AUA: How To Lead When You Don’t Have The Answers?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: At Work with The Ready

Episode Title: AUA: How To Lead When You Don’t Have The Answers?
Hosts: Rodney Evans & Sam Spurlin
Date: May 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this “Ask Us Anything” mini-episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin tackle a fundamental yet often taboo question: How do you lead when you don’t have the answers? With growing uncertainty in the workplace—especially around topics like AI, shifting industry standards, and evolving expectations—leaders increasingly feel pressured to appear certain and confident. The co-hosts explore the difference between certainty and confidence, the importance of process over answers, and the power of intuition for effective, authentic leadership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Stigma of Not Knowing (00:22)

• The listener’s question centers on the pressure to have “the right answers” at higher organizational levels.

• Sam Spurlin reframes this as a positive sign: Leaders who question themselves are demonstrating important self-awareness—unlike those who always claim certainty.

  “Lots of horrible leaders think they have answers. You are not one of them. Good job.” [Sam, 00:46]

2. Certainty vs. Confidence (01:55)

• Rodney Evans distinguishes between having certainty and exuding confidence.

  • You can (and should) be confident in your capacity to learn, adapt, and navigate challenges, even when you lack the specifics.
  • Confidence doesn’t require pretending to know everything.

• Overconfidence often masks a lack of accountability:

  "You can absolutely be confident in your ability to figure things out...and that certainty is not required in order to have confidence." [Rodney, 01:56]

  “Most people that say they have the answers are full of shit. And mostly they’re just, like, walking, talking egos...no one checks receipts on whether the thing that they're so sure about actually comes true.” [Rodney, 02:35]

3. Developing Certainty Around “How,” Not “What” (00:46)

• Rather than feeling pressure to have all the “whats” (specific answers), focus on providing clarity and confidence about the “how” (process for discovery and adaptation).

• This is a valid, modern leadership stance.

  “You can start to develop certainty and communicate certainty around the how: how we will figure these things out, how we will build capabilities.” [Sam, 01:22]

4. Intuition as Leadership Tool (03:58)

• Rodney shares a personal journey toward relying more on her intuition, especially in complex or ambiguous environments.

  • Most people “talk themselves out” of their intuitive sense because hard decisions and confrontation are unpleasant.
  • Intuition signals when something isn’t right, even if the full picture is unclear.
  • Trusting intuition is often more courageous (and accurate) than over-relying on data or rationalization.

  "Nobody really likes making hard calls...or confrontation. I don't either. ...Most of us feel intuitively like we know when something isn't right. ...And what I've learned is that actually there's really no part of knowing those things that's selfish in nature, because it's always easier to avoid conflict." [Rodney, 03:59]

  "If my intuition is telling me that there’s a hard thing to do, then it’s real, and then I have to investigate it, and then I have to find out what’s true about it, and then I probably have to act about it.” [Rodney, 04:41]

5. Investigating Intuition (05:48)

• Sam reinforces that intuition isn’t about acting rashly on feelings; it’s about noticing, investigating, and validating those signals before taking action.

  “It’s noticing that your intuition is saying something and then having some moves to investigate further.” [Sam, 05:48]

• Rodney further distinguishes between intuition and emotion, emphasizing the deep “knowing” aspect versus surface feelings.

  “For me, the work is actually separating out the emotion from the intuition because it’s not really a feeling. It is a knowing. ...It’s just tuning into that voice instead of the emotional voice or the very intellectual voice.” [Rodney, 06:13]

6. Strengthening Intuitive Leadership (07:12)

• Sam asks how to develop intuitive discernment beyond just experience.

• Rodney’s Method:

  • Practises like swimming and walking without stimulation; allows inner signals to surface.
  • Questions commonly held beliefs, especially when something feels “off.”
  • Reflection on “out of tune” moments builds this internal compass.
  • Asserts that three elements are necessary: space, quiet, investigation.

  “Most of us don’t have all three of those. ...I actually think you need all three in order to start to hear the quiet voice and then really tune into it.” [Rodney, 08:46]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Rodney: “Most people that say they have the answers are full of shit. And mostly they’re just, like, walking, talking egos.” [02:35]
• Sam: “Lots of horrible leaders think they have answers. You are not one of them. Good job.” [00:46]
• Rodney: “If my intuition is telling me that there’s a hard thing to do, then it’s real...I probably have to act about it.” [04:41]
• Rodney: “It’s not really a feeling. It is a knowing. ...It’s really hard work to let that quiet voice become the louder voice and also for me to separate it from the feeling.” [06:13]
• Rodney: “Most of us don’t have all three [space, quiet, investigation]...and I actually think you need all three in order to tune into it.” [08:46]

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Key Timestamps

• 00:22 – Listener’s question on leadership & uncertainty introduced.
• 01:22 – Advice: focus certainty on the “how,” not the “what.”
• 01:55 – Rodney on the distinction between confidence and certainty.
• 03:58 – Personal story: Rodney’s use of intuition in leadership.
• 05:48 – How to act on intuition: investigation vs. acting on emotion.
• 07:42 – Developing intuition: practices and reflection.
• 08:46 – The “three ingredients”: space, quiet, and investigation.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• You’re not alone: Feeling uncertainty at higher levels is normal—and often a sign of strong leadership self-awareness.
• Don’t fake certainty: Real confidence comes from trust in your adaptability and process, not from pretending to have all the answers.
• Lead with process and intuition: Provide certainty around how your team will tackle unknowns; cultivate your intuition through space, quiet, and investigation.
• Question everything: Critical reflection, challenging commonly-held assumptions, and attending to your “inner voice” are essential for nuanced, effective leadership in complex times.

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For further questions or to submit your own workplace challenge, the hosts invite listeners to reach out at [e-mail].

Transcript

[A]

Hey everyone. Welcome back to At Work with the Ready. I'm Sam Sperlin and I'm joined as always by Rodney Evans.

[B]

Hi Sam. Hi everyone.

[A]

Every other week we're tackling one tough, thought provoking listener question and sharing a few ideas that might help. So let's dive in. Rodney, what you got for us this week?

[B]

I'm finding that the higher up I get in my organization, the more people expect me to have the quote unquote right answers. My team wants reassurance about AI, my peers want to know what other companies are doing and leadership wants confidence. I don't have. I know you've talked a lot about leading through uncertainty, but what should I be doing when the honest answer to a lot of it is I don't know.

[A]

Well, listener, this is a good sign because the fact that you have the self awareness to even be asking this question, I think in many ways puts you in a different class of leader than many. There are lots of people out there, lots of leaders, quote unquote leaders out there who are not feeling any of this and they should be so good sign that you're feeling this tension. Lots of horrible leaders think they have answers. You are not one of them. Good job. The more helpful thing hopefully that I will offer is that where you feel a lack of certainty around the what. So what is happening? What are other companies doing? What should we do? All of those things, which is completely understandable. I think you can start to develop certainty and communicate certainty around the how around how we will figure these things out, how we will build capabilities. And that I think is worth spending time getting good at and is a completely valid kind of leadership posture to, to be eventing.

[B]

I had a related point which is you said in your question that the leadership wants confidence from you that you don't have. I think people confuse confidence and certainty a lot. You can absolutely be confident in your ability to figure things out and in your ability to learn and in your ability to adapt without being certain about what you need to learn and what you need to change and what you need to adapt to. And I think having a posture of confidence is that it's being grounded in the idea that you have done hard things before, you can do hard things again, and that certainty is not required in order to have confidence. And even just adopting that mindset might help you shake off a little bit of the yips that I'm reading in this question. Also, like Sam, I think your your point is really right on, which is most people that say they have the answers are full of shit. And mostly they're just, like, walking, talking egos. So I would be really suspicious of those people to begin with, rather than seeing that as some bar that you're not reaching, I would investigate whether those people are ever right or whether they just seem really sure of themselves in the room. Because I'm around a lot of those people, and what I know about them is no one checks receipts on whether the thing that they're so sure about actually comes true. And so they just keep doing it. So, like, I wouldn't. I wouldn't hold that up as the model that you're aiming for. I think your way of thinking about this is actually much more sophisticated. And the last thing that I would say, and this is, like, very personal to me because this has been a big part of my own journey, becoming a steward in complexity that is still responsible for both execution and innovation of a business, is I rely a lot more on my intuition than I used to. And what I've realized about myself, and I don't know if this will resonate for you, but I'm gonna say it anyway, is nobody really likes making hard calls, and nobody really likes giving bad news, and nobody really likes confrontation. I don't either. People say that I do. It's just that I'm not afraid of it. But it's not like I. It's not like I can't wait to start a fight today. And the reason that I'm saying that is because most of us feel intuitively like we know when something isn't right. We know when a person isn't working out. We know when a standard isn't being met. We know when the work isn't as good as it could be. And most of us talk ourselves out of that knowing because. Because we don't really want to deal with it. And what I've learned is that actually there's really no part of knowing those things that's selfish in nature, because it's always easier to avoid conflict. It's always easier to keep the okay performer, the mediocre work, the annoying client, than it is to do the hard thing. And so if my intuition is telling me that there's a hard thing to do, I'm basically like, then it's real, and then I have to investigate it, and then I have to find out what's true about it, and then I probably have to act about it. And that has taken a lot of work for me to not default, to turning it into an intellectual exercise, to not default to trying to get a lot of data. Also to not default to, like, you know, acting too soon or irrationally, but being like, if something is just sort of, like, bugging me and keeps coming up and is in the back of my brain, I should probably listen to it. And it's a. It's a different kind of knowing than the knowing that you're describing in your question. But to me, the quote unquote, higher up you get, the more important that kind of knowing is.

[A]

Yeah. And what I love about what you just said there, it's not that you just take your intuition and do whatever it says immediately. It's noticing that your intuition is saying something and then having some moves to investigate further. And. Yeah, but you probably more than half of the time, whatever the intuition was saying is like the thing that you end up doing. But it's not just kind of like acting emotionally to a feeling that's in your tummy.

[B]

Yeah, well, and I would say that that's true, although I put the number way, way higher in terms of what I actually do. It's like 100%. But for me, the work is actually separating out the emotion from the intuition because it's not really a feeling. It is a knowing. And it's. And it is different. It is a different quality because it's not just. Sometimes it's like, this is making me angry. Why is that? I should figure that out. That happens a lot. But sometimes it's like I just. I just have, like, an inner voice that's telling me things that's, like, pretty wise. And it's just tuning into that voice instead of the emotional voice or the very intellectual voice. That's like, how does that make sense? That doesn't make sense. That's not rational. That's not provable. And it's really hard work to let that quiet voice become the louder voice and also for me to separate it from the feeling.

[A]

Yeah. I'm saying I feel like we're on the verge of a much bigger episode about this. But I'll ask one question, and hopefully we won't go too long on it. How do you develop that voice? Because I think one part of my brain says, well, it just comes with experience. So you get more reps. The more reps that you get, the louder that voice or the more nuanced that voice becomes. But I have to imagine there's more than just age. There's a bunch of old idiots out there. So what else can you do to develop that voice?

[B]

I think a lot of it is self reflection a lot of what I do. And this is why I have practices like swimming and walking without a lot of. I have a lot of practices that involve no stimulation so that it's just like what's happening inside of my own closed ecosystem can ping around. But a lot of it for me is like questioning commonly held beliefs. And when people say things and they're just like, so. So confident or so certain about it, and I'm like, that doesn't make sense to me. Stopping and being like, why is that? Why doesn't that make sense to me? What about that Seems not right to me. And so a lot of it, I think, is just investigating the quiet signal that goes like, there's something about this that the only way I can describe it is like, it feels a little out of tune in the moment. And then later I'll be like, why was that? And I think the practice of developing it, because we all have this and we've all had it always is space and quiet and investigation. And most of us don't have all three of those. Most of us have one or fewer of those. And I actually think you need all three. I think you need all three in order to start to hear the quiet voice and then really tune into it.

[A]

All right, that is it for this mini. If you've got a question of your own, hit us up@podcast ready.com.

[B]

we will see you back next week for a full episode of At Work with the Ready. Thank you for being a listener.