944: LEADERSHIP MINDSET: The Gifts of Suspending Certainty

Shameless Leadership

Sara Dean

Education, Management, How To, Business, Self-improvement

4.7 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I was recently sitting in one of my Change Leadership classes for my Master’s degree in Organizational Leadership, and my teacher asked us, “What would it look like if, as change leaders, we were to suspend certainty more often?” I immediately made a note to myself, “podcast episode on suspending certainty!” As someone who craves certainty but understands that nothing is certain, I often think about becoming more comfortable with impermanence. I’ve never heard this referred to as “suspending certainty”, but this term struck me, and I knew I wanted to dig into it with you all! In this episode, we talk about the importance of suspending certainty in leadership and personal growth. We talk through the benefits of embracing uncertainty, including: Increased curiosity Access to new perspectives Openness to learning and new opportunities Increased surprise, delight, and joy Gifts that come when we step out of our “I got it all figured out” ego Resilience, resourcefulness, tenacity, creativity, fun, and JOY are all born out of figuring out new things, embracing new realities, letting go of the old, and stepping into new opportunities where we don’t know exactly how things will go. What might happen for you if you felt prepared to step into uncertainty at any time? Suspending certainty will help you with this preparation. Episode Highlights: 00:00 Introduction and Exciting Updates 03:35 The Concept of Suspending Certainty 04:03 Understanding the Gifts of Suspending Certainty 11:10 Benefits of Embracing Uncertainty 20:10 Navigating Personal and Collective Uncertainty 30:30 Conclusion and Upcoming Workshop Links Mentioned: Attend my free workshop for women small business owners, Focused and Fierce: Lead with Purpose and Build Your Business in a Noisy World: saradean.com/fierce Watch Shameless Leadership episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@saradeanspeaks Hire me to speak: saradean.com/speaking Coach with me: https://saradean.com/executive-coaching-services Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saradeanspeaks Interested in becoming a sponsor of the Shameless Mom Academy? Email our sales team at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to shameless leadership. I'm your host, Sarah Dean. This show is for women, transgender people, non-binary folks, as well as allies, who are committed to advancing their leadership while also advancing the leadership of those around them. In each episode, we will offer practical tips, leadership strategies, and inspiring
0:21.9	stories to help you become a more confident, compassionate, and inclusive leader. The truth is,
0:27.5	you were born to lead. What might happen for you if you were to wholeheartedly embrace that
0:32.2	part of yourself? So let's start now, together. Hello, shameless leaders. I'm so happy to be with you today.
0:38.9	And I get to follow up on a couple exciting things that have happened on the show recently that we, I haven't had a chance to reconnect with you on.
0:46.1	So first of all, we are up on YouTube.
0:48.6	We've been up on YouTube for a few weeks now, which is really exciting.
0:51.5	It took a lot of work to get there.
0:53.4	So please go check out the show
0:55.1	on YouTube. Subscribe, leave comments, like episodes, like do all the things. If you, I'll put a link in
1:01.5	our show notes and you can go directly to our YouTube page, Saradine speaks. The other exciting
1:07.1	thing that's been happening is interviews. So behind the scenes, I've been doing interviews
1:11.1	for the last few months since the beginning of 2025, but we've started dripping them out and we're
1:15.3	going to continue dripping them out. So keep an eye out for incredible guests talking about all the
1:21.4	things we really need to be talking about right now. It's been really fun and enlightening and
1:26.9	illuminating and so supportive to be able to bring
1:30.6	incredible experts and leaders into this podcasting space to glean knowledge and expertise
1:38.2	and also inspiration, which is just so desperately needed right now. I've been amazed at the
1:43.8	conversations I've been
1:44.6	able to have, knowing that I was bringing in people who were brilliant and fun and funny,
1:50.1	but also the surprise and just being able to have really good human, supportive, connected
1:56.5	conversations that I think will be, that'll meet you right where you're at. There's so much going on
	...

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