Lead Change is a leadership media destination with a unique editorial focus on driving change within organizations, teams, and individuals. Lead Change, a division of Weaving Influence, publishes twice monthly with SmartBrief. Today's post is by Chuck Wisner. This stressful pandemic has highlighted our aversion to uncertainty. However, a recent Boston Globe article on uncertainty lays out the secret gifts that it offers. Uncertainty is a hot topic for cognitive science and psychology, both of which explore the ways our fears of not-knowing can limit our thinking and minimize our tolerance for change and diversity. Significant philosophical shifts during the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment began a much-needed quest for certainty. Thinkers of those eras rejected the religious ideology of the Middle Ages and gravitated toward rationalism. New philosophies embraced humans’ intellectual capacity to gain knowledge through experience and logic, but that pursuit came at a price. Over time, our craving for answers quashed the benefits of uncertainty, and that need for answers has permeated the business world and cultures at large.