Leaders Navigating Uncertainty: Five Questions to Ask Right Now
We recently sat down with our founder, Ellen Graf-Martin, to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing leaders of values-driven organizations today. Ellen’s not new to this game, she started Graf-Martin Communications at the bottom of the “great recession” in 2008, and walked with a number of organizations through 2020. Her perspective, honed over 17 years of navigating market shifts, global trends and crises offers a compelling framework for not just surviving, but thriving in uncertainty.
“Recently I've been reading a series of books by Tod Bolsinger, and thinking a LOT about how much time leaders spend navigating change. What I've come to understand is that Leaders are actually their organization’s Chief Change Officers. And the hardest people to lead through change might just be the leaders themselves. Myself included.
The last year brought an incredible amount of change, it seemed. In my conversations over and over with the leaders of different organizations, a few patterns emerged. One: pause — wait for calmer waters before moving much further. Two: throw caution to the wind — forge ahead and chart a new path. But, as Tod Bolsinger’s books suggest, perhaps the best way forward is to be okay with not having all the answers, look to our team’s insight and creative thinking, and identify who we should be charting the way forward with, instead of trying to go it alone.
Here are some key questions I believe every leader should be asking themselves and their teams right now.
Are we waiting for the “perfect time” to act?
Honest leaders know there is always something we could or should start, stop or change. We also know there will always be a compelling reason to delay — uncertain economic factors, a tight budget, an overstretched team. We might say “I don’t know if this is the right time,” but perfect timing is a myth. It might be better to ask, “what am I afraid of?”.
Once that’s been answered, an even better question is, "What are the right opportunities, right now?"
Strategic leadership is the ability to hold two things in tension: wise planning and a deep trust in your mission that keeps you flexible. You can, and should, do your due diligence. But you must also be willing to move when an opportunity aligns with your core purpose, and lead your team, donors or customers, even with the discomfort of an uncertain outcome. This requires a mindset of purpose-driven risk — the ability to act not because you can predict the future, but because you are confident that your organization has the experience, resilience and clarity of mission to handle whatever outcome arises.
In my experience with organizations across the board, fear paralyzes; a clear purpose empowers you to move forward.
2. Are we doing this just because we have always done it this way?
When things feel unstable outside of us, a pattern I often see in leaders is to focus on things that bring immediate results, and a bit of a dopamine hit. With teams, I see them focusing on the urgent things, and “what we’ve always done” and neglect things that are important for long-term success. If we’re going to pause on anything, this is where I’d suggest we do it. Take a breath and ask, “what urgent things are we doing just because we’ve always done them?” and then follow that up with, “what are these things doing to contribute to our long-term strength?”
It’s like building up your core strength before embarking on a “new year, new me” ambitious gym membership.
Ask your team:
How’s our core?: Are our foundational strategies actually solid? When was the last time we audited our brand messaging, our communications strategy, and our mission-centered goals to ensure they are still aligned and effective? Where are we weak?
How can we think like a startup?: If we were starting from scratch today, what would we stop doing immediately? What essential activities would we keep? And what’s one calculated risk we would take to learn something new? The startup mentality isn’t about being new; it’s about being nimble, curious, and willing to challenge your own assumptions.
How are our people doing?: Do we truly know the people we serve? Do we understand where they are right now — their pressures, their needs, their hopes — and have we adjusted our strategy to help meet these needs? The most brilliant strategy will fail if it doesn’t resonate with their current reality.
3. Am I still curious?
I suspect one of the biggest dangers of this unstable world is exhaustion that kills our curiousity and creativity. A number of years ago, I shared on a podcast that I believe one of the most powerful things a leader can cultivate is outrageous curiosity. When you’re tired, it’s easy to become cynical. And so many of us are really tired right now in an incredibly uncertain world. Choosing curiosity instead of cynicism instead makes you, and your organization, stand out.
Staying outrageously curious might be the most important thing you could do as a leader in 2026. One way to start is by asking better questions:
Do we still know where our mission is leading us?
What is actually happening in our sector that we need to understand — and what data can I find to back this up? (Tip: be open to finding out it’s actually better than you thought it was!)
Who can our organization really care about serving right now, and how can we best love and serve them?
What are my unique gifts in this season that set us apart as an organization, and how can I keep growing them?
How can I learn from my team?
Who are the mentors, partners, therapists and coaches I can learn from?
In a challenging season, resilience might be mostly about cultivating a growth mindset, humility and putting that learning into practice.
4. What am I willing to let go of?
When you’re mission driven, the need is always huge, and the temptation for a passionate leader is to believe that success rests entirely on their shoulders. I know very well how this ends up with leaders and teams in burnout. I’ve also seen over and over how it leads to incredibly frustrating organizational bottlenecks. So many times I've heard teams frustrated by leaders who don’t delegate tasks like writing and content, and leaders frustrated by teams who don’t seem to be able to do these tasks as well as they should.
So, what haven’t you been willing to let go of, even though you should? What do you wish you could let go of? What would make it easier to let go? How could you get there? Are you willing to ask for help to make this a reality?
And, what should you not let go of? How can you preserve your energy to ensure that you can do these core things well?
Seasons like the one we’re in right now might just force this issue — even high-capacity leaders only have so much energy. The hard truth, which I keep on learning myself, is that trying to do it all can damage your organization, your family, and yourself.
5. Who is on your team?
Who is on your team? How can you equip them, train them and release them? What are the gaps, and how could you creatively fill them?
This is where we often step in as the team at Graf-Martin. I’ve spent countless hours with Executive Directors who need trusted counsel and fresh perspective from someone with experience and a big-picture view. My team regularly supports stretched but mission-driven Fundraising, Marketing or Communications team leaders who want to succeed, but don’t feel equipped to do their best work, and don’t know what the gap really is.
In short, we’re not just communications pros, we’re more like therapists with tools to help bridge communication challenges.
With some good listening and fresh insight, it’s a lot easier to understand what your team still needs. That might be trust, or it might be a new team member. It might be a new tool to get organized, or the freedom to try something new, even if it might fail. And honestly, this is often where we discover ways to save money and stretch budgets, and it’s less complicated than you might think.
These questions aren’t easy to answer. But the clarity they can bring might hold the key to helping you and your team stay steadily moving forward, despite the storms around you. Our missions, and the people we serve, are worth it.”
