In this interview, Speaker A (a researcher collaborating with social entrepreneur Sam Conniff and UCL’s brain science department) explains that people have a measurable and mutable trait called tolerance of uncertainty. Using the Tolerance of Uncertainty Scale, individuals can become aware of how they emotionally react to uncertain situations. The conversation highlights that emotions are essential for decision‑making; when we feel and label them, we can regulate them and unlock intuition, which provides a subconscious data stream crucial when facts are insufficient. Practical pathways to build this skill include storytelling, an interactive Netflix documentary, breathwork, and interoception training—learning to sense and name bodily feelings. The team is packaging these methods into courses and a forthcoming book, The Uncertainty Toolkit (June 2025). The discussion also touches on cultural gender norms that discourage emotional expression, noting that many men are taught to ignore feelings while women are told they are unhelpful. Finally, the speakers argue that leaders who can tolerate uncertainty and regulate emotions are better at perspective‑taking, empathy, and innovative decision‑making during change or conflict.
Chapters
You don't want to face it, you don't want to risk it. And the real, the real sort of the modern research that, that's, or the, the most sort of interesting thing that's coming out of the research that we are doing, and this is research with an amazing social entrepreneur called Sam Conniff and University College London, their brain science department, is that actually, you know, we all have a level of uncertainty tolerance that is not just measurable, but it's changeable as well. And we can change that by actually starting to understand and be aware of how we emotionally react to uncertainty. And I find this very interesting as a woman, you know, as a director of my own company and lab, in that for many, many years I was told to take emotion out of the business world and that it wasn't going to help. And now, you know, undeniably the truth in neuroscience is that emotions are incredibly important to the decision-making program, like, you know, ability. If we can't feel emotions, you lose your intuition and you actually make bad decisions. But those emotions need to be regulated. Yeah. And so in order to regulate those emotions, you need to be in touch with them. You need to have a conversation about emotion and to recognize them, especially recognize how you emotionally react to uncertainty. From there, you can learn to regulate that emotional reaction, and then you unlock this amazing intuitive power that can be far more powerful than facts alone. In a moment of uncertainty to make a decision, to lead a team, to be creative? Wow.
Okay. There's a lot there I wanna unpack. A lot. Because first off, you're absolutely right. I often talk, and my viewers and listeners know my whole kind of preaching about we're not robots. We are, we are, you know, humans with tons of emotions. And to squelch them because we're in a work environment is dangerous and it's very unhealthy and it's certainly restrictive to any type of growth and success. So That said, I'm totally on board with you. You said when we can measure and then change. So if someone's sitting there listening or watching today and they're saying to themselves, I know that I am, I just don't know how to articulate it. I don't know how to identify it. I don't know how definitely to measure it, let alone to then change it. So what do you do and how can you help individuals really recognize that, that uncertainty and anxiousness to then be able to get to a point where they can measure it? And how do they do that?
Yeah, well, we've been, we've been really lucky in, you know, the traditional ways to change. So uncertainty tolerance is a psychological trait like things like open-mindedness or, you know, everyone knows the Big Five, you know, anxiety, neuroticism, things like that. It's just very rarely measured. There is a slightly dry scientific scale called the Tolerance of Uncertainty Scale that you can test people on. And actually on our website, we provided a test people can look at and test where they, where they sit on it. But what it does is it looks at, it makes you aware of your, how you emotionally respond to uncertainty, which most people don't think about. You know, people who don't like to think about their emotions. We're not, we, you know, we live in this sort of slightly toxic positivity era. Where it's like, don't admit you get afraid to uncertainty. And one of the ways we help people understand it is through storytelling. So we've been lucky enough to work with people like Netflix on a big interactive documentary. We create courses, we're writing a book that's coming out in June next year called The Uncertainty Toolkit that really helps people realize that we, it's okay to, to not like uncertainty. It's okay to have a negative emotion. You know, it was amazing. We went and we worked with all these incredible people we called the uncertainty experts at the, you know, the fringes of society. People who had been in gangs, people who had been in prison, you know, people who had had very sort of extreme circumstances. And they all admitted they, you know, they had, they're very successful now. They changed their lives around by acknowledging the natural fear every human has to uncertainty. And not just that, but what it feels like. You know, we are so out of touch. With our bodies and the emotions that sit within them. And so what we do is we help, you know, it's a sort of, in psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, touches on this, but we wanted to make something that was much more interactive with people. So part of our mission has been how can we help people understand what it feels like when they face uncertainty and what can you do to have emotional regulation around that? And that's everything from the things you've probably heard about from breathwork to something called interoception, which is this new science of being able to feel your emotions in your body and label them. We are terrible at labeling our emotions. And what we find is that, you know, we almost have to feel more to be able to regulate our emotions. And by helping people be brave enough to feel more emotion in their body, you then can regulate it because your emotion is a data stream and it's just your brain trying to tell you something. Right. And when you start to acknowledge it, Uh, it then becomes manageable. You can then calm your nervous system, right? And that's something I think that, you know, and I, I don't make any, any sort of gender stereotypes whatsoever, but a lot of men are cultured to ignore their emotions and women are sort of cultured to think that they're unhelpful and push them away.
Yeah.
When actually we need to get to a place where we can actually feel and go, actually, I do feel afraid at this moment of uncertainty and that's okay.
Right.
And I can regulate it. And once you start to regulate it, you start to actually tap into the deeper emotional data stream, which is your intuition. And we know that people who, for whatever reason, have had the emotional part of their brain disabled through accident, through whatever's happened, they can't make decisions. And they're especially bad at making decisions in uncertainty. But because, because they lose the emotional intuition that they have, because data's not enough in uncertainty. You know, in uncertainty, things have changed, so you don't know what's happening next. Your brain can't predict what's happening next. When things are stable, you can just use past information and you know what's going to happen and you can gather information. The state of uncertainty is the state where you don't have enough information to know what's going to happen next. But that's when your more subconscious mind, which has a wealth of experience in it, and it can pick up on all sorts of things around you that you can't like consciously sense, picks up signals and gives you a gut feeling. I mean, that gut feeling can be very important.
And does it also have an impact to leaders? Because when they are making decisions, especially decisions in times of like significant change and conflict and whatnot, it ha— it also has to introduce like empathy and compassion as well.
Incredibly important for leadership and innovation. And we know that when people can't handle uncertainty, they can't do something called perspective taking.
