When the world feels like it’s unraveling, visionary leaders don’t look away. They find a way to hold both the pain and the possibility.
I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately with leaders who are struggling with how to make sense of all the change and turbulence that’s happening in the world right now. Not just for themselves, but for the people they’re leading.
The pain is real. The uncertainty is profound. And the weight of having to hold space for others while processing your own fears and concerns is a real challenge. It’s also an important challenge to acknowledge, address, and be able to move through.
Recently, on a coaching call with one of our Crisis Ready® Certification students, I was asked a question that perfectly captures what so many leaders are facing:
“People keep coming to me with their fears and concerns about everything that’s happening in the world. How do I address their concerns without getting pulled into the fear myself?”
In moments like these, you have a choice. You can get pulled into the fear with others, or you can offer a different way of seeing what we’re all experiencing. And let me begin by saying this…
As a Visionary Leader who leads through change, it’s not your responsibility to change people’s minds. Trying to do so is the same as trying to control the situation. And, as we teach at Crisis Ready® Institute, control is a tool of fear.
Instead, your responsibility is to expand perspective. When you can offer a new way of seeing a challenge or situation—even if it expands someone’s view by just a few degrees—you’ve done your job. Expanding perspective is like planting seeds that take root in perfect timing with each person’s individual growth and evolution.
So what perspective can we offer when people are struggling with the current state of the world? What expanded way of seeing can we bring to the table when others are consumed by fear and uncertainty?
The Uncomfortable Truth About Collective Choices
Here’s what I’ve come to understand through years of studying things like human behavior and quantum physics, countless conversations with people who see the world differently, and guidance from coaches whose heart-centered wisdom far exceeds my current capacity:
We are experiencing what we have collectively chosen to experience.
I know that may be a hard pill to swallow. I know it might trigger feelings of anger or defensiveness. I know it might feel like blame or spiritual bypassing or oversimplification.
But stay with me.
Why Primitive Beings Need to Touch the Hot Stove
The truth is, humanity is still primitive in our evolution. As a collective, we’re not yet the higher consciousness beings we’re capable of becoming. Some individuals are, but the collective is not yet. And primitive beings can’t just be told “don’t touch that, it’s hot.” They have to experience the burn to understand the contrast.
We can’t yet just be told about what suffering is in order to understand joy. We can’t yet just be told about disconnection to understand unity. We can’t yet just be told about fear-based leadership to understand what visionary leadership actually looks like.
And yes, I say “yet” because I do believe we’re headed towards that level of collective higher consciousness. And with a higher collective consciousness, will come less pain and suffering in our world.
What if, to get to a place of no more pain and suffering for humanity, we need to understand the contrast so profoundly that we never choose the path of separateness and therefore pain and suffering, again?
What if to get there, we need to experience the depths of what we’re currently moving through? In nature, there’s always a contraction before expansion. What if this collective contraction is exactly what’s required for us to expand into something so much greater than anything we’ve ever been capable of before?
The Leader’s Dilemma: How Do You Hold This?
This is where it gets practical for us as leaders.
When your team is scared, when your community is divided, when your family is overwhelmed by what they’re seeing and experiencing, you have a choice in how you show up.
You can get pulled into the fear and the spiraling. You can try to logic your way through emotions, which never works. You can avoid the conversations altogether.
Or you can do what Visionary Leaders do: hold space for the full human experience while maintaining your connection to a larger perspective.
This doesn’t mean toxic positivity. It doesn’t mean dismissing real pain or real concerns. It means acknowledging the difficulty while staying anchored in possibility.
What if there’s a reason we’re moving through this together?
When you can hold both the difficulty and the possibility, when you can acknowledge the pain while staying connected to the trajectory toward something bigger and better, you give people something invaluable: hope grounded in presence, not fear or denial.
Your Role in this Trajectory
Here’s what I know to be true: the universe is always working for us, not against us. Not just for me and against you, but for all of us, in balance, in harmony, because we’re interconnected. In my experience, this is true 100% of the time, without failure.
When you step back and take a bird’s eye view—when you come out of the storm to see the grander purpose that we can’t yet fully understand but can trust—you can approach your observation and understanding of the current climate with the possibility that there might be some really important reason we’re going through what we’re going through. So that we can get to somewhere better together.
That means your role as a leader right now isn’t to fix everything or to have all the answers. Your role is to:
- Hold space for the full range of human emotion without getting consumed by it
- Connect with people’s actual experience rather than trying to logic them out of their feelings
- Maintain your connection to possibility even when others can’t yet see it
- Trust that there’s a larger process at work that you’re a part of, not separate from
This is the work of creating less pain and suffering as we move through this moment in time together. This is how we help people go from fear to trust, from isolation to connection, from reactivity to possibility.
The Evolution of How I See It
I didn’t arrive at this perspective overnight. It’s been shaped by books that challenged my worldview, conversations with people who forced me to examine my assumptions and limiting beliefs, and guidance from coaches who have helped me access deeper layers of wisdom than my logical mind could ever reach.
Most importantly, it’s been shaped by recognizing that as a leader, I get to choose how I hold what’s happening. I can contribute to the fear and division, or I can be part of the solution.
The solution isn’t avoiding the difficulty. It’s learning to hold the difficulty with such presence and compassion that others feel safe enough to transform in your presence.
This is strategic leadership. This is Visionary Leadership. This is the leadership that creates the change we actually want to see.
If this resonates with you, know this: This is the work we do inside the Crisis Ready® Certification.
It’s where purpose-driven leaders develop the presence, emotional intelligence, and energetic fluency to lead through uncertainty—not by avoiding the hard conversations, but by learning to hold space for the full human experience while maintaining connection to possibility.
If you’re ready to lead from vision rather than fear, to hold space for others’ transformation while maintaining your own center, this is your pathway.
Learn more about the Crisis Ready® Certification here.
If this triggers questions or thoughts that you’d like to raise and explore, I’m here for it! Either comment below or send me a private note and let’s discuss!
Founder and CEO of the Crisis Ready Institute, Melissa Agnes is the author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World, and a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection. Agnes is a coveted keynote speaker, commentator, and advisor to some of today’s leading organizations faced with the greatest risks. Learn more about Melissa and her work here.
