Your Presence Is the Plan: Leading When You Don’t Have the Answers

There’s a moment every leader faces—when things start to fall apart, eyes shift in your direction, and you don’t have the answer. The room gets quiet. The energy dips. Everyone is waiting.

And in that silence, your team isn’t scanning for a perfect plan. They’re scanning you.

Because in times of uncertainty, your presence is the plan.

When Leaders Disappear

One of the most common mistakes I see leaders make in uncertain times is this: they disappear.

Not physically, but emotionally. They go quiet. They pull back. They wait until they have all the answers before speaking up. And here’s the problem with that—your team can feel it.

Silence, when rooted in composure, can be powerful. A pause allows people to breathe. But silence rooted in fear or indecision? That creates a vacuum. And in that vacuum, your team will start to fill in the blanks with their own assumptions—usually worst-case scenarios.

You don’t need to have everything figured out. But you do need to show up. Even if the map is blurry, even if the next move is uncertain. Your steadiness becomes the anchor.

In fact, I’ve come to believe that showing up is 50% of effective leadership. It’s not the solution itself—it’s the stabilizing energy that makes the solution possible. Your team can take uncertainty. What they can’t take is absence.

The Power of Being Seen

During my time as a First Sergeant in the Marine Corps, there were moments when chaos and pressure were inescapable—personnel crises, incidents involving federal authorities, tragedy in the ranks. And while I didn’t always have the immediate solution, I knew one thing: my presence mattered.

I made it a point to be visible, available, and calm. Because when you’re present in the mess—not hiding behind closed doors or lost in a flurry of behind-the-scenes planning—you communicate something powerful:

“We’re in this together. I’m not above the uncertainty. I’m walking through it with you.”

Your team doesn’t expect perfection. They expect consistency. When they can see you, hear from you, and feel your grounded presence, they’re better able to steady themselves. They don’t need your confidence to be flawless—they need it to be real.

There’s a phrase I’ve used before: Leadership isn’t about being the loudest in the room. It’s about being the calmest. That still holds true. But it’s not just about tone of voice. It’s about how you carry yourself, how you listen, and whether you can hold the tension of uncertainty without making it worse.

When the Plan Breaks Down

I remember a deployment where everything that could go wrong, did. Logistics collapsed. Communications failed. Uncertainty reigned. Our original strategy didn’t survive first contact, and the temptation was to scramble for control.

What saved us wasn’t a perfectly updated operations manual. It was shared presence. Leaders showing up, calmly directing traffic even when they were still gathering the facts. NCOs walking the line, checking in, asking questions, listening.

In those moments, the plan wasn’t the strategy on paper. It was the leadership in motion.

And that leadership? It looked like calm body language. Steady tone of voice. Eye contact. Empathy. More than anything, it looked like people willing to lead with humanity in a high-stakes situation.

Sometimes we forget that leadership is deeply human. It’s not the briefing slides or the metrics dashboard that your team remembers—it’s the presence of the person who didn’t flinch when everything started falling apart.

Presence Is a Leadership Skill

Your presence sets the emotional tone for the team. If you’re fraying, they’ll fray. If you’re grounded, they’ll regulate around you.

That’s why presence is not passive. It’s not just "being there." It’s about being there for them.

You can lead with presence even when you:

• Don’t have all the answers

• Can’t control the outcome

• Are still processing the change yourself

It starts with eye contact. A check-in. A shared breath. A steady voice saying, “We’re going to figure this out together.”

Presence says: This isn’t about control. It’s about connection.

It means putting down your assumptions and listening to what people actually need. It means pacing your delivery, watching for body language, and pausing long enough to let trust take root.

I’ve had Marines tell me years later that it wasn’t what I said that stuck with them. It was that I showed up. That I didn’t disappear into meetings or hide behind a title. That in the worst moments, they could see me. And that visibility became a source of strength.

When Presence Becomes the Plan

One of the biggest myths in leadership is that people need us to be superhuman in a crisis. The truth is, they need us to be human. Present. Calm. Available. Honest.

When things get unclear, don’t disappear. Don’t wait until you’ve got every piece in place. Say what you know. Own what you don’t. Be steady.

Because in uncertain times, it’s not the best strategy that leads first.

It’s the most grounded presence.

And when your team can feel that? They’ll follow you through anything.

This doesn’t mean you abandon decision-making. Quite the opposite. Presence gives you the emotional bandwidth to make better decisions. It gives your people the calm they need to stay focused. And it gives your organization a steady pulse when the outside world feels like it’s spinning out.

Presence becomes the plan not because you’re stalling for time—but because you’re stabilizing the conditions for progress.

A Final Word

If your people are going through change, give them more of you, not less. Don’t retreat to wait for clarity. Walk out into the fog with them—and let your values light the way.

That’s leadership when it matters most.

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