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“The deep recognition that we don’t have the answers yet. We’re going to have to create them. And by the way, it won’t be me, and it won’t be you. It’ll be us… And in order for that to happen, we’re going to have to do the hard thing of giving each other feedback on the evolving product.”
In this episode of the podcast Rethinking Leadership, Roemer Visser speaks with Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School and author of The Fearless Organization and Right Kind of Wrong, about what is required of leaders in a world defined by uncertainty and interdependence.
They discuss how many of today’s senior leaders were shaped in environments where problems were predictable and expertise could reliably determine the “right” answer. That era, she notes, has passed. “The taken-for-granted mental models that many leaders grew up with just don’t work in a highly uncertain context.”
From having the answers to asking better questions
In this new reality, leaders must resist the impulse to have the solution. Instead, Edmondson says: “As a leader, I don’t bring the answers. I bring questions.”
The leader’s role shifts toward sense-making, helping interpret confusing data and celebrating progress and discovery rather than accurate completion.
It is not about slowing down or lowering ambition. Rather, it is about recognizing that we cannot take as a given that we know the right way to achieve the results that we're trying to achieve.
Creating the conditions for collective intelligence
Effective leadership today, Visser and Edmondson argue, means tapping into the wisdom of the group and creating conditions where people learn together rather than relying on top-down direction. This requires psychological safety. To which Edmondson adds an important caveat: “Psychological safety isn’t the goal… It describes a climate where learning can take hold.”
It is not about being nice or avoiding conflict. It is about ensuring that people can speak up with ideas, questions, concerns, even mistakes, without fear of rejection or humiliation.
Execution as learning
Many organizations still treat performance and learning as trade-offs. Edmondson challenges this: Execution must become a learning process. “Plan-do-check-act all the way along.” Rather than perfecting plans upfront, teams experiment, evaluate, adapt, and improve… together!
The leadership mindset for today
To lead effectively now means:
• Asking good questions instead of providing answers
• Encouraging intelligent risk-taking rather than rewarding only success
• Listening deeply, especially to voices with less status
• Treating execution as ongoing learning, not as compliance to a fixed plan
Curious how to build teams that learn—and perform—in uncertain environments?
Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.