No route, but direction
In Ethiopia I sometimes cycled for hours without a map.
I knew two boundaries: to the west the tarmac road, to the east the big river towards Gondar, where I lived. In between I rode on donkey tracks, forest paths and walking trails. Sometimes I knew roughly where I was. Sometimes I only thought I did.
At one point I was truly lost.
In my broken Amharic I tried to explain where I needed to go. A man understood me. He took me up to a mountain ridge. There he pointed into the distance, towards Gondar.
There.
That was all I got.
No route. No explanation. No safe way back to the main road. Only direction.
I have often thought back on that lately.
Many people today are looking for a map. Understandable. The world moves fast. Technology accelerates. Markets tilt. Organisations shift. What worked yesterday sometimes still half works today. Just enough to hold on to. Too little to build on.
That is perhaps the hardest thing about this time.
Old recipes keep up the appearance of working for a little while longer.
“A better map does not help you when the map describes another country.”
What you need then is a compass. Not certainty. Only direction while you still have to move through unknown terrain yourself.
That is where leadership begins for me: daring to move before everything is proven, feeling that something is right before everyone else sees it, giving direction without pretending the route is already fixed.
The old map remains tempting
Under pressure the past quickly regains authority. We return to what we know: the model that once brought calm, the language, the control, the structure, the reflex that used to help.
For me this is a sensitive point. I quickly become allergic to regression: getting the old map out again, just when the terrain has changed. More analysis. More control. More explanation. More precision on a map that no longer describes the landscape.
Perhaps your reflex is a different one. Deciding faster. Grabbing everything yourself. Going quiet. Becoming cynical. Seeking consensus until no one moves any more. Using big words to mask doubt.
Everyone has a place like that, where uncertainty wakes up an old pattern. The question is whether that reflex still helps us.
Whoever tries is vulnerable
Whoever tries something new rarely gets applause straight away. First comes resistance. Then it can go quiet around your proposal. And if it only half succeeds, a third movement sometimes follows: being judged afterwards as if you should only have tried when you already had certainty beforehand.
“Whoever tries something new sometimes pays three times: first with resistance, then with standing alone, then with judgement afterwards.”
That is how initiative becomes expensive (and how what some call action paralysis arises).
I recognise that. A proposal that is later used against you leaves traces. The next time you move more slowly, look for more cover and start protecting yourself against the risk of initiative.
We ask people to change, to innovate, to show ownership. At the same time we often make it safer to wait, or to repeat what was accepted before. Even when everyone feels it is no longer enough.
Zin as direction and appetite
That is why I like to use the Dutch word zin, which means sense and appetite at once.
For me zin carries two meanings at the same time: direction and appetite (the Flemish “goesting”). Direction says where to. Appetite says why you still want to move.
And it is precisely this zin that makes morale stronger when certainty falls away. Not morality as a rulebook, but morale as resilience – the willingness to carry on while the map is still missing.
Feeling like doing something is about the inner willingness to step while you cannot yet see the whole way.
That is also what I see becoming possible at Outward Bound, again and again. Take the Umicore team with whom we went into the cave. Beforehand there was hesitation. Understandable. A cave is not a meeting room: you have no overview, you cannot bend the space to your will and you cannot move a passage because it fits your plan better.
You have to work with what is there.
In some passages you only hear the person in front of you and behind you. You move more slowly. You feel your way. And at the same time there are constant choices. A wider passage. A narrower passage. Letting someone go first. Trying first yourself.
No big theory. But small decisions in uncertainty. Precisely there the inner compass starts to work. It helps you read signals: in yourself, in the group, in what the situation asks. The more you notice, the more choices you have.
And then sometimes something remarkable happens. What you feel, someone else puts into words. The group starts to move along. What was uncertain at first starts to feel right: fragile, unfinished, but recognisable.
That is resonance. You feel it in yourself, you hear it back from someone else, and the group starts to vibrate in the same direction.
“Resonance is not proof. It is trust that starts to grow along the way.”
And that is exactly what gives appetite to carry on.
Finding zin in uncertainty
In changing contexts there is rarely one right route waiting. There are passages. Some are too narrow for one person and just attractive to another. Some ask for more trust, others for more patience. Sometimes you turn back. Sometimes you only notice along the way why something works.
The question is then bigger than: what is the plan? The question becomes: what do we learn, what do we notice, what do we feel as we move?
In uncertain times people quickly long for someone who seems to know the way for certain. That is human. When the ground moves, we look for something to hold on to. But the loudest voice rarely brings the brave answer or a searching proposal. It reaches for what suits it, not for what the terrain asks.
A compass is more honest. It promises no straight line. It only says: that way. Keep feeling. Keep looking. Keep moving. Correct along the way.
Perhaps that is what makes leadership so vulnerable in this time. We have to give direction while we ourselves notice how much we would sometimes like to find an old map again. We have to take people along without pretending to be certain. We have to keep our appetite while the proof is still on its way.
And that is exactly why we need places where we learn again to notice what feels right: in ourselves, in the group, in the direction that slowly shows itself.
Leadership does not begin when our reflexes disappear. It begins when we recognise them and still look for direction again.
In Ethiopia I was not given a map. Only a mountain ridge, a horizon and a finger pointing. That way.
Sometimes that is enough to set off again.
Stay Human.
I am Kobe. I trained as a psychologist. As director of a reception centre for refugees at Fedasil, as a trainer and consultant in Ethiopia, and now as Executive Director of Outward Bound Belgium. What drives, connects and sometimes holds people back: that is what I like to stay curious about. From boardroom to rock face, the common thread in my life is how we can remain human in a world that is spinning out of control.
Sources
Koen Schoors, Alles wordt anders … en beter. Borgerhoff & Lamberigts, 2024. Susan David, Emotional Agility. Avery, 2016.