In uncertain times, fear is often framed as something to push through or conquer. But what if fear isn’t the problem? What if it’s actually part of your leadership fuel?

Neuroscience tells us that fear activates the amygdala—a part of the brain that detects threat. But fear doesn’t just initiate panic or paralysis. It also primes the prefrontal cortex to pay closer attention, scan for patterns, and solve complex problems. When harnessed well, fear is not a weakness. It’s a wake-up call that enhances your leadership intelligence.

We recently worked with a COO at a global consumer brand whose company was undergoing a rapid digital transformation. As layoffs loomed, her fear spiked—not just about performance, but about preserving trust with her team. Instead of suppressing it, she named it, explored what it was pointing to (a core value of transparency), and used that awareness to guide her messaging and leadership stance. The result? A team that didn’t just weather the change—but stepped up with renewed loyalty and creativity. Fear, for her, became a catalyst.

Most leaders think of uncertainty as something to manage around. But what if the real danger isn’t what’s happening externally—but what uncertainty quietly does to your leadership internally?

Research from Harvard Business Review shows that in uncertain environments, leaders often retreat into short-term, self-protective behaviors—reducing communication, delaying decisions, and narrowing their strategic lens. 

A study from MIT Sloan further found that when ambiguity increases, leaders’ willingness to delegate, innovate, or act decisively can drop significantly—especially when the stakes are high and outcomes unclear. In other words, uncertainty doesn’t just slow down external momentum. It silently rewires how leaders think, relate, and behave.

When disruption hits, the pressure to stabilize often overrides the instinct to innovate. Many senior leaders default to protection mode—preserving resources, reducing risk, and sticking with what has worked in the past. But ironically, these moments of volatility are exactly when innovation is most essential. The leaders who navigate uncertainty successfully don’t wait for calm waters. They build the capability to innovate within disruption—not outside or after it.

Research from BCG found that companies that continued to prioritize innovation during downturns outperformed their peers by up to 30% over the long term. But this kind of innovation doesn’t just come from product teams or R&D. It starts at the top. Senior leaders who want their organizations to thrive in changing conditions must personally model the curiosity, adaptability, and decision-making that fuels innovation culture.

Here are three critical ways senior leaders can drive innovation—even when the environment feels uncertain, unstable, or stretched to the limit.

Disruption is rarely just operational—it’s emotional, relational, and deeply psychological. When markets shift, strategies fail, or internal trust begins to fracture, leaders often double down on execution. But during ambiguity, the greatest leverage point isn’t control—it’s curiosity. And that starts with asking better questions. Not surface-level check-ins or data reviews, but bold, brave coaching questions that invite people to reflect, realign, and re-engage.

Yet asking the right question at the right time is a skill many leaders haven’t been trained for. According to research from Harvard Business School, organizations that encourage inquiry-based leadership outperform their peers by 21% in decision speed and 27% in innovation outcomes. But those same studies show that most leaders underuse reflective questioning in high-stakes moments, especially under pressure. Why? Because it’s far easier to fill the space with direction than to make room for uncertainty.

At TLI, we’ve coached senior leaders through mergers, market pivots, leadership transitions, and cultural overhauls—and the same truth keeps showing up: progress doesn’t come from pushing harder; it comes from asking wiser. 

Disruption tests more than just your business model — it tests the strength of your executive team’s alignment. The pressure to present a united front can push leaders to appear aligned on the outside while sweeping real disagreements, fears, or uncertainties under the rug. This “performative alignment” may feel safer in the moment, protecting reputations and minimizing conflict. But in reality, it creates hidden fault lines that can fracture trust, delay critical decisions, and sabotage execution.

The truth is that disruption requires more honest, transparent alignment — not less. Yet many executive teams unintentionally fall into patterns that look like cohesion but actually mask deep misalignment. These patterns are subtle, and they often happen to even the most well-intentioned, talented leadership groups. If left unchecked, they can lead to confusion, disengagement, and poor results at precisely the moment when the organization needs clarity and confidence the most.

Disruption shakes up routines, roles, and expectations. As people struggle to regain their footing, stress levels rise. It’s normal for conflict and tension to emerge. In fact, conflict during disruption is often a sign that people still care enough to advocate for their ideas, values, and contributions.

Take, for example, a senior leadership team I worked with last year during a large-scale restructuring. Their organization was merging product lines and laying off nearly 20% of staff. Tensions were high, and conflict spiked among team members who had once collaborated smoothly. Disagreements over resource allocation, turf boundaries, and strategic priorities created daily friction. At first, the CEO saw this conflict as a threat, worried that it would derail execution. But by naming the stress everyone was under and creating structured opportunities to surface concerns, the team began to see conflict as a healthy signal of what mattered most. Over time, they transformed those heated debates into constructive decisions — ultimately emerging with a stronger, more cohesive strategy.

Change puts people on edge. Disruption scrambles assumptions. In these moments, even small phrases can have outsized impacts. As a leader, you’re not just sharing information—you’re shaping the emotional climate of your team. Words can soothe or inflame, clarify or confuse, unite or divide.

At Tenacious Leadership Institute, we often remind clients that language is not just a delivery mechanism for facts — it’s a mirror of your mindset and a signal of your leadership presence. In the pressure cooker of disruption, people listen more closely to your words than ever before. They will replay them, share them, and build their own meaning around them. One moment of careless phrasing can damage months of trust-building, while one moment of courageous, intentional language can inspire people to rise together.

Disruption shakes our sense of security. When the environment feels chaotic, the brain’s threat detection systems go into overdrive, activating the amygdala and flooding the body with stress hormones like cortisol. This stress response can shrink our mental bandwidth, narrow our attention, and leave us with tunnel vision focused only on survival. Over time, repeated activation of these systems can make us — and our teams — feel stuck, powerless, and reactive rather than strategic.

That’s why cultivating agency is so powerful. When people experience a sense of choice, influence, and meaningful action, the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for reasoning, perspective-taking, and planning — comes back online.

When things go sideways during complex change, leaders often fall into the trap of firefighting instead of facilitating. But the most effective executives pause to ask—not assume. These five questions aren’t soft—they’re strategic. They help your team reconnect, realign, and rebuild momentum when the pressure is high and uncertainty is growing.

At Tenacious Leadership Institute, we’ve worked with senior leaders in global companies who’ve watched their best teams start to unravel—despite their talent, dedication, and shared purpose. The common thread? When disruption strikes, even high performers can lose their rhythm. Priorities blur. Tension builds. Energy gets wasted in the gaps between people, not just systems.

Most leaders today say they’re open to change. But when disruption actually hits—through market volatility, organizational restructuring, technological shifts, or rising team tension—the cracks start to show.

Take our client David, a Senior Vice President at a global tech company. When a major internal reorganization was announced alongside a shifting product roadmap, many of his peers scrambled—overloading their teams with new initiatives, retreating into isolated decision-making, and defaulting to short-term thinking. David took a different approach. He paused. He brought his core leadership team together to realign on priorities, got clear on what could be paused or dropped, and led with direct, transparent communication—even when he didn’t have all the answers.