Organizational leaders are being asked to perform, adapt, and grow amid rising uncertainty. This should prompt every HR leader to ask an important question: Are our leaders truly capable of navigating the environment they are now being asked to lead through?
According to DDI, only 13 percent of HR leaders believe their organization’s leaders are very capable of anticipating and reacting to change, and only 18 percent of leaders say they feel very prepared to do so. Even more concerning, DDI found that only 8 percent of executives demonstrate strong change leadership.
The good news is that HR leaders recognize the urgency. SHRM reports that 46 percent of CHROs identified leadership and manager development as a top priority for 2026, ranking it as the top priority for the second year in a row. McLean & Company similarly reported that developing leaders replaced recruitment as HR’s top priority for 2025.
But recognizing the need is only the first step. The more important question is: How can HR leaders best help?
The traditional leadership development approach has been to give leaders more knowledge, tools, models, and skills. These matter. Leaders need communication, coaching, strategic thinking, and change management skills. But if HR leaders want to help leaders navigate uncertainty more effectively, knowledge, tools, models, and skills are not enough.
This is because in uncertain environments, leaders do not simply rise to the level of what they know. They often fall to the level of the internal operating gear from which they lead.
The future of leadership development is not about helping leaders know more. It is about helping leaders operate from a higher gear.
To drive growth in uncertainty, leaders need to make three shifts.
- From Reactivity to Regulation
Uncertainty often activates a threat response in leaders. While this response is normal, leaders do not operate effectively from threat.
Threat-activated leaders tend to become more controlling, defensive, and impatient. They may rush decisions, shut down dissent, transmit anxiety, or cling to certainty when the situation calls for curiosity and adaptability.
Leaders cannot help others navigate uncertainty if they cannot stay grounded in uncertainty themselves.
The shift from reactivity to regulation is not about becoming unemotional. It is about developing the ability to pause, notice what is happening internally, and respond with intention rather than react from threat.
For HR leaders, this means leadership development must include more than cognitive learning. It must help leaders build practices that strengthen self-awareness, emotional regulation, recovery, and steadiness under pressure.
Growth requires leaders who can be a source of steadiness, not a transmitter of pressure.
- From Proving Value to Creating Value
In times of uncertainty, many capable leaders become subtly self-focused. They feel pressure to prove they are smart, strategic, indispensable, or in control.
This often shows up in familiar ways: defending ideas too quickly, avoiding feedback, protecting turf, withholding trust, or needing to be the one with the answer. These behaviors are rarely intentional. They are often the natural result of leaders trying to prove their value when the stakes feel high.
But growth requires a different mindset.
Leaders must shift from asking, “How do I prove my value here?” to “How do I create value for those I serve?”
That shift moves leaders’ eyes off themselves and onto their stakeholders: their teams, customers, peers, and the broader enterprise. It helps them become more open, courageous, collaborative, and agile.
For HR leaders, this means development must help leaders examine the mindsets driving their behavior. Are they operating from a need to look good, be right, stay comfortable, maintain control, or protect status? Or are they oriented toward creating value, building trust, and serving the mission?
This shift is especially important in uncertainty because pressure often pulls leaders inward. The leaders organizations need most are those who can stay outwardly focused when it is hardest to do so.
- From High Effort to Higher Gear
Many capable leaders respond to uncertainty by pushing harder. They work longer hours, attend more meetings, make more decisions, solve more problems, and personally carry more of the load.
This may look responsible. It may even work for a while. But over time, high-effort leadership often creates bottlenecks, dependency, fatigue, and burnout.
Driving growth in uncertainty does not require leaders to bear down and do more. It requires them to step back, think strategically, empower others, and create conditions where people can contribute at a higher level.
This is the shift from high effort to higher gear.
Higher-gear leaders understand that their greatest contribution is not doing all the work themselves. It is creating clarity, trust, ownership, alignment, and capacity around them.
For HR leaders, this means helping leaders redefine strong leadership. Strong leadership is not always being the engine. Often, it is becoming the multiplier.
In uncertainty, organizations cannot afford leaders who become the bottleneck for growth. They need leaders who multiply growth through others.
The Developmental Work Ahead
Helping leaders make these three shifts requires a different kind of leadership development.
Traditional development often focuses on horizontal development: the addition of more knowledge, skills, tools, and competencies. These are useful. But they are not sufficient.
The shifts leaders need now require vertical development: elevating the internal operating system from which leaders use their knowledge and skills. Vertical development involves helping leaders become more regulated, value-creating, stakeholder-focused, and capable of multiplying impact through others.
Organizations do not need leaders who simply know more about change, culture, strategy, or coaching. They need leaders who operate differently when pressure rises, uncertainty increases, and growth requires courage.
The future belongs to organizations that develop leaders who can shift higher.
Now, the challenge for HR leaders is this: Can they use vertical development to help leaders make the internal shifts required to stay grounded, create value, and multiply the capacity of those around them?
