out of the way. If you’re still approving every $500 expense during a pivot, you aren't leading. You're micromanaging your way to failure.
Dealing With the Human Toll
We talk a lot about "resilience," but let's be honest: resilience is exhausting. Your team is tired. You are tired. Leadership in turbulent times isn't just about hitting targets; it’s about managing the collective nervous system of your organization.
There’s a real risk of "decision fatigue." This happens when you’re forced to make too many choices under pressure, and your brain eventually just gives up and starts making bad ones. Watch for it in yourself. Watch for it in your managers. Sometimes the most "productive" thing a leader can do in a crisis is tell everyone to go home at 3:00 PM on a Friday because the marginal utility of another three hours of panicked work is literally zero.
Actionable Steps for Leading Through the Next Mess
Stop looking for a "silver bullet." There isn't one. But there are specific, tactical things you can do right now to stabilize your team.
1. Define the "Non-Negotiables" Immediately.
When everything is changing, people need to know what isn't changing. Is it your commitment to quality? Is it your "no layoffs" policy? Is it your 24-hour customer response time? Pick three things that stay the same even if the world ends. It gives people an anchor.
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2. Kill the "Hero" Complex.
You are not the protagonist of a movie. You don't need to stay up 20 hours a day to prove you care. A burnt-out leader is a dangerous leader. Model healthy behavior. If you want your team to stay sane, you have to stay sane.
3. Shorten the Feedback Loop.
In stable times, you might do quarterly reviews. In turbulent times, you need daily huddles. They should be 10 minutes, max. What did we do yesterday? What are we doing today? What’s in the way? That’s it.
4. Update Your "Failure Mode" Thinking.
Instead of just hoping for the best, run "pre-mortems." Ask your team: "It’s six months from now and we have failed. What happened?" This allows people to voice concerns without sounding like "naysayers." It’s a brilliant tool for uncovering risks before they become catastrophes.
5. Focus on Radical Prioritization.
Most companies try to do too much during a crisis. They try to maintain "business as usual" while also "pivoting." You can't do both. Look at your project list. Cut the bottom 40%. It’ll feel like you’re losing ground, but you’re actually just focusing your limited energy on the things that will actually keep the lights on.
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Leadership in turbulent times is ultimately a test of character, not a test of IQ. It’s about whether you can stay kind when you’re under pressure. It’s about whether you can keep your word when it’s expensive to do so. People will forget your "strategic initiatives," but they will never forget how you made them feel when they were scared for their jobs.
Don't try to be a perfect leader. Just try to be a present one. The rest usually figures itself out.