Leading Through Uncertainty With Strategy And Positive Influence

Forbes

08-08-2025

Lynn O'Leary is President, U.S. Global Specialty Lines at Intact Insurance Specialty Solutions.
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Across industries, leaders face an everyday reality: Volatility is a constant. Economic pressures, geopolitical shifts and rapidly changing customer needs continue to test even the most stable organizations. Navigating this volatility requires clarity and consistency, both of which fuel confidence in success.
Working in insurance is an inherently complex space. What makes you successful is staying focused on what matters most: your values, people and strategy.
Strategy Provides Clarity and Consistency
Yes, there may be economic, political or social challenges—and how you navigate and adapt to achieving your strategy may evolve—but the strategy itself remains a constant. For those of us leading the industry, it's about being laser-focused on what's important.
Consider these strategic objectives in three core areas that my company focuses on:
• Customers are your advocates. Strive for three out of four customers to be your advocates and for four out of five brokers to highly value your specialized expertise.
• Your people are engaged. Being recognized as a 2024 Mercer Best Employer in the U.S. reflects our commitment to employee satisfaction and growth. Leaders can offer their employees opportunities to shape the industry's future, cultivate meaningful careers and collaborate with expert teams to foster employee happiness.
• Strive to make your company one of the most respected. This means consistently outperforming your competitors and achieving recognition from three out of four stakeholders as leaders in building resilient communities.
When your employees clearly understand and consistently see your strategic direction reinforced, it can foster trust, commitment and high engagement. This clarity empowers teams to navigate confidently amidst uncertainty.
The Power Of Shared Values
While strategy sets direction, values should shape how you get there and guide you along the way. For example, we highlight five values—integrity, respect, customer-driven, excellence and generosity—to guide how we lead, collaborate and make decisions.
These values can help insurance companies provide consistency in periods of uncertainty. For instance, they help our teams stay aligned, even as conditions evolve. They act as a filter: When faced with tough decisions, we ask ourselves, 'Does this reflect who we are?' That creates accountability and confidence. People know they're operating within a framework they can trust.
This value-driven mindset should be evident in how you communicate, support and deliver for your customers. It's about showing up with empathy, responsiveness and expertise when it matters most. In insurance, trust is everything. Values are what make that trust durable.
Leading With Positivity
One of the most formative leadership moments in my career was when I moved to Europe to serve as CEO of our business. We had a specialty insurance operation that we wanted to align more closely, both strategically and structurally, with our North American specialty businesses. The goal was to create a foundation for long-term sustainable growth in Europe, establish new lines of business and enable better collaboration among our specialized experts.
Over two years, we developed and implemented a strategy that mirrored our global specialty approach. We pivoted our underwriting business into a specialty portfolio with a focus on deepening our expertise in segments where we could outperform. We also leveraged our global expertise in North America by launching two new lines: Technology and Management Liability.
It wasn't easy. We faced challenges and setbacks. Would I do some things differently now? Absolutely. But we achieved our objectives, and the experience taught me a great deal about leading through change.
I learned that success hinges on emotional contagion. Engage your teams by spreading optimistic energy and positive influence. It is one of the most powerful tools we have. It builds momentum under challenging moments, fuels determination and accelerates decision-making and outcomes. Our job as leaders is to build engagement and optimism that is grounded in our values and demonstrated in the way we execute on our strategy.
Leading Through Uncertainty
Uncertainty can make even the most capable teams feel adrift. That's why I've defined a set of leadership success factors that can serve as a foundation for leadership at every level to ensure we support one another daily:
• Live your values. It starts here. Values are our leadership foundation, especially in times of pressure. They inform everything from high-level strategy to individual interactions and help ensure consistency and trust across the organization.
• Care for people. Leadership is about connection. Supporting our people through open communication, empathy, or development opportunities creates engaged teams that can weather any challenge.
• Be open and honest. Transparency builds trust. Our leaders strive to be clear about what's happening, why decisions are being made and what comes next. This openness fosters resilience and reduces fear in times of change.
• Take accountability. Leaders cast a long shadow. Taking ownership when things are difficult sets the tone for the rest of the organization. Accountability is about modeling integrity.
• Drive change. Stagnation is riskier than innovation. We encourage leaders to challenge the status quo, ask tough questions, and seek new ways forward, even when the answers aren't obvious.
Investing in your internal culture, supporting employee resource groups, community engagement programs and ongoing development opportunities lets your teams thrive. These factors can keep your company aligned during challenging moments and ensure our leadership is intentional. It allowed us to move forward confidently, knowing we have a consistent standard for how we lead and a shared understanding of what success looks like.
Prioritizing Clarity And Purpose
Authentic leadership doesn't eliminate uncertainty but helps people move through it confidently. It's about creating clarity where you can and consistency where it counts.
Strategy is the constant. When leaders are clear and consistent, people understand the direction and are confident in their ability to follow it.
Our purpose as leaders is to empower people, businesses and society to prosper while standing strong through adversity. This is how we should lead, especially when the road ahead is unpredictable.
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