The Science of Mastering Uncertainty | Carla Fowler

Do you find uncertainty and ambiguity and changing dynamics to be challenging to those around you find them challenging. My guest today, Carla Fowler tells us why we can find uncertainty to be so challenging. And she tells us about the not so helpful things we tend to do when faced with ambiguity, and what we can intentionally do instead. Carla Fowler, MD PhD, is the Founder and Managing Director of THAXA, a boutique executive coaching firm that leverages the best ideas from performance science to help leaders. I'm glad she's here for this conversation, because uncertainty and disruptions are prevalent in all aspects of the marketplace. Carla gives us practical ways that anyone can implement to deal with ambiguity more effectively.

Welcome to the Courage of A Leader podcast. This is where you hear real life stories of top leaders achieving extraordinary results. And you get practical advice and techniques, you can immediately apply for your own success. This is where you will get inspired. And take bold, courageous action. I am so glad you can join us. I'm your host, Amy Riley. Now, are you ready to step into the full power of your leadership and achieve the results you care about most? Let's ignite the courage of a leader.

Carla, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate your experience and your perspective that you have. You have a scientific approach to performance and development. And we are going to talk today about how to deal with maybe even relish uncertainty in very practical ways. We know that uncertainty is the new certainty.

The new norm, right?

Yeah. So how do we get comfortable with uncertainty with ambiguity with operating when we're not entirely sure of the path that we should follow?

Ah, these are such great questions. If we're thinking about what happens in our lives when we encounter uncertainty, like what are some of the things how would we recognize this. And I'd love to give it just a couple examples of like number one, for example, startup CEO, and they are thinking about they're launching something new and like in the tech realm out into the market. And it's going kind of slowly, they have their team is out there testing it, like we're doing some market testing, it's going slowly. And there's this big question of uncertainty. And one of the behaviors we often do when we run into it is we try to control it, right? So we don't like it, our brains don't like it. And so we get out there and we're like, can I just get through this uncertain period more quickly. And so like sometimes what happens then is this this hypothetical CEO is like, kind of pushing their team saying Come on, like run the market tests faster. Like they sort of get into the weeds. But the reason I'm doing this is not because they're bad CEO is because they've got this uncertainty, and they're just like, I'm so uncomfortable with this, I want to get to the part where we know it's going to work or it's not going to work. And I want to rush as fast as I can there. Okay, that's one thing that happens, a different thing that other people might recognize themselves in is, let's say we have an executive at a firm she is thinking about, you know, has been very successful with the business she has developed for them previously. Now, she has been tasked from the firm to go develop a new area of business, which is awesome. She is kicking butt. But he finds it's a little bit hard to like, do some of the work on that new area. And so another natural response. Sometimes when we hit that uncertainty, we start to avoid it. And we gravitate towards the things that we feel more certain about. And so she finds that she's continuing to work with some of those other clients polite, not moving to do some of the more uncertain work of like, getting out there having some zero to one conversations with people. Like that's another very natural response we have. And so I just like to point these out what we do, the kinds of behaviors we do when we're encountering this discomfort can look different. But one of the things I think it's really important for us to recognize is that it's true. Like when things feel uncertain, our brains often assume that it might be something negative that could happen in the face of that uncertainty. But I like to point out that uncertainty is often where the opportunity actually lies for us. So like in the example of the CEO, they could be the next booming company with their solution or for this executive like she could be the next big p&l revenue line. And so it's not just sure, like, Could something negative happen? Absolutely. But it's also where something different and uniquely positive can happen. And so I like to bring this up as the framing of our conversation, because I think that's where we have room to adjust our perspective and our behavior to actually say, could we view this differently, and also reap some of the unique benefits from uncertainty, for example, avoiding stagnation in our careers, or that often where something's uncertain is also where there's the room for us to grow. And so, anyway, so that's just as a framing for why why should we talk about this? What does it look like? And why is it exciting to think about?

I love this. Carla, you are having us talk about this very practically, right from the start. And we want to bring that awareness to our natural, very human reactions to uncertainty. You said our brains can assume negative perspective there, right? Because our brains are designed to protect us to help them survive. That's how they've evolved. So if they see anything that remotely looks like a threat, it's on guard. And yeah, have us tried to control trying to rush or to avoid our, but there's magic, there's opportunity inside of the uncertain space.

Yes. And a great example that I think we can all relate to, about how this could be true, because I can imagine people saying like, sure, that's it. That's a great theory, Carla, but it's just plain uncomfortable. Yeah. And so an example I always give is this idea of the concept of a spoiler alert, whether it's the next best, best seller, right? That just came out that everyone's reading or the movie, like the new blockbuster, we enjoy those things. And the reason we don't want someone to tell us what the ending it is, is because to go on the journey of knowing that we don't know what's going to happen, and we don't know if our favorite character is going to get killed off in the third. Or is the hero going to win? We love suspending our understanding of what's going to happen, because it makes like the victory at the end, more interesting to us. And so that's, I think that's something we've all experienced. And so I I love to say, this is also true in our lives. Because the things that we often feel most proud of any of us look back and say, what was a moment that I felt amazing about what I done, I felt proud of it. And I was just on a high, right, like I was on the top of the mountain. If you look before that could be in the months before that it could even be in the years before that, we often find that what was going on before that was a good deal of uncertainty. And the reason we felt so good when we reached it were all the things we accomplished and had to overcome to get there. And all the ways we've grown, like how we even see ourselves in a new way. But only because there was that uncertainty. If it had been a sure deal. We actually would not have felt as good. And so yeah, so I knew it

was gonna happen. I knew I was gonna hit that home run. But when it's uncertain, yeah, well, if we take on anything big, personally, professionally, it comes with that element of unknown uncertainty. Yeah, and you're exactly right. That's when we feel most proud of ourselves. And I didn't hurt it associated it with the spoiler alert. idea, right. So collar fall for all of us out there. This includes me, who would never dream of turning to the last few pages of the book to find out high ends before he is on that journey to get there. How do we bring that energy and that perspective, to work to other changes in our lives that do bring uncertainty? Absolutely.

And so I'm so glad now we have some framework to think about why we might even bother working on this thing. And so, the way I like to think about how we work on this, it has two parts. You can work on it from the standpoint of what's our perspective or our mindset, and even like what we've learned We've been talking about how could I view this differently than just uncertainty equals something negative that I don't know what it is yet, basically. So there are mindsets and perspectives that I think help set us up to do this. And so we'll talk through what some of those are. I also think there's some actions and some behaviors that we can take to do it. And usually, I say, we want to do a mixture of both. Both are helpful. We don't just solve it from a mindset or perspective standpoint. And we don't just solve it from Oh, a behavior standpoint, like I need to do these things differently. I think the mix creates this powerful sort of positive spiral that heads you in the direction of just getting some more comfort with that uncertainty. So I love it. I

love where we're headed Carla. And before we go there feasor before we get to mindsets and actions, let me tell you listeners a little bit more about Carla. Carla Fowler, MD PhD is the Founder and Managing Director of THAXA, a boutique executive coaching firm that leverages the best ideas from performance science to help leaders around the globe. Karla graduated from Brown University magna cum laude, earned her MD and PhD at the University of Washington and completed her internship and general surgery at Stanford University. Outside of THAXA, Carla is an angel investor specializing in med tech and biotech with a portfolio of over a dozen investments. She's also an active member of Social Venture Partners, Rotary Washington, Women's Foundation, Alliance of Angels, and Keiretsu. Thank you for being here. Carla. I love how you bring your scientific approach to what we're discussing.

Thanks for having me, Amy. This is great. Yeah.

All right. So you set us up, we are going to talk both about mindsets and actions. Take us there.

Awesome. All right, starting with mindsets. And again, I think it just sets us up for success then for some of the actions we do later. So I think one of the first most important things we already started to talk about and it's reminding yourself, that uncertainty is just not having necessarily like clarity or insight into what's going to happen. There may be a probabilistic curve to it, right, but you can't call exactly what it will be. But what it does not necessarily mean is that there is risk or that all the outcomes are negative. When we think about uncertainty, or like a probabilistic curve, some of those outcomes or are positive, some of those outcomes, in fact, are extremely positive. And sure, there's less likelihood of the very extreme extreme positive event in the same way that there's less like very little probability of the extreme extreme sort of negative outcome. Right. But the main point is just our brains want to think that uncertainty is like only that negative half of the curve, you have to remember there's two sides of the curve. Okay, so that's, I think, a first. Great reminder. That's how you know math works. So

yeah, so we have to remind our brain of that, yeah. Because our brain is trying to protect, so more like yes, so to that negative side of the curve.

Exactly, exactly. It's like you're seeing you like covered one eye, if you're only seeing that part. So that's just a first thing to remind yourself about the world and how things often work. So then, I think there's a couple of helpful you can call them mantras or just like little things to remind yourself, particularly at the start, when you you have that feeling, it is worth identifying and calling out or labeling when you are feeling discomfort from uncertainty. Because sometimes actually, we don't really realize or recognize what's going on. And so the moment if you're just feeling bad, or you don't like what's going on, or you find yourself avoiding a bunch of stuff, always worth asking yourself, what is uncertain about this situation? And is that what's going on for me, and just labeling it? So, you've you've identified in fact, and now you've reminded yourself that like, Okay, well, uncertainty does not mean that there are only about bad outcomes here, potential, then I think the next thing that can be helpful is often to remind yourself that there is more than one good way to get somewhere and also that there is more than one good place to get to. Okay, and so, this is a pair of statements and you can even use these or journal about them because what they do is they remind us that we don't have to be rigid or stuck with a particular process or path. To get to our goal, so let's see, you've identified something you really wanted to happen. Often the moment something in our process starts to or a path starts to go not on the path that we thought it should. Mm hmm. That's what the first statements about, there's more than one good way to get where you need to go. And so it reminds us that that does not mean you can't get to your goal, necessarily. And there might be something or we have to change our path, because reality is telling us something about that isn't how you can actually get there, it doesn't mean you can't get there, you just can't get there that way. So that's the first statement,

probably have evidence of this in our lives. But we all can probably look back on something like, Oh, I was really hoping that I was gonna get that promotion, yes, I'm gonna get that client engagement. And then we didn't. And instead, this other thing opened up later, or it created space and time. And yes, she for something else, right? And looking back, like, okay, there was more than one way to fulfill that need, I was feeling at the

moment, right, like to have that works, success, whatever, whatever was your thought about the success? Yeah, it didn't happen that way, you didn't win that big proposal, but in fact, then you got the opportunity to head up something else. And, and were tremendously successful. So so that that's about sort of path. And then the second piece of that statement is, there's more than one good place to get to. And that I think reminds us that sometimes we do set out with a goal. And we have an idea of what we really want to have happen. And then along the way, either like that goal becomes sort of not possible, or we realized that it wasn't what we thought it was, you know, I have a great example of this in my life, like I set out to become an academic physician, and ultimately have ended up doing something quite different as an executive coach. So you have to learn something about what you're doing along the way. And then you realize, actually, your goal has shifted, and that's okay. That's why I like those two statements.

Yeah, this is making me think of a emerging leader that I worked with last year, he had an action learning project of, and he was really taking a risk with this one, because he didn't know whether it could come to fruition or not have trying to sell a solution that they already had in their organization, different application, different customer different division, yeah, meant that all the processes in the different division were not there. And we brainstormed a bunch of different in ways to influence what he wanted to have happen. And we really thought it was going to come from the top down. And it ended up not working out that way. It was actually the scientists that helped make the shifts in process to make this happened. They created the energy that caused the tipping point to be able to change all the things that needed to be changed in the organization in order to sell in a new application in a new way to a new type of customer. But he put a bunch of different feelers out there differently than you thought it was super exciting. Yeah, yeah. What

a great example of that. And I think often what is helpful is just again, when we have these, these ideas that keep us open minded, and not immediately judging, like, what is happening is bad, it means there's more bad to come, you know, not going down toward that rabbit hole, it helps us examine what might be true in our situation. The last sort of mindset tip that I have is this idea of giving your future self some credit. That there you can't solve the problems you don't know about yet, you can't solve those challenges or those puzzles. But your future self will probably have a good crack at it. And so we often need to like leave those for future self, but also like, trust our future self, that we will be capable and have what we need in that moment to problem solve it. So those three things, that is how I think often about getting like a mindset like fertile ground for us to then feel like we can take some different behaviors in the face of uncertainty. That's why start with mindset is to like prep the ground so that when we take action, that actions, both appropriate versus like, for example, actions that are too controlling or to avoiding, but also just set ourselves up for success.

I love it, Carla. So just because there's uncertainty, there's not only the potential for bad outcomes, remember the potentials for good outcomes? Right, remind ourselves of our own evidence that we have of that in our lives, applies to both sides of the curve. Carla tells us that's how math works. You bring your awareness to it right? Label when that discomfort is there. What is uncertain right now? How am I feeling about it? Because when we're aware of something, then we can do something about it. And more than one good way to get there, and more than one good place to end up. All right, we're ready for actions.

Awesome. So I think one of the interesting things that can happen to us when we are facing uncertainty is sometimes we get stuck in like analysis paralysis. So and it's a form of trying to control. And often what that looks like, is we're like, how do I like continue to research and learn and prep and prep and prep and prep, but we're not actually like doing anything that moves us forwards into where we're going? Yeah. And what I like to point out about this, is that absolutely doing your homework ahead of time, like there are some things that can be learned from the resources that are out there, whether it's like online books, other people who have been there done that, absolutely. For the kinds of things you can know. And it's worth mapping some of those out. So and then say, here's what I need to do some research on, here's what I'm committing to. Because I think these are actually things that I could learn ahead of time, that would benefit me. So if there's homework to do, by all means, do your homework. But be very clear on like, what are things you cannot learn by doing research ahead of time? And when have you crossed from doing research as a way to like, smartly prepare and do your due diligence vs. Research has now become a tool to avoid the uncertainty and to try and control? Like, what happens? And how we'll get stuck? Do you have this list of what you cannot learn?

I know that there are, again, bringing awareness to it, right? Because we are not going to be able to learn these things before we embark on this journey. So we gotta move forward, not knowing those. Yes, making that part of the list?

Well, and again, it's a nuanced point. And and one of the challenges about performance science, I think, is people want a binary answer, like, is it this? Or is it this? Often, I would say there's a lot of performance that hits that sweet spot, it was some tension between those two points. And this is a great example, where we're saying, oh, like no one would say don't like, Don't do your homework and get the easy learnings when they are available. But it's also a thing that can hold us back. But I think my favorite part about talking with people about learning to relish uncertainty, and when I think it actually gets really fun, and when we start to feel very free, because we suddenly have a new relationship with embarking into what is the unknown for us, is this idea of learning how to run good experiments. And as you can probably imagine, this definitely taps into my science days. And just a story about that. So for about five year period, I worked in a lab and did research and my job was to come in every day, and more or less work on a problem that nobody knew the answer to, and try and learn answers about how that biology worked. And basically, no one made you wrong for coming in every day and not knowing the answer, because that was why you had a job. That was that was a piece of the point of it. And your reward. If you learned something about the biology was that then there was a new next thing you needed to learn about it. There was always a next question that then was uncertain or unknown. I bring this up, because I think it's a really useful, like way of thinking in not just in the lab and science, but also in the business world. And that we should use it because when you're not making yourself wrong for not knowing something. And when you know, like, Okay, well, we're gonna have to like mess around a little bit and try and figure out how to learn some things. And that's exactly how we innovate. That is how we do something that other companies aren't doing or haven't figured out, suddenly, you become much more creative. So like our minds become, feel more free, we feel more creative, when we're not busy saying, we need to know the answer. And there's only one answer, and we're already feeling wrong, because we don't know the answer. And we don't feel like we can take take a risk or try something and maybe have it not worked out. That's when our minds get less creative. And so I love this scientists mindset. And so that's why use the language of learn to run a good experiment. And it rather than saying, well, we should have known the answer. It's to say no, like this is the whole entrepreneurial process. Yes to try things, but to try them in a way that you're set up to learn a good answer. There is part of what you learn as a scientist is how to set up a good experiment that teaches you something, whether your hypothesis was correct. Or if your hypothesis was not correct. What you thought was going on was not how it works. And so, in business and and in life, I think it's worthwhile knowing like, alright, if I want to improve at something, there's some ideas I have about, like, what that might take what might work well, and then being able to say, How can I test that? How could I work on it? And see if in fact, that is correct, or even if it's partially correct. And so, some tips on how to run a good experiment? I think one of the first most important things in business and in life is run experiments that have relatively good upside, if you are correct, and the thing works awesome. Relatively, like balanced or limited downside. So for example, if you're like betting the whole company on one experiment, that's got a lot of potential downside to it. And it would make sense that that might feel extremely stressful to you? Versus, hey, what amount of resources could we spend on this? That would be worth going out to the market? And what if we're doing a bunch of customer interviews? How much are we willing to spend on it? So that helps you go into the experiment not being so stressed about or needing to control the outcome? Because again, the downside is not that big. I think another great way to look at this is to say, how do we like for example, if you are going out to do market research? One way to do that is just to sort of say like, Alright, do you like the red car? Do you like the red car? And people are like, yes, no, yes. No. All you learn when you do that is you're like, Well, did they like the red car? And if everyone loves the red car, well, then you're in luck. Because then you're like, let's make the red car. The challenges if everyone says, No, you know, they don't want the red car. But you haven't learned anything about why did they not like the red car? Yeah. And what color car do they want? Yeah. And so I use this. This is a ridiculous example. I'm guessing nobody ran this business experiment. But it's meant to illustrate that there are ways to say if our hypothesis is wrong, how can we learn something about why it might have been wrong? And ask, for example, how we ask the questions, how we frame them, to give us more insights, if we're gonna go do all that work? How do we get the most insights possible? So in fact, if red car isn't what everyone wants for Christmas, then we have a sense of, oh, they do want to red carpet, they actually don't want that car. They do not want the station wagon. Turns out, everyone wants the convertible, I know. So, so that's just an example of thinking ahead about what are the kinds of things you might want to get some more data on in case your first thought about how it's going to work, or what may be true, is wrong?

Terrific, Carla, this is I want to jump in for a second to underscore this. Language is very powerful. So first of all, labeling things as experiments, I actually do that working with leaders day to day if they're going to try and practice with their team or new, right, like it's a practice or it's a game or it's an experiment, because when we're experimenting, we expect some stuff to fail. Exactly. Right. And part of it, it's experiment. So we're gonna learn something from it. And then this is really upgrading it for me, Carla, this, how to set up and how to run a good experiment. Right now we're thinking about what are our desired outcomes? What do we want to learn? What are the variables? What are the considerations? How do we set this up so that we're really targeting what we most want to get out of this, these experiment efforts?

Exactly. And I think that is one element. We can't control the outcome. Right? We often would say in science, like the biology is biology is yeah, I'm just gonna figure out what the biology is telling us. Okay, we are not in the business of determining like telling biology what it's going to be. Yeah. And I think the same is often true with a marketplace, right? With a customer base. You can't really tell the customers what they want, they want what they want. But we can have some control over how well we go investigate and try and find out what they want. And so I love just there are elements where we can have some intentionality we can have some have some control, we just need to put it in the right place. I love it. Okay, so we talked about two different points of run. Good experiment. Last thing that comes to mind, I think it's always worth, like talking with your team and being clear on yourself of when are we going to like do the measuring, right? Like, what? What's the protocol, more or less, just map it out for yourself. Because sometimes in the middle of an experiment, you can suddenly be like, oh, let's go try this other thing, you get an idea. And what happens is, it can then sometimes be challenging to interpret your results. So it's not to say that you must always continue and experiment for the full time you thought you might, but it's just worth being deliberate about what are we trying, and if you're gonna make a change, then worth sort of calling that shot deliberately, and saying, we literally had no one, no one has said yes, that they like the red car. So like, we're gonna stop asking about red cars, and just start asking you about some other things. So I think that's just the last piece that's helpful. And also, of course, very helpful for your team to really understand like, how are we doing this? How are we doing this investigation?

I think this is super helpful, Carla, when and how are we going to measure? And I could see that that could help combat your first example of that startup CEO. Oh, you know, I'm rushing, I want to do something out, right. And so we're rushing to declare, we might declare something as success or a failure before we really know. Or we might start throwing new things at it, or abandon ideas before we should? Exactly at a time, here's how and when we're going to measure something. And then we will determine whether so like, so the experiment has this duration of time, we could get antsy and are uncertain exactly and start to flail around and do other things.

You said it perfectly Yes.

That that's how it feels for me, when those kinds of things are coming up. Carla, you gave us such great information about what naturally happens for humans in uncertainty, and how we can intentionally choose mindsets and take actions that will set us up for success. I saw my note here on the last mindset piece that I didn't summarize when I did it earlier. And it might be a nice point to end on. Trust our future self know that we are going to be learning and creating new data and information as we run experiments, and know that our future selves are going to be ready to deal with that, and pivot and stay on the journey.

Absolutely.

Terrific. Thank you so much, Carla, for being on the courage of a leader podcast.

You are welcome, Amy. It was really fun to be here. Before

we sign off tell listeners where they can find you.

All right, well, I love having conversations about performance science. And obviously today we talked about uncertainty, but there are lots of other fun things to talk about. So I am on LinkedIn at Carla dash Fowler, and that's a great place. I always post new conversations there. And then if hearing more about coaching or learning about my coaching processes of interest, my websites at www.thaxa.com and that's a great place to message me or look at FAQs.

Excellent follow are spelled F O W L E R and THAXA is T H A X A so that you can find Carla in the places that she just mentioned. Thank you again for your time and expertise today, Carla.

Oh, you're so welcoming.

Thank you for listening to the courage of a leader podcast. If you'd like to further explore this episode's topic, please reach out to me through the courage of a leader website at WWW dot courage of a leader.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please take the time to leave a review on iTunes. That helps us expand our reach and get more people fully stepping into their leadership potential. Until next time, be bold and be brave because you've got the courage of a leader