Why leaders need skills to handle disruption?

Disruption exposes who a leader really is. It is not the small daily frictions or routine problems that reveal leadership character, but the moments when something truly destabilising happens. A key investor pulls out at the last minute. A sudden regulatory change wipes out a major revenue line. A competitor ships a product that looks very close to what your team has been working on for months. In those weeks, titles, strategy decks, and inspirational slogans fade into the background. What people remember is how the leader showed up in the room, what was said, and how decisions were made when the ground beneath everyone’s feet suddenly shifted.

Many founders and executives treat disruption as if it were mainly a technical or strategic issue. They talk about pivots, new product directions, fresh fundraising plans, and market repositioning. All of that matters. But under the surface there is a more human reality. Disruption is the moment when a team silently asks whether they are safe, whether their work still matters, and whether the people in charge know what they are doing. Leaders who only prepare themselves at the level of strategy often discover that they lack the inner and interpersonal skills to handle disruption without falling into fear, denial, or blame.

Disruption is often described in terms of external forces, such as technology shifts, policy changes, or aggressive competitors. Inside a company, the experience is more intimate. It shows up as missed targets, confused customers, late night messages, and stressed conversations in corridors and group chats. For employees, the disruption is emotional before it becomes strategic. They start to question whether their jobs are at risk, whether promises made to them will still be kept, and whether management is hiding unpleasant truths. A leader cannot control every external shock that hits the organisation, but they can control the way they respond in those moments, and that response is shaped by specific skills, not by vague notions of resilience.

One of the most important skills in disruption is sensemaking. This is not about pretending to predict the future, but about organising confusing information into something that people can work with. A leader skilled at sensemaking can stand in front of a team and say clearly what is known, what remains uncertain, and what that might mean in the near term. The value is not in having perfect answers but in framing reality in a way that reduces noise and speculation. When a leader takes the time to speak to customers, advisors, and partners, and then translates that input into clear scenarios for the team, people can move from gossip and anxiety to focused problem solving.

Communication is another central skill. In times of disruption, many leaders default to extremes. Some share almost nothing, hoping to avoid panic, and create a vacuum that rumours quickly fill. Others overshare every raw detail in the name of transparency and unintentionally flood their teams with unprocessed fear. Effective communication during disruption means deciding what people genuinely need to know in order to do their work and plan their lives, what can be shared later when there is more clarity, and how to deliver bad news in a way that is honest but not theatrical. A leader who can tell their team that runway is shorter than expected, explain what that means in practical terms, outline what is being done this week to address it, and commit to a specific time for the next update, signals both realism and responsibility. People may leave such a meeting worried, but they will not feel abandoned.

Decision making becomes harder when disruption hits because information is incomplete and the cost of mistakes feels high. Some leaders freeze and wait for perfect data, only to find that the window for action has closed. Others rush into grand moves simply to appear decisive, creating long term consequences for short term relief. Developing the skill of decision making under uncertainty involves accepting that risk is part of the landscape and shifting from heroic, one shot decisions to smaller, reversible bets. Leaders who are used to running experiments, learning quickly, and adjusting course can treat a crisis as an extension of their usual practice, even if the stakes are higher. They look for decisions that buy time or insight without destroying future options, such as testing a new customer segment with a small part of the team or renegotiating a single major contract before rewriting all agreements.

A dimension of leadership that becomes very visible in disruption is the state of the leader’s own nervous system. Before people absorb any spoken message, they read body language, tone of voice, and energy. If a leader walks into the room visibly agitated, rushed, or shut down, the team senses that something is wrong regardless of the words that follow. The leader’s internal state becomes the emotional climate of the organisation. Handling disruption well therefore requires the skill of regulating oneself. That might mean deliberately carving out time before a town hall to breathe, reflect, or seek perspective from a trusted peer instead of endlessly editing slides. It may mean having the courage to pause a heated meeting and suggest a break, with the promise of reconvening with clearer questions and a calmer mood. This is not indulgence. It is part of the work. Leaders who take their own state seriously are better able to hold steady for others.

Disruption also reveals whether the underlying systems of a business are robust or fragile. Storytelling is important, and many leaders can speak eloquently about reinvention and resilience. However, if the company’s hiring logic, processes, and customer commitments are all designed only for stable conditions, they will tend to crack when conditions change sharply. Leaders with real skills for handling disruption are willing to examine the underlying structures of their organisation. They ask which processes will fail if revenue drops by a fifth, whether critical knowledge is held by just a couple of people, and whether too many decisions still depend on their direct involvement. In environments where informal, family style cultures are common, this can feel uncomfortable. Warm relationships and loyalty can support morale, but without clear roles and simple systems, these same cultures can drift into confusion and resentment under pressure.

A crucial point is that these skills are not magically acquired in the middle of a major crisis. When disruption arrives at scale, leaders do not suddenly rise to a new level of capability. They fall back to the level of their habits. If a leader has never practised honest communication on smaller setbacks, it is unrealistic to expect them to deliver calm, clear messages when layoffs are being considered. If they have never practised making decisions with incomplete information on medium level issues, it is improbable that they will suddenly become skilled decision makers in a high stakes moment. If they have never observed and managed their own stress responses in ordinary busy weeks, their behaviour is likely to be erratic when truly hard news lands on their desk.

For this reason, building skills to handle disruption is everyday work, not an emergency measure. Leaders can treat smaller changes or disappointments as rehearsal. When a project slips, they can practise transparent communication instead of hiding the problem. When market signals are ambiguous, they can practise forming provisional views and updating them openly as more information arrives. When they feel pressure rising in a normal week, they can experiment with ways to reset themselves before stepping into key conversations. When growth feels smooth, they can still invest in building systems and spreading knowledge, so that the organisation is not entirely dependent on the heroics of a few individuals.

The world leaders operate in today is already deeply disrupted. Economic cycles are volatile, technologies shift quickly, and social expectations of companies evolve faster than many boards can track. For founders and executives in Malaysia, Singapore, the Gulf, and beyond, the question is not whether the next shock will come. It is how they will respond when it does. Leaders who refuse to develop these skills often tell themselves a quiet story that when things become serious, they will naturally rise to the occasion. More often, the occasion simply exposes the preparation they never did.

In the end, developing skills to handle disruption is not about becoming fearless or pretending to have certainty. It is about learning to face uncertainty without breaking the people who depend on you. It is about being able to tell the truth without surrendering to despair, to make decisions without perfect clarity, to stabilise yourself so that others can think clearly, and to build systems that can bend without snapping. Teams do not expect perfection from their leaders in a crisis. They expect presence, honesty, and a path forward that, even if narrow, is real. Those are the leaders people remember once the storm has passed.