Brilliant Doubt: Harnessing uncertainty to lead with impact

by Jenny Williams

Overview

We need leaders who doubt.

No playbook exists for the complexity, challenges and choices leaders are dealing with, so why do they – and we – expect certainty? Certainty does not guarantee success or the avoidance of failure. What if leaders can create better results by harnessing doubt effectively?

Doubt is complex: it can both paralyze us and propel us forward. In Brilliant Doubt, Jenny Williams challenges how we think about doubt and reveals its power. She examines the role of self-doubt and external doubts – our own and others’ – shining a light on how leaders can work with doubt to inform their decision-making, and ultimately to achieve better results. Her insightful and practical approach will change your relationship with doubt forever, and show you how to harness uncertainty to inform decision-making, and ultimately to achieve better results.

Jenny Williams (MCC) is a top Executive and Systemic Team Coach who has lectured at Cambridge University on leadership, entrepreneurship and creativity. She has spent thousands of hours working with exceptional clients who doubt, showing them how to leverage the power of doubt as a catalyst for clarity, creativity and confidence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788606479
Publisher:	Practical Inspiration Publishing
Publication date:	05/12/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	220

About the Author

Jenny Williams (MCC) is a top Executive Coach who works with leaders to leverage the power in their doubts. Her style of ‘deep challenge and deep care’ mirrors how she works with doubt to help leaders be inspired, clear and decisive.

Jenny Williams (MCC) is a top Executive and Systemic Team Coach who works with leaders to leverage the power in their doubts. For the last 15 years, she has spent thousands of hours working with exceptional senior clients who also doubt, to deliver exceptional results. While leaders often see their doubt as a problem, Jenny knows how to use it as a catalyst for clarity and a powerful aid to better decision-making. Her unique approach is based on research and her own experience working through her own doubts, first as a global Creative Director for Nokia, and then with her coaching abilities. This work has established her in the top 4% of coaches globally with an International Coaching Federation certification as Master Coach. She has lectured at Cambridge University on leadership, entrepreneurship and creativity.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Section 1: Don’t Doubt Doubt

Chapter 1: Why the business world needs doubt more than ever before

• The crisis of certainty
• Culture: the breeding ground of doubt
• What if we can’t succeed without doubt
• Power in doubt for the leader, the team and the organisation

Chapter 2: What is doubt? * Inner doubt and the imposter * External doubt * Professional Doubt

Section 2: Leadership Doubt

Chapter 3: Doubt is a process

Chapter 4: Processing the doubt demons

Chapter 5: The Professional Doubt process:

• The question from doubt
• Do the ‘do’ in doubt
• Challenge
• Collaboration
• Creativity
• Changing
• Calculation
• Decide and drive

Section 3: Team Doubt

Chapter 6: Surfacing the doubts

Chapter 7: Sharing the doubts

Chapter 8: Solutionising doubts

Section 4: The Future of Doubt

Chapter 9: Using doubt to create future leaders

• Recruiting doubtful leaders
• Using doubt to unlock future dreams

Chapter 10: Why the future needs doubt?

• Doubt and AI

Conclusion

End Pages

About Jenny Williams

Acknowledgements

References