NAVIGATING UNCERTAINTY Through a Scenic Route
Lessons for Business Leadership in a Changing World
If you find yourself wondering why the business climate has changed so radically that planning according to old patterns would rather hinder, not help your business, you need to seek new solutions. Nowadays, entrepreneurs face the dilemma of adapting quickly to new norms and thriving or clinging to obsolete patterns in hopes that things may just work out. But what if they don’t? Today we speak with an expert whose mission is to guide fellow business owners and get them through these tough times to achieve success.
You’re the author of the book "When the Curveballs Keep Coming: A Leadership Playbook for an Uncertain World", which summarizes your experience as a coach and consultant. “Yes, it draws on my own experience in large companies, as well as an endurance athlete when I learned to deal with uncertainty, but mostly on the work with my clients because they're all very high, fast, hyper-growth type of companies in Silicon Valley. Thus, this playbook was really designed for them.” Your book provides insight into the ripple effects of leading through uncertainty, and it explains how you can adopt a possibilities mindset to always find the next win for you and your team. You also did a TEDx talk on the topic. Can you please elaborate on this for someone who has not read the book or wants to be more familiar with your brand? “I think we would all agree that we live in times of unrelenting uncertainty. And one of the key things to remember is that our brains are wired for certainty and for surety. So, when we're faced with uncertainty, particularly the level and the intensity that we've seen over the last few years, leaders who don't have the right playbook or the right mindset start to lose their confidence. They'll start to shut down, or they'll distance themselves from the people that work for them, or from their peers, because they don't have all the right answers, which none of us does.
Please introduce yourself, who you are, what you do, and how your journey started as an author and entrepreneur.
“My name is Bobbie LaPorte. I live in San Francisco. I'm a leadership and organizational development consultant and executive coach. A lot of the work I do with tech companies in Silicon Valley is around helping leaders navigate through uncertainty during complex, challenging times when there’s a very different behavior and mindset. And when the COVID pandemic started, a couple of colleagues said to me, "you need to really get
this down now on paper because it's something that would be valuable to everybody."
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