The leadership skill no one teaches

In a culture obsessed with decisiveness, the most effective leaders often possess a rarer ability: a tolerance for uncertainty.

In October 1962, with Soviet missiles 80 miles from Florida and his generals demanding airstrikes within days, John F. Kennedy did something his advisors found almost unbearable. He waited. While his advisers urged invasion, Kennedy created what one biographer later called “a space for the situation to breathe.” The crisis ended not because America acted decisively but because Kennedy refused to act prematurely and held that position while every nerve in the room screamed otherwise. We don’t teach this. We teach the opposite of this.