"Once things settle down."

It's the leadership equivalent of:

"I'll start exercising after Christmas."

Which Christmas? This one? Next one? The one after you've finally found the perfect gym, bought new runners and aligned your chakras?

I hear it everywhere.

"Once things settle down, I'll spend more time developing my team."

"Once things settle down, we'll revisit culture."

"Once things settle down, we'll focus on leadership."

"Once things settle down, we'll start having meaningful conversations."

Or the BIG ONE

“Once things settle down, we’ll do that next engagement survey"

Translation?

"Not today."

Now before you start throwing your coffee at the screen, I get it.

Leadership is messy.

Your inbox breeds overnight.

Priorities change faster than a politician's promises.

Budgets get tighter.

Resources get thinner.

Someone resigns.

Someone complains.

Someone launches a new initiative called "simplification" that somehow creates three new layers of complexity.

It's exhausting.

But here's the velvet sledgehammer:

Things aren't going to settle down.

And if your leadership strategy depends on things becoming easier, calmer, clearer or less complicated...

You don't have a strategy.

The Myth of "Normal"

Many of us are still chasing what I call the mythical land of Normal.

It's a magical place where:

workloads are manageable

priorities are clear

stakeholders agree

budgets are abundant

the technology works

and nobody sends emails after 4pm on a Friday

It's right next to Narnia and just past Hogwarts.

The problem?

It doesn't exist.

For the last decade we've had disruption piled on top of disruption.

Economic uncertainty.

Pandemics.

AI.

Skills shortages.

Workforce shifts.

Restructures.

Transformations that are really transactional Org Chart shifts made into something clever.

Transformations of transformations.

I've worked with organisations going through their fifth transformation while still recovering from their second.

And somehow leaders are still saying:

"We'll get back to the people stuff once we get through this."

Through what?

The next quarter?

The next restructure?

The next budget cycle?

The next shiny strategic priority?

The next thing always becomes the next thing.

And before you know it, three years have passed and you've been waiting for conditions that never arrived.

The Leadership Trap Nobody Notices

Here's what worries me.

When the pressure rises, we often stop doing the very things their people need most.

The coaching conversation gets postponed.

The development discussion gets pushed back.

The one-on-one turns into a project status update.

Reflection disappears.

Curiosity disappears.

Human connection becomes transactional.

And the irony is beautiful in the worst possible way.

The moment uncertainty increases is the exact moment leadership becomes more important.

Yet that's often when we do less of it.

It's a bit like saying:

"The house is on fire, let's stop using water."

Your Team Is Watching

Whether you realise it or not, every day you're teaching your team how leadership works.

Not through PowerPoint.

Not through values posters.

Not through the beautifully laminated leadership framework sitting on the intranet that nobody has opened since 2022.

You're teaching through behaviour.

Your team watches what you prioritise.

They watch what you tolerate.

They watch what gets discussed and what gets ignored.

And when leaders continually postpone people conversations until conditions improve, teams learn something very quickly:

People matter when things are easy.

Work matters when things are hard.

Most would never say that out loud.

But that's often exactly what their team experiences.

Leadership Was Never About Certainty

One of the biggest misconceptions in leadership is that your job is to create certainty.

It's not.

Your job is to create capability.

Read that again.

Capability.

Not certainty.

Because certainty is becoming increasingly rare.

Capability is becoming increasingly valuable.

The best managers aren't the ones with all the answers.

They're the ones building teams that can thrive when nobody has the answers.

Can your people think for themselves?

Can they make decisions?

Can they adapt?

Can they navigate ambiguity without needing adult supervision every 15 minutes?

Can they challenge respectfully?

Can they learn quickly?

Can they collaborate through complexity?

Because that's the real test.

And none of those capabilities magically appear when things get difficult.

They have to be developed before they're needed.

Volatility Isn't Interrupting Work

Here's the shift I'd encourage managers to make.

Stop treating uncertainty as an interruption.

It's not.

It is the environment.

Volatility isn't visiting.

It's moved in.

It has unpacked its bags, claimed a bedroom and is helping itself to food from the fridge.

The best managers understand this.

They don't ask:

"When will things calm down?"

They ask:

"How do we become better at succeeding in the middle of the chaos?"

That's a completely different conversation.

The Work Is Smaller Than You Think

The good news?

This isn't about launching another leadership program with a logo, a slogan and matching polo shirts.

It's simpler than that.

Give people ownership.

Ask better questions.

Create space for reflection.

Have the difficult conversation.

Coach instead of telling.

Listen longer.

Stay curious.

Make time for people when every instinct tells you to focus only on tasks.

Especially then.

Because leadership isn't what you do after the important work.

Leadership is the important work.

A Tough Question

Let me finish with a question.

What have you been waiting to do until things settle down?

The conversation?

The decision?

The culture reset?

The performance issue?

The development opportunity?

The strategy discussion?

Now for the velvet sledgehammer.

Or……all of the above?

What if things never settle down?

What if this is it?

What if uncertainty isn't a temporary phase but the permanent backdrop of modern leadership?

Because if that's true, waiting might be costing you far more than you realise.

Final Thought

The most dangerous phrase in leadership isn't:

"We have a problem."

Problems can be solved.

The most dangerous phrase is:

"Once things settle down."

Because hidden inside those four words is an assumption that leadership can be deferred until conditions improve.

It can't.

The managers who will thrive aren't waiting for certainty.

They're building capability.

They're growing people.

They're strengthening adaptability.

They're creating teams that can navigate whatever comes next.

Because leadership was never about finding calm waters.

It's about building a crew that can sail through a storm.

And if you're still waiting for things to settle down...

You might be waiting a very long time.