Leadership models have traditionally taught leaders how to project certainty and decisiveness. More recently, frameworks have expanded to include the softer, more nuanced qualities of leadership such as authenticity, adaptability and the creation of psychologically safe environments in which people can perform and grow. These models recognise the complexity of human behaviour and the value of difference. They move leadership away from command and control and towards something more relational and responsive. In doing so, they open the door to the next phase of leadership thinking, one that needs to more fully reflect the realities of the world leaders are now operating in.
Alongside this shift, environmental frameworks have evolved. VUCA described a world that was volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous; unstable, but still broadly analysable. More recently, BANI, a term coined by Jamais Cascio, goes further. It captures not just the structure of the environment, but the experience of it: brittle systems that can fracture, rising anxiety, nonlinear cause and effect, and a growing sense that some things are simply hard to comprehend. Put simply, VUCA describes complexity. BANI explains why it feels harder to navigate.
In this context, it is inevitable that doubt rises. Old assumptions no longer hold. Data is incomplete or overwhelming. Cause and effect are less predictable. Leaders are required to make significant decisions in conditions where clarity cannot be guaranteed.
VUCA and BANI explain why doubt is increasing. Leadership models still do not explain what to do with it, and how to channel it productively.
Leadership has always involved holding tension, but the intensity and frequency of those tensions have increased. Leaders have always experienced doubt, but it has largely remained hidden. It has been treated as the shadow side of leadership, associated with hesitation, second-guessing and loss of momentum. And yet leaders continue to doubt. The issue is not the presence of doubt, but our interpretation of it. There is a duality to doubt, and when we ignore it, we ignore its potential. The potential of challenge, creativity, and its invitation to collaborate. Doubt is a source of intelligence when used wisely. But that intelligence requires a language and a framework, something that has largely been absent from leadership models to date.
To harness the potential in doubt, leaders first need to locate it. What I call Professional Doubt distinguishes between three different sources of doubt. Self-doubt is internal, showing up as questions about capability, credibility or belonging. Situational doubt sits outside of us. It is shaped by context, incomplete data, competing priorities, stakeholder dynamics or unclear direction. Systemic doubt comes from the wider system, the structures, incentives and hidden dynamics that influence what is seen, said and done. The problem is that leaders often collapse all doubt into one place, themselves. What may in fact be a signal about the situation or the system is misinterpreted as personal inadequacy. This misinterpretation leads to missed opportunity.
This is where Active Doubt becomes critical. Active Doubt is doubt with purpose, moving it from inaction to action. It is the capability to acknowledge its presence, understand the question it is pointing to, and work with it to reach better outcomes. When leaders can locate doubt accurately, they can respond more intelligently. Self-doubt can prompt reflection and can be a signal of growth. Situational doubt can sharpen judgement and decision-making. Systemic doubt can surface hidden risks, institutional blind spots and create the conditions for more engaged and responsive organisations Without this, doubt either overwhelms or gets suppressed. With it, doubt becomes usable and, more importantly, useful.
As the world becomes more technologically advanced, this becomes even more important. We need to redefine the human contribution to leadership in this context. The question is no longer just what leaders know, but how they apply challenge, judgement and ethical consideration to the situations they face. The uniquely human contribution to leadership is not the ability to eliminate doubt, but the ability to work with it.
If leadership models have historically focused on building confidence, alignment and direction, the next generation of leadership thinking needs to go further. It needs to legitimise and develop the capability to work with doubt, not as something to overcome, but as something to interpret, not as a weakness, but as a form of leadership intelligence. Active Doubt is not an alternative to confidence. It is what makes confidence more grounded, more adaptive and more real.
In a BANI world, the question is no longer whether leaders experience doubt. It is whether they know what to do with it.
