Welcome to another episode of clover before we get into anything else today, I want to acknowledge something that I think is important to stay out loud there are some genuinely hard things, scary things happening in the world right now. The economy feels uncertain in a way that's hard to put a finger on. The employment market is tight, even for people with strong resumes and long track records. Companies are being acquired, reorganized, downsized, or put into holding patterns. Budgets are being scrutinized, decisions are taking longer, and a lot of people are working inside systems that feel way less stable than they did even a year ago. And on top of that, there's a broader backdrop. We're all living inside of political tension, global instability, constant, scary news cycle. AI reshaping work faster than most organizations are equipped to absorb thoughtfully, even if none of this has directly affected your job or your role, yet it still shows up, and my goodness, I'm sure it hasn't impacted your personal life, as we wake up every day to what I call Fresh Hell. So it does show up in conversations. It shows up in leadership meetings. It shows up in the way people hedge or soften or stop saying certain things out loud. There's a kind of ambient stress in the air right now. It's like a low level hum of uncertainty that's it's easy to normalize, but then it gets hard to ignore. So if you've been feeling a little off lately, not panicked or falling apart, but less grounded than usual, I want to be very clear about something. You're not imagining it. You're not weak for feeling it, and there's nothing wrong with you. This is what it feels like to lead work and make decisions inside uncertainty. And yet, so much leadership content skips right past this part. It jumps straight to productivity optimization or confidence without acknowledging the reality that people are actually standing in So this episode is not about pretending everything is fine, or it's not about pushing through or staying positive, and it's definitely not about ignoring what is happening in the world. It's more about grounding, because when everything feels uncertain, the instinct is to either freeze or to spin, to wait for clarity that never quite arrives, or to consume so much information that you lose your own center. What actually helps is starting somewhere solid. So today I want to talk about where to start when nothing feels stable, when the signals are mixed, when waiting feels safer than moving, but moving with staying still doesn't feel great either. So I want to share a framework I return to myself in these moments, it's simple, but it's steady, and it doesn't require certainty, because you don't need certainty to lead. You really need grounding. So one of the things I see over and over again with women leaders is how quickly uncertainty gets internalized when the environment feels unstable, the first question many people or women ask is not what's happening around me, it's what am I doing wrong? That reflex is not accidental, it's learned. Many women built their careers by being very good at reading context. We learned how to sense shifts before they were announced, read between the lines and anticipate expectations. Make smart, well timed moves. We were rewarded for being perceptive, responsive and adaptable. Those are real skills, and they matter, but they come with a hidden cost. Those skills depend on feedback loops. They depend on signals. They depend on knowing how decisions are usually made and who usually makes them, and uncertainty that disrupts all of that. So when the economy feels unstable, when leadership teams are under pressure, when roles are shifting, when the future is unclear, those signals disappear. Suddenly. It's not obvious. It's not obvious when to speak up, when to wait, when to push, when to protect yourself, and because many women were taught to calibrate themselves based on external cues, the absence of those cues can feel deeply unsettling. This is where I want to slow down and say something important. That unsettled feeling is not self doubt. It's not a confidence problem, it's not a failure of leadership. It's a mismatch between the leadership strategies that worked in stable systems and the leadership strategies that are required and unstable ones. Many women were taught to lead after clarity arrives after alignment, after consensus. Consensus after the right moment presents itself. This moment does not offer that. So what feels like hesitation or confusion is often just your old operating system trying to function in a new environment. And the solution is not to become louder, faster or more certain. The solution is to ground yourself somewhere that does not move when the environment around you does. I want to make this a little bit more concrete. It by sharing something personal. Years ago, my husband and I were laid off at the same time, not months apart, not in different seasons at the same time. This was during, like, what they call it, the.com bust, right? We were there for the.com boom, which I could do a whole episode on. And this was during the.com bust. I still remember sitting there and realizing that two incomes were gone in one moment. There was no buffer period. There was no easing into it, just a sudden, very real sense of, okay, now what? And here's the thing that surprised me, it was not just the financial stress, it was the identity shock. We had both been competent, responsible, high performing adults. We had done what we were supposed to do, and suddenly the system we were inside of had changed without our consent. There was fear, obviously, but there was also, like this sense of disorientation, because when systems collapse or shift, suddenly the rules we were playing by no longer apply. There was no clear single signal about like what the right next move was. There was no obvious timeline. There was no guarantee that doing the smart thing would lead to a good outcome. And I remember realizing something in that moment that has stayed with me ever since, waiting for certainty was not going to help us. There was no version of that situation where clarity arrived first. The only way forward was through decisions made without guarantees. That experience changed how I think about leadership and uncertainty. Then years later, covid happened, and like so many people, I was furloughed that moment carried a different kind of weight, because it was not just about my job, it was about the world. Everything was uncertain, all at once, health, work, school, the future, and again, the hardest part was not just the logistics. It was the waiting, waiting to see what would happen, waiting to see when things would reopen, waiting to see if rose would come back, waiting for information that no one actually had yet. That waiting did something to people. It ended confidence. It eroded confidence away. It made capable people question themselves. It created a sense of powerlessness that lingered even after things started moving again. What I learned in that season is something I still come back to. Uncertainty does not respond to passivity. It responds to grounding. So here's the core idea I want to offer you. When everything feels uncertain, do not try to solve the entire future. Do not ask yourself to predict what the economy will do, what leadership will decide, or what your career should look like five years from now. Those questions sound responsible, but in moments like this, they usually create paralysis. Instead, start with grounding. Grounding is not about optimism. It's not about pretending things are better than they are. It's about orienting yourself to what is real and available right now, I use three questions to do this. I come back to them whenever I feel unsteady, or reactive or frozen. Sometimes I ask all three. Sometimes I only need one. The questions are, number one, what do I control right now? Number two, what am I responsible for, even if no one asked me to be number three, what am I willing to decide without consensus? These are not theoretical questions. They're practical. They pull you out of abstraction and back into agency. As you listen, I want you to notice which one creates the most resistance. That's usually the one that matters most. So let's start with the first question, what do I control right now? When uncertainty is high, most people dramatically overestimate how much they do not control. We fixate on market forces, leadership decisions, restructures, budgets, timelines and other people's reactions. Those things matter, but they're not where your agency lives. Control is not about power. It's about choice. So I like to shrink this question down until it becomes manageable. Not what do I control this year? Not what do I control in this organization, but what do I control today. Today, you control how you show up in conversations, whether you say what you actually think or you soften it, where you spend your attention, which decisions you delay in, which you move forward, how visible or invisible you choose to be, even in very constrained environments, these choices still exist. One of the most common patterns I see in certain times is capable women waiting for clarity before acting. They tell themselves they are being thoughtful, strategic and careful, but often what they are really waiting for is safety and leadership rarely offers safety before movement. Clarity usually comes after you move, not before. That does not mean making reckless decisions. It means making real ones. When I feel frozen, I stop myself. I stop asking myself, what the preserve what the perfect decision is. I ask myself what decision is actually available to me right now might be small. It might feel almost insignificant, but movement restores agency, and agency restores confidence. And confidence does not come from knowing the future. It comes from trusting yourself in the present. The second question goes deeper. What am I responsible for, even if no one asked me to be this is where leadership identity really comes into play. Responsibility is different from accountability. Accountability is assigned, responsibility is claimed. Many. Women wait for responsibility to be formally handed to them, a title change, a promotion, a mandate, explicit permission. But uncertainty exposes something important. The people who shape outcomes are rarely the ones waiting to be asked. They are the ones who decide internally. This matters, and I'm going to own my own part in it. I want to be clear about what responsibility is not it is not doing everything. It is not over functioning. It is not fixing problems that are not yours. Responsibility is not martyrdom. Responsibility is ownership over impact. It is asking yourself, Where do my decisions actually matter? Where do people already look to me, even informally? Where am I influencing outcomes, whether I name it or not, and uncertain times, it can feel safer to shrink responsibility, to stay inside the lines, to say that is not my call. Sometimes that is appropriate, but sometimes it is avoidance disguises, humility, and women are particularly good at that. We do not want to overstep. We don't want to seem difficult. We do not want to claim authority that has not been explicitly granted. But leadership does not wait for permission. Authority is often recognized after it is exercised. This question is not about taking on more work. It is about being honest about where you already have influence and choosing to own it intentionally. The third question, what am I willing to decide without consensus? In certain times, consensus feels comforting, more opinions feel safer, more alignment feels responsible, but consensus is not the same as collaboration. And waiting for consensus when leadership is required can quietly erode your authority, especially for women. Many women were taught that good leadership means making sure everyone agrees that inclusivity means unanimity, but leadership requires discernment. It requires knowing which decisions need broad input and which ones do not. It requires knowing when speed matters more than agreement. It requires being willing to decide and adjust later. These decisions do not have to be dramatic. They can be small, naming a direction, setting a priority, saying something out loud when everyone else is that everyone else is thinking, making a call and revising it later. If you wait for consensus and uncertain times, you may never move. So I invite you to ask yourself where you are outsourcing decisions that you are actually capable of making. That's not arrogance, it's leadership. So I want to share how this looks for me in practice, and things feel uncertain. My old instinct was to gather more information, more news, more opinions, more context. I thought clarity would eventually show up if I consumed enough input. What actually happened was overwhelm. Now, when I feel that internal static, I do the opposite. I reduce inputs. I stop crowdsourcing my intuition. I come back to my first principles. I ask myself what I know to be true. I ask, What am I avoiding deciding? I ask, what it would look like to trust myself here and then I move one thing forward, not because it's perfect, but because staying still is also a decision. That's what grounding looks like. For me, it's more about self trust. So if you're waiting for the right moment, you're not alone, but the right moment is often a moving target, and at times like these, waiting can quietly become a way of giving your power away. So I want to offer you permission, permission to decide without complete information, permission to be visible even when things feel shaky, permission to lead without guarantees. If everything feels uncertain, do not wait for the ground to stop moving. Start by deciding where you are willing to stand. That's leadership. So as you finish this episode, I want to leave you with one question. Which of these questions as you resist the most? That's usually where your next step lives. You don't have to solve everything. You just have to start somewhere solid. Thank you for being here and thank you for the way you lead, even when it is hard. I'll see you next week. You.