Leadership in Turbulent Times: Beyond Control

The instinct to exert more control when conditions become less predictable is understandable.

When leaders face disruption, uncertainty, or rapidly changing expectations, they often respond by tightening their grip. They introduce more reporting, more meetings, more oversight, more performance measures and more approval points.

It can create the appearance of control. But it does not necessarily create the conditions for people to do their best work.

In complex environments, excessive control can slow decisions, suppress initiative and leave capable people waiting for permission rather than responding intelligently to what is in front of them.

This was one of the central themes in my recent Beyond the Book conversation with Marc Inzelstein, executive advisor and author of Essential Leadership: Practicing L.O.V.E. in Turbulent Times.

Marc’s argument is that many leaders are trying to navigate today’s reality using an outdated leadership operating system. The world has changed, but the underlying model—predict, direct and control—has not changed with it.

If leaders cannot predict everything that will happen next, what can they offer instead?

Clarity. Presence. Confidence. Connection. A willingness to adapt. And trust that people can navigate uncertainty together.

Leadership should be a conscious choice

Many people become leaders without ever consciously deciding that they want to lead.

They are promoted because they are excellent engineers, clinicians, salespeople, technicians or subject-matter experts. Leadership becomes a reward for strong performance or the only available route to greater status, influence and remuneration.

But technical excellence and leadership capability are not the same thing.

When organisations treat management as the default next step, people can find themselves responsible for the performance, development and wellbeing of others without having considered whether they want that responsibility – or having been prepared to carry it.

Some discover that the work they loved has been replaced by work that drains them. Others try to lead by relying on the same expertise and personal effort that made them successful in their previous roles. The result can be an unhappy leader and an unhappy team.

Marc suggests that leaders ask themselves a deceptively simple question:

Why do I choose to lead?

This question changes the meaning of leadership. Instead of seeing leadership primarily as a marker of achievement, it invites us to confront its effect on other people. Leaders influence the quality of people’s work, their confidence, their opportunities, their emotional state and, at times, their quality of life.

Consciously choosing to lead does not make leadership easier. It does, however, ground it in purpose, humility and service.

It also permits an honest answer. Not everyone wants to lead people, and there is nothing inherently wrong with choosing a different path. Organisations need credible, well-rewarded specialist pathways so that leadership is a genuine choice rather than the price of career progression.

The false choice between success and a sustainable life

Many high-performing leaders live inside an unspoken bargain:

I will work harder now, achieve enough, and become successful. Then I will have the freedom to live the life I want.

The problem is that “enough” keeps moving. There is another goal, another crisis, another promotion, another organisational problem that only this leader can solve. Fulfilment remains just beyond the next achievement.

Marc describes this as the leader’s false dilemma: the belief that we must choose between a successful career and a meaningful, sustainable life.

The work of leadership can be genuinely demanding. Workload, poor systems, resource constraints, competing priorities and organisational dysfunction cannot be solved purely through a change in personal mindset.

That distinction is important. We should be wary of asking individuals to become more resilient while leaving the conditions exhausting them untouched.

But Marc’s argument is not that organisational conditions are irrelevant. It is that leaders should also examine what is driving their relentless effort. Are they doing the work because it is genuinely required? Or are they using achievement to prove their value, secure their identity or reach an imagined future point at which they will finally feel successful?

A sustainable leadership practice requires both individual and systemic examination. Leaders need to understand what they are carrying internally. Organisations need to examine the structures, expectations and cultural conditions that keep creating overload.

Without both, “resilience” can become little more than learning to endure the intolerable for longer.

Your team experiences who you are being

Leadership is usually discussed in terms of action: What should the leader say? What decision should they make? What strategy should they follow? What behaviour should they demonstrate?

Marc adds another question:

Who is the leader being while they do those things?

Imagine a leader entering a meeting while anxious, frustrated or under intense pressure. Before they speak, people may already be reading their pace, expression, posture, tone and attentional focus.

The leader may believe they are containing their stress. Their team may experience something very different.

This is not simply a philosophical observation. Research into emotional contagion indicates that emotional states can spread between people in workplace settings, and studies of leadership have explored how leaders’ emotions can influence employees’ feelings and behaviour. The effect is not uniform or mechanically predictable, but the broader evidence supports the idea that a leader’s emotional state can affect others. See this review of emotional processes between managers and workers.

This does not mean leaders must always appear calm, cheerful or relentlessly positive. That would be neither realistic nor authentic. Anger may signal that an important boundary has been crossed. Concern can communicate the seriousness of a situation. Urgency may be appropriate when people face a genuine threat.

The issue is not whether a leader experiences emotion. It is whether the emotion is recognised and used intelligently—or unconsciously transmitted into the system.

When leaders are unaware of their inner state, people around them may become more cautious. They may contribute fewer ideas, soften bad news or wait for the leader’s mood to improve before raising an important concern.

The agenda may say “innovation”. The leader’s emotional climate may say “do not take a risk”. Both messages are being heard.

Emotional mastery is not emotional suppression

Many leaders have learnt to manage difficult emotions by pushing them down and putting on a professional face.

Marc distinguishes between controlling an emotion and mastering it. Control says: I should not be feeling this. I need to hide it. I must push through.

Mastery begins with recognition: This is what I am experiencing. How do I want to respond?

Suppression does not necessarily remove the emotion. It can leave the leader trying to manage both the original feeling and the effort required to conceal it.

Emotional mastery creates a pause between stimulus and response. It gives the leader enough space to recognise what is happening internally before deciding what the situation requires from them.

That pause might involve taking a breath, naming the emotion, delaying a non-urgent response, becoming curious about what triggered it or acknowledging the situation honestly.

“I can feel myself becoming frustrated, and I don’t want that frustration to drive the decision. Let’s pause and look at what is actually happening.”

That is not weakness. It is self-management in service of better judgement. Leaders do not need to become emotionless. They need to become less governed by emotions they have not examined.

The L.O.V.E. framework for essential leadership

Marc’s Essential Leadership framework is organised around four principles:

L — Letting Go
O — Opening to Oneness
V — Visioning Consciously
E — Energising Self and Others

Despite the acronym, this is not an argument for soft, sentimental or conflict-avoidant leadership. It is a framework for leading people through complexity without defaulting to greater force and control.

Letting Go

Letting go does not mean abandoning responsibility or becoming passive. It means releasing the illusion that a leader can control every person, variable and outcome.

Leaders remain accountable for making decisions, setting boundaries, allocating resources and responding to risk. But they distinguish between what they can control, what they can influence and what they must learn to navigate.

This can make leaders more decisive rather than less decisive. They stop exhausting themselves trying to manufacture certainty and focus their attention where it can make a difference.

Opening to Oneness

Oneness is the most philosophical element of Marc’s framework. At its most practical, it means recognising interdependence. Leaders do not operate separately from the systems and relationships around them. Their decisions affect others, and the quality of those relationships affects what the organisation can achieve.

This matters particularly at senior levels. Executives can begin to see themselves primarily as representatives of their own functions, defending their own priorities and resources. The organisation fragments as each leader optimises their part at the expense of the whole.

Opening to oneness asks leaders to widen the frame: What does the whole organisation need? What are we creating together? How is my behaviour contributing to the conditions around me? What might be alive for the other people in this interaction?

Marc also explores more speculative ideas about human interconnectedness in the book. In our conversation, we discuss the boundary between established science, emerging inquiry and philosophical interpretation. Leaders do not need to accept every theoretical proposition to test the practical value of greater curiosity, interdependence and relational awareness.

Visioning Consciously

Vision is often treated as a distant destination: a five-year aspiration printed in a strategic plan. Marc brings vision into the immediate moment.

Before a meeting, decision or difficult conversation, a leader can ask:

What is the highest and best outcome I want this interaction to create?

Without a conscious intention, leaders can slip into survival mode. They try to get through the meeting, finish the conversation or remove the problem from their desk.

But surviving an interaction and leading it are not the same thing. A clear intention changes how the leader listens, speaks and responds. The conversation becomes more than something to endure. It becomes an opportunity to create clarity, accountability, connection or movement.

Energising Self and Others

We all know leaders who leave people feeling clearer, steadier and more capable. We also know leaders who drain the energy from every room.

Energising others does not mean performing positivity or inspiring people through sheer force of personality. Nor does it require leaders to conceal exhaustion or pretend that difficult circumstances are easy.

It means considering the effect of the interaction. How do I want people to feel when this meeting ends? Have I created clarity or confusion? Agency or helplessness? Focus or fragmentation? A stronger capacity to act, or greater dependence on me?

Sometimes energising leadership is encouraging. Sometimes it is removing an obstacle. Sometimes it is making a clear decision so that everyone else can move. And sometimes it is telling a difficult truth that people need to hear.

Humane leadership is not comfortable leadership

Leading with care is sometimes confused with being nice. They are not the same thing.

A leader can care deeply about someone and still hold them accountable. They can make an unpopular decision, deliver difficult feedback or remove someone from a role while treating them with dignity.

Humane leadership does not promise that people will never be disappointed. It shapes how difficult decisions are reached, communicated and implemented.

People pay attention to whether the leader has listened, told the truth, explained the decision, applied standards fairly and considered the human consequences.

The decision may still hurt. But pain is not the same as harm, and discomfort is not evidence of poor leadership.

Leaders become ineffective when they protect people from every uncomfortable conversation. Niceness without honesty can leave performance issues unresolved, resentment growing and other team members carrying the consequences.

How do I do what leadership requires without unnecessarily diminishing another person?

When prediction is impossible, offer confidence

People often look to leaders for certainty. They want to know what will happen, what the organisation will decide and whether the strategy will work.

In turbulent conditions, an honest leader may not know. Pretending otherwise creates brittle confidence. One unexpected development can expose the certainty as an illusion and damage trust.

Marc offers a more credible alternative: leaders may not be able to provide prediction, but they can provide confidence.

We do not know exactly what we will encounter.
We have capable people.
We will pay attention to changing conditions.
We will learn quickly.
We will adjust our approach.
We will navigate this together.

This is not confidence in a guaranteed outcome. It is confidence in the team’s ability to respond.

Leadership in turbulent times is less like driving along a mapped highway and more like sailing through changing weather. A leader cannot command the wind. They can help people read the conditions, adjust the sails and remain oriented towards a meaningful destination.

Failure must become information

If leaders cannot predict every outcome, organisations must become more intelligent about failure.

Most organisations say they value experimentation and learning. Fewer have created cultures in which people genuinely believe it is safe to try something that may not work.

When failure is punished indiscriminately, people protect themselves. They choose conservative options, disguise problems and wait until success is more certain before acting. But avoiding failure entirely is impossible when organisations are confronting problems they have never faced before.

This does not mean that all failure should be celebrated. Negligence, reckless conduct, repeated avoidable mistakes and deliberate wrongdoing require accountability. The more useful distinction is between irresponsible failure and intelligent experimentation.

When people have acted thoughtfully, tested reasonable assumptions, monitored the results and adapted quickly, an unsuccessful outcome can still produce valuable information.

Leaders also need to separate identity from achievement. When getting something wrong means “I am a failure”, experimentation becomes personally threatening.

A learning culture is built not only through innovation slogans but through what leaders do when a thoughtful attempt does not succeed. Do they become curious – or look for someone to blame?

The Essential Leadership Pause

Marc concludes the book with a practical pause built around the four elements of L.O.V.E.

Before a difficult conversation, consequential decision or important meeting, ask:

Letting Go: What is my inner climate right now? What am I carrying into this interaction?
Opening to Oneness: What might be happening for the other person or people involved?
Visioning Consciously: What is the highest and best outcome this interaction could create?
Energising Self and Others: How do I want people to feel and what do I want them to be capable of doing when the interaction ends?

The practice can take two or three minutes. With experience, it can take a few seconds. Its purpose is not to guarantee a comfortable interaction. It is to help the leader enter it deliberately rather than reactively.

What does essential leadership look like in practice?

Essential leadership is the practice of responding to uncertainty with presence, relational awareness, conscious intention and intelligent action rather than relying solely on control.

In practical terms, it means:

choosing leadership consciously;
recognising the emotional state you bring into the room;
pausing before reacting under pressure;
distinguishing responsibility from control;
considering the organisation as an interconnected system;
setting an intention for important interactions;
telling difficult truths with care;
creating confidence without pretending to possess certainty; and
treating thoughtful failure as information.

The deeper challenge is not learning another list of leadership behaviours. It is becoming more conscious of the place from which those behaviours emerge.

Because people do not experience only what a leader does. They experience who that leader is being while they do it.

Watch the interview with Marc Inzelstein

In the full Beyond the Book interview, Marc and I explore the personal story behind Essential Leadership, why outdated leadership models are struggling, how leaders transmit their emotional state, and what it takes to lead with confidence when prediction is no longer possible.

You can purchase Marc Inzelstein’s book, Essential Leadership: Practicing L.O.V.E. in Turbulent Times on Amazon.

You can also connect with Marc Inzelstein on LinkedIn.

Frequently asked questions

What is essential leadership?

Essential leadership is Marc Inzelstein’s approach to leading through uncertainty using four interconnected practices: Letting Go, Opening to Oneness, Visioning Consciously and Energising Self and Others.

Why does command-and-control leadership struggle in complex environments?

Command-and-control leadership assumes that leaders can obtain enough information to predict outcomes and direct the correct response. In complex environments, conditions change quickly and knowledge is distributed across the organisation. Excessive control can slow decisions, reduce initiative and prevent people from responding to emerging information.

What does it mean to let go as a leader?

Letting go means releasing the illusion that a leader can control every person and outcome. It does not mean abandoning accountability. Leaders still make decisions and set direction, but they focus on what they can influence and adapt to what they cannot control.

Can a leader’s stress affect the team?

Yes. Research into emotional contagion suggests that emotions can spread between people at work. Because employees often look to leaders for cues, an unexamined emotional state can affect how people interpret a situation and how confidently they participate.

Is humane leadership the same as being nice?

No. Humane leadership combines care and dignity with honesty, boundaries and accountability. A humane leader may still deliver difficult feedback, impose consequences or make unpopular decisions.

How can leaders build confidence without pretending to know the future?

Leaders can be transparent about uncertainty while creating confidence in the team’s ability to respond. They can clarify what is known, identify what matters most, invite expertise, monitor changing conditions and adapt as new information emerges.

About Ros

Ros Cardinal is the Founder and Managing Director of Shaping Change, an Australian leadership and organisational development consultancy.

With almost 40 years’ experience in organisational development, executive coaching and leadership consulting, Ros helps leaders and organisations navigate the hidden dynamics that shape culture, influence, decision-making and performance.

She is the creator of the Recognition Pathway™, Political Intelligence Compass™, Organisational Hidden Ecology™ and the Women’s Leader Archetypes™ framework.

Book a chat with Ros.