What Do You Say When You Don’t Know Yet?
There are times at work when people understandably want answers and you simply don't have them. Perhaps a change has been announced but the details are still being worked through. A decision has been made at a more senior level and you know the broad direction, but not exactly what it will mean for your team. Or something is clearly happening and people have begun asking questions before there is much you can tell them.
The temptation is often to wait. After all, nobody particularly enjoys standing in front of a group of people and admitting they don't know the answer. Waiting another few days can feel sensible, especially when you expect the situation to become clearer.
The difficulty is that silence isn't neutral. If people know something is happening, they will naturally try to make sense of it from the information they have. A passing comment takes on greater significance. Somebody hears something from another department. An assumption is repeated and gradually starts to sound like a fact.
Before long, people have created their own explanation for the silence. By the time there is something definite to communicate, you may find yourself dealing not only with the change itself but with everything people have come to believe about it in the meantime. That is why communicating through uncertainty requires something slightly different from simply communicating a decision.
You may not be able to tell people exactly what is going to happen, but you can usually tell them something about where things stand.
What do you know?
What hasn't been decided?
What are you able to say now, and when are you likely to know more?
There is nothing particularly reassuring about false certainty. Most people recognise when someone is carefully avoiding a question or trying to make a situation sound more settled than it really is. A straightforward "we haven't made that decision yet" may not be the answer they wanted, but at least they know where things stand.
There is also an important distinction between having an answer and being able to respond. You may not be able to answer someone's question today, but you can acknowledge it. You can explain what is still being decided and, where possible, say when you expect to know more. That can make quite a difference.
Uncertainty becomes harder when people don't know whether anyone is listening to their concerns or when they might hear something further. Even a simple acknowledgement can give them something firmer to work with.
It is also worth remembering that the other person is unlikely to hear the information in quite the same way that you say it. You may have been thinking about the issue for weeks. You may have attended several meetings, heard different possibilities discussed and had time to become accustomed to the idea that things may change.
For somebody else, your conversation may be the first moment they have had to consider what any of it means. Their first question may not be their most important one. People sometimes need to go away, think and come back later. Questions about their role, their team or what happens next may only emerge once the initial information has had time to settle. That means communication isn't necessarily finished when the meeting ends.
When there is still uncertainty, it can help to tell people when you will speak to them again, even if the next update may simply be that there is nothing new to report. That might sound unnecessary. In practice, knowing when they will hear from you removes at least one uncertainty from the situation.
There is another reason this matters. When leaders wait for complete certainty before communicating, they can unintentionally create the very thing they were trying to avoid. Rather than protecting people from incomplete information, they leave a space in which speculation grows. Sometimes the more useful approach is simply to separate what you know from what you don't.
"We know this."
"We haven't decided this yet."
"This is when I expect to be able to tell you more."
There is confidence in being able to say that. You aren't pretending to know something you don't, but neither are you disappearing until all the uncertainty has gone. And in many situations, the uncertainty won't disappear completely anyway.
Questions to Consider
Is there something you are delaying communicating because you don't yet have the full picture?
What do you know with reasonable confidence at the moment?
What are people likely to assume if they hear nothing?
When could you realistically update them again?
Try This This Week
Think about one situation where you have been waiting for more information before saying anything. Divide a page into two columns: What we know and What we don't know yet. Then look at what you have written and ask yourself whether there is already enough there to have a useful conversation.
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