Amy Cuddy recently shared a thoughtful LinkedIn post on leadership withdrawal under prolonged uncertainty, and it brought something important into focus for me.
When uncertainty persists, people do not just get tired. They can start to lose their sense of agency.
What is being described is not simply fatigue.
And not simply burnout in the usual sense.
It is something more disorienting:
a gradual fraying of the felt link between effort and impact.
In other words:
“I act, but it no longer feels as though my actions meaningfully shape outcomes.”
That matters enormously.
Because when that link weakens, people do not only lose energy.
They begin to lose orientation.
They hesitate.
They withdraw.
Or they swing to the other extreme: control, rigidity, symbolic action, overcorrection.
Not because they are weak.
Not because they no longer care.
But because the conditions around them have become so unstable that their usual way of generating agency no longer works.
In the PsycheVita approach, I think it helps to understand this as an erosion across several capacities at once.
The capacity to feel that our actions still matter.
The capacity to regulate and recover under chronic uncertainty.
The capacity to tolerate ambiguity without collapsing into passivity or coercive control.
The capacity to make wise enough decisions when there is no reassuring map.
That is why I think “just be resilient” is often too thin a response.
What is needed is not only endurance.
It is capacity-building.
The development of steadier internal skills for:
recovering under pressure,
thinking clearly in ambiguity,
staying connected to meaning,
and continuing to act when certainty is unavailable.
From that perspective, withdrawal is not simply a leadership failure.
It is a signal.
A signal that prolonged flux may be exceeding the person’s current internal capacities.
And that shifts the question.
Not:
“What is wrong with this leader?”
Not even only:
“How do we get them re-motivated?”
But:
What capacities now need to be strengthened so that agency can be restored?
That is where I think some of the most important developmental work now begins.
Notes:
- Prompted by Amy Cuddy’s thoughtful post on the erosion of agency in prolonged uncertainty, and the article she referenced. Here is the original post for anyone who wants to read it: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/erosion-agency-age-flux-amy-cuddy-hjzzc/
- In PsycheVita terms, the capacities I’m especially thinking about here are that can be further developed as skills for restoring agency in a world of uncertainty are:
Regulation and recovery:
8.4 Recovery and Decompression Practices
8.1 Sustainable Energy Management
1.1 Self-Regulation Under Stress
Agency and inner steadiness:
3.3 Self-Efficacy
3.4 Healthy Self-Worth
Functioning well when the old map no longer works:
9.4 Practical Wisdom in Uncertainty
9.3 Acceptance of Limits with Innovation
10.4 Reflective Decision-Making
10.2 Perspective-Taking on Self
That is part of why I see this not only as a motivation issue, but as a capacity issue under prolonged flux.