In this monologue, the speaker explores the competency of adaptive leadership—specifically, how leaders make high‑stakes decisions when information is incomplete and circumstances are still unfolding. Using the recurring experience of watching Star Trek: Voyager’s Captain Kathryn Janeway confront morally and technically fraught choices, the speaker illustrates the personal emotional toll of such decisions (e.g., pulling the plug on a mission that strands the crew for centuries). The talk outlines four possible leader responses when faced with uncertainty: (1) hold fast to the current position, (2) rethink or adjust thinking, (3) consult others, and (4) delegate or make the decision appear democratic. The speaker emphasizes that effective adaptive leadership requires confidence in one’s authority while remaining open to new information, willing to change direction, and able to live with the consequences of hard choices—especially in crises where black‑and‑white thinking can become a defensive coping mechanism.
Chapters
Our next competency is an interesting one. Where are you currently expected— where are you expected to have all the answers where you don't have all the answers or where the situation is still unfolding? And this is a leadership question. I love watching science fiction, and my husband and I are watching the Voyager series, Star Trek, for probably— I don't want to exaggerate— about the 5th or 6th time that we've watched the entire series in the years that we've been together. We are super fans. But I love watching Kathryn Janeway, the captain of the Voyager, encounter various problems. And now because I know the stories really well, I can watch for certain things that I'm looking for. And the last couple of episodes that we've just watched have been heartbreaking because I identify so strongly with her. But I'm looking at her having to make decisions that are absolutely horrible. Decisions that are perhaps morally right, or perhaps technically correct, but they have consequences on other people. Times when she has to make the decision to pull the plug, to let something fail for something else to exist, to do the right thing, which means that her crew is going to be stranded in the Delta Quadrant for hundreds of years and they can't get home. And the struggle that she goes through, it's very easy for us to look at leaders and say they're getting it wrong, or they should have known better, or how could they make a decision like that? I know a number of times where people have pointed at my leadership and judged me, and I'm going, you have no idea the number of hours, and to be honest, the number of tissues I've gone through to get to the point where I knew that this was a decision that I, with all the integrity I could, this is the decision I had to make. And I know that it has affected other people, but I've had to make it and I have to live with the consequences. But as we grow and develop, as that influence changes, as we learn new things, we need to respond in different ways. And that is adaptive leadership. And I apologize to the poor model of this particular mini video that I caught her in a moment where her eyes look like she's having a stroke. That was a— that was an accident. So, so what do we do in those moments? Do we, do we hold our position and say, I'm just going to go ahead with the information that I have? Do we allow ourselves to rethink, to adjust our thinking? Do we consult with other people? Do we just make it democratic and make it somebody else's problem and say, I didn't make this decision, they did? Or do we hold on to a decision that we're making? And how we do that in leadership, in influence, in our lives, in our families, that is an incredibly important competency to develop, to be able to know and trust yourself that you are a good enough leader or influencer, you're a good enough leader to be in a position, but you're still open to learning and you're still open to new information and you're open to changing direction if you need to do that. That is really important in times of crisis. In times when there is a lot of uncertainty, many people revert to a very black and white view of the world, and they say it's like this, there are no options, and they hold fast to that dogmatic position and they refuse to yield, not necessarily because they really truly believe that that is the best choice, but because the only certainty they have is around that role, that position.
