Following on from my recent thoughts about collective intelligence as a futures skill, I thought I’d come back to the widespread assumption that leadership, and futures work, requires certainty. That someone, somewhere, should know where things are headed and what needs to be done.
When that certainty isn’t available, anxiety rises, and groups often look for it in all the wrong places: confident voices, authoritative answers, or simplified stories that promise control.
But uncertainty isn’t something individuals can, or should, carry alone.
One of the most important roles of facilitation in futures work is creating spaces where uncertainty can be held collectively. Where it’s named rather than denied, and where people don’t feel pressured to resolve it immediately.
This is not a passive act. Holding uncertainty together takes courage. It requires trust. Not in outcomes, but in the group’s ability to stay engaged without guarantees.
When facilitation supports this, something shifts. The future becomes less of a threat and more of an open question, and people stop bracing against uncertainty and start relating to it. Hope emerges, not as a feeling that everything will be fine, but rather as a willingness to remain present and responsive in the face of not knowing. This stance of “hopefulness” is one that can be practised. And when it is, uncertainty becomes less paralysing. Not because it disappears, but we see opportunities to “do”, no matter how small, rather than be “done to.”