Leading Without a Map: What Wave Pilots Can Teach Us About Adaptive Leadership

When Marshallese navigators set out across the Pacific, they don’t rely on GPS or even fixed visual markers. The ocean offers no signposts—just endless water and shifting skies. To master this, apprentices were trained in unexpected ways, sometimes blindfolded lying in the canoe to feel the rhythm of the waves against their bodies. Every swell and every subtle shift in current was a message. They call it ‘navigating with your stomach,’ because it’s less about what you see and more about what you sense.

This skill developed in one of the most demanding environments on Earth.

The Marshall Islands are tiny strips of land scattered across hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean, rising only a few feet above sea level. From a boat, you wouldn’t see an island until you were almost on top of it. For generations, survival meant mastering the sea. Long before European contact, Marshallese navigators crossed vast stretches of open water in dugout canoes, landing precisely on isolated atolls. They did it through wave piloting—steering by the feel of the ocean rather than fixed stars.

For thousands of years, this practice guided people safely across unpredictable waters, and it works because wave pilots trust what’s emerging, not what’s fixed. They know the ocean will never stop moving or changing, and they build skills to work with that reality rather than against it.

Today’s leaders are also sailing unpredictable seas. Volatile markets, disruptive technologies, and cultural shifts make yesterday’s maps obsolete.

So how do you lead when the map disappears?

A Changing Ocean: Why Old Maps Don’t Work Anymore

Most leadership playbooks assume stability. They tell us to plan, predict, and control. But in a world where conditions change overnight, those strategies can feel like plotting a course with landmarks that no longer exist.

The truth is, uncertainty isn’t a temporary storm, it’s the climate leaders must learn to navigate.

Like the ocean, today’s business environment erases familiar markers. Whether it’s past performance, best practices, market forecasts, or even customer behaviors, what once felt fixed can vanish overnight.

Old charts create an illusion of control. Leaders who cling to them risk making confident decisions based on outdated assumptions, only to discover too late that the ground has shifted. In uncertainty, false confidence is more dangerous than no confidence at all.

Release the Anchor of Certainty: Challenging Assumptions

One of the hardest things for leaders to do is let go of what they “know.” Past experience feels like a safe harbor, but it can become an anchor that keeps you from moving. When we cling to old assumptions, we filter out new information that doesn’t fit, which is dangerous when the environment is shifting.

Try an Assumption Audit. Ask yourself and your team:

• What are we assuming about the market, our customers, or our team?
• What if those assumptions are wrong?
• What would we do differently if the opposite were true?

This simple exercise can surface blind spots and open space for new possibilities.

It’s uncomfortable, but so is navigating uncertainty without adaptive capacity. The difference here is taking the opportunity to mine new information by sitting in that uncomfortable and perhaps unsettling space.

It creates an opportunity for new pathways to emerge that are connected to the reality you’re actually standing in. Avoiding the discomfort likely means staying on the paths you already know, which won’t get you anywhere you haven’t been before.

Don’t Just Read the Charts, Feel the Swells

Wave pilots don’t just look, they feel. They tune into signals that are easy to ignore: the rhythm of waves, the pull of currents, the way the canoe responds. Leaders need the same sensitivity. In uncertainty, the most valuable data often starts as a whisper.

Build practices for signal scanning:

• Listen for weak signals in team and employee sentiment, customer feedback, and emerging trends.
• Treat anomalies as clues, not noise.
• Pair data with dialogue: Numbers tell you what happened. Conversations offer stories and explanations that can tell you why.

When the future feels foggy, lean on scenario thinking. Instead of betting on one forecast, explore multiple plausible futures and stress-test your strategy against each. Scenario planning isn’t about predicting the future, it’s about preparing for possibilities.

Marshallese navigators used stick charts (woven patterns of sticks and shells) to represent how they experienced the waves interacting with the islands. They weren’t literal maps, but relational guides.

Leaders need something similar. Not rigid org charts or strategic plans, but networks of trust and feedback loops that help the organization sense what this moment is saying, track patterns of what shifts certain signals are connected to, and to respond in informed ways.

Adaptive Navigation: How Leaders Stay Flexible in Uncertain Conditions

In uncertainty, rigid plans crack under pressure. Adaptive leaders experiment, learn, and adjust. They create safe-to-fail spaces, invite diverse perspectives, and move into action quickly with a commitment to observe and iterate. This mindset builds resilience and trust.

The ability to be present, grounded, and sense critical information in times of uncertainty isn’t one we’re born to trust, but it’s a skillset we can develop. The human nervous system is programmed to react to uncertainty because our meaning-making, future-predicting brains find the unknown to be a terrifying thing to face. If you were on a boat in the middle of the ocean with no familiar navigation tools and no developed skills to know how to respond, your body would likely see it as a life-or-death scenario.

Our defense mechanisms narrow our focus and instinctively filter information through what we’ve seen and experienced before, which works against the practices of the wave pilots.

Building Adaptive Leadership Skills

Leaders must regulate their own nervous systems to stay grounded when the map disappears.

Navy SEALs train for this: controlling arousal and staying present enough to read the moment with precision. Breathing and attention control are critical, and where you direct your focus shapes how you respond.

Leaders who build these skills aren’t just able to improve their own experience and discernment, they cause ripple effects of clarity and calm and create conditions for others to think, notice, and adapt. They become stabilizers rather than amplifiers of noise and instability. Practically, this looks like:

• Slowing the pace when people are overwhelmed.
• Naming what’s true without catastrophizing or sugar-coating.
• Creating clear guardrails and reinforce shared principles: Define priorities and boundaries so teams know where to focus.
• Strengthening feedback loops: Encourage real-time sharing of observations and ideas.
• Modeling curiosity: When uncertainty spikes, ask questions instead of rushing to control.

These moves allow a team to function like a healthy nervous system. Rather than freezing or overreacting, it leans on strong feedback loops and shared principles, and team members are able to sense signals, exchange learning, and move with agility.

Trust What’s Emerging
Marshallese navigators trust traditions of practice and intuition, not rigid certainty. They know the ocean will never stop moving and they build the skills and mindsets to be present and respond to what each new moment is telling them.

The leadership we need today is no different. Adaptive leadership is not about predicting the future, it’s about being equipped to meet it as it comes.

Ready to Improve Your Own Adaptive Leadership Skills?

Conversant helps leaders respond to uncertainty with clarity, presence, and adaptability.

Learn more about our leadership development experiences.

[Author Bio]

Emma Rose Connolly

Consultant

With over a decade of experience in leadership development, organizational change, and strategy alignment, Emma Rose has partnered with leaders across industries, geographies, and disciplines to bring a human-focused approach to culture, employee experience, and performance. Grounded in psychology, behavior change, and systems thinking, her facilitation and coaching style is all about designing experiences that unlock real, lasting change. She’s most energized when navigating complexity with clients—where trust needs to be built, purpose clarified, or collaboration reimagined—and finds nothing more rewarding than watching a group move from uncertainty to shared possibility. Emma Rose believes in a future standard for leadership that’s grounded in being self-aware, adaptive, and bold enough to prioritize connection in the face of urgency and competing demands. When she’s not working, you’ll find her outside with her dog, cooking something nourishing, or getting lost in a good book.