E31 Get Through The Unknown Without Burnout
September 2025
19 minutes
E31 Get Through The Unknown Without Burnout
September 2025
19 minutes
Stream on:
In this episode of the 3Peak Master Leadership Experience, Mino Vlachos and co-founder Dr. Mazen Harb explore how CEOs and leaders can navigate chronic uncertainty without succumbing to burnout or anxiety. They discuss why uncertainty can trigger worry, negative thought loops, and stress, and how leaders can stay resilient while guiding their organizations through unpredictable times.
Key insights for managing uncertainty:
0:00 - 0:59 Introduction 0:59 - 6:15 Managing Uncertainty and Anxiety 6:15 - 13:06 Navigating Chronic Uncertainty 13:06 - 18:40 Practical Strategies For Leaders
3Peak Coaching & Solutions is a leadership consultancy dedicated to Elevating Executive Mastery. We specialize in transforming businesses through leadership and team development during transitions and times of crisis.
We focus on the 3 critical areas where chaos and conflict are most likely to appear:
By addressing these flashpoints, we assist you in navigating change to build unity, create certainty, and establish clear direction.
Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the 3Peak Master Leadership Experience. My name is Mino Vlachos and I'm the co founder of 3Peak Coaching & Solutions. 3Peak Coaching & Solutions is a leadership consultancy dedicated to elevating executive mastery. We specialize in transforming businesses through leadership and team development. During transitions and times of crisis. We focus on three critical areas where chaos and conflict are most likely to appear. Board, CEO and C suite. Misalignment Transitions into executive leadership Conflict between functional departments. By addressing these flashpoints, we assist you in navigating change to build unity, create certainty and establish clear direction. Our approach empowers leaders to master complex challenges and transform their companies to thrive now and in the future. Today I am joined by Dr. Mazen Harb, who is also one of my fellow co founders of three Peak Coaching and Solutions. Today's topic is about managing uncertainty without burning out. So as we go into change, as we go into unpredictability, oftentimes we find ourselves in uncertainty, which can be stressful for some people, many people, all people. And what we find is that when we're in chronic uncertainty, some folks tend to burn out. And so today we're going to open up this topic to understand how CEOs and other leaders who are in this period of uncertainty can manage it to the best of their abilities. So, Mazen, imagine we're going into a period of uncertainty or we're doing something where there's no clear end to it. We don't know what the end point is and we don't know how to even get to an end point. What is that? What is the impact of that on a person when someone is in that kind of work environment, to be in.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Full uncertainty and not knowing what's the end point, or not knowing even what's the outcome?
Mino Vlachos: Yeah. So we don't know, is our company going to succeed? Is it going to fail? Where is it going? What's the purpose of our company? There's a lot of moments of uncertainty in a company and we don't know when we'll get the results of the experiment.
Dr. Mazen Harb: When you draw it like this. Actually, you're speaking about anxiety and worry. The outcome of anxiety and worry when you, when you picture, when you picture it like this. So unpredictability, the uncertainty are literally the definition of what anxiety is.
Mino Vlachos: You want to tell me a little bit more about that?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah. Like when I was researching, when I was working in research centers and the, the topic of anxiety was one of the topics that worked on and we, we wanted really to pin it to two things. To, to understand what's the real formula that creates it. And the real understanding was, is when you combine uncertainty with unpredictability to animals, to humans, to any living beings, sentient living beings. And what happens is that creates a worry and then that worry in the body as well. And, and then that worry translate into the mind kicks in to try to. But I want to understand, I want to bit of predictability, a little bit on uncertainty. What happens is the mind starts going into loops, loops and, and that's what create anxiety. So anxiety later on is a bit of fear in the body. But then the mind comes in, oh, I want to understand, but the mind cannot understand. But the more the mind try to understand, to create a frame of understanding, the more it starts to be really in the head, really letting go of the body, really in the, in the mind. And then we start to be worried, anxious and actually our performance, our role, our job, we start to do less and less because we're dominated by anxiety and fear and we're, we're eaten by it. So that's in the context you said?
Mino Vlachos: Yeah, I mean one of the definitions I've recently heard of resilience and I think they're. Resilience as a term is so loose and there's so many definitions, so take this with a grain of salt. But one of the definitions I recently heard is that resilience is the ability to sit in the uncertainty. It is to be able to tolerate the negative emotions and thought patterns that could come up in long chronic periods of uncertainty. And so I'm wondering, Mazen, what is the impact of sitting in this chronic uncertainty? Chronic. If it turns into anxiety, anxiety, what happens to a leader who is in that?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Imagine if you say to someone, sit in a bathtub that's full of mud or full of a certain color, you will become that color. So if a leader is sitting within an anxiety field that created because of the outside and the inside, it really ripples and then the outcome of it is a constant negative thoughts. Again, I'm speaking the word negative not as bad. There's no good or bad or wrong or right. I'm speaking about literally in the mind. We have negative thoughts, positive thoughts and neutral thoughts. Very simple. They're not in a scale of goodness. There's no morality in the body. So whenever we tilt toward worry and anxiety, the mindset like shift. Literally our brain waves configure toward everything is negative thoughts. Right. So we start to see the worst case scenario of everything. I See a pimple in my body, even though I'm working, my business is giving that stress. I see pimple on my body. What if it's a disease? What if it's that? So everything starts to escalate. Whatever small problem, whatever someone calls you in your family, hey, I have this problem. And then everything become super. Like you feel pressure, everything becomes so heavy. And then you feel like, why do people don't understand? It's too much like today, you know, you hear people saying everybody's bringing me their big problems. Probably their problem is not that big. But we lose the capacity as a leader, as a person to contain any energy from outside, any energy from the news. And even worse, what happens in then brain loop. We start to go and fetch them. Everything that's negative or war is happening, a crisis is happening, financial things are happening to justify why we are in that. So you go into justifying the negative inside of you by looking at the negative out. So you are in loop of negative mind. No good nor bad. It's just a negative mindset. Negative thoughts mindset. Yeah.
Mino Vlachos: Do you feel like this is inevitable? Like because as I'm hearing you speak, I'm like, well almost every founder, this is the state in some way they're in there, right? They're, they're starting a new venture. They're going to be doing something that's quite uncertain. It's going to be probably four or five, six years until they might get product market fit. So they might not even know if people really want the thing they want that they're selling. And it might even be 10 years until they're starting to actually make like an actual like salary, right? That like is probably similar to what they could get if they were working in a corporate at an equivalent position. So you have this kind of like really long period that we've been through ourselves, right? And like there's so many times in the three peak experience or like there is uncertainty, there's not. Like I cannot prove to you that beyond a shadow of a doubt everything is going to work out the way I think it is. Often it doesn't. So there is this condition called uncertainty. And then founders And I think CEOs of all companies to some extent because they're so high level and they're thinking like vision, right? Like where are we going? 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 years. Like they're, they're really pulling a magic trick where they're in the future even though the future doesn't truly exist, but they're just Using that as a tool to direct the company in a certain direction. Right. So like we're, we're all kind of dealing with this chronic uncertainty and then people like in society, like you said, we don't know where the government is going, we don't know where the news disease. Like there's so many things that we don't know in a conscious rational, like the life is unpredictable. I think it's a very basic fact to our conscious rational mind. But is it inevitable that we go into that anxiety? Is it like that's the only way to be in uncertainty? Is a founder just doomed to be chronically burnt out and having negative thoughts?
Dr. Mazen Harb: No, I think I, I, I, we know each other quite well. I think you feel where I'm going, but I will. You gave me the beautiful question to really bring to how humans were created. If that happens, it's just a conditioned way that we learn from our parents, our peers, our teachers and our leaders. This is, we're not programmed to only go to anxiety. Actually we're not programmed to anxiety. Anxiety is like it happens. But we are programmed, we're programmed to adapt. We survive millions of years of evolution because we adapt. So now I'm gonna give a metaphor, an example and I'll ask you, who would you trust more? Two ships that sailed, sailed in the really big deep ocean. One ship that they, they all going to the same direction. They have the maps, but they don't know what to expect. They don't know what's coming their way, storms, they don't know anything. And then you have a really big storm coming on the horizon, but you never know how, you know how long it needs to hit. In one ship, the staff and everyone, they really see it and they're like, we're gonna hit, we're gonna hit a storm maybe. What do we do then? The captain of the ship ask them, all right, let us just continue our work, take care that we do the maximum we can do to take care of if something bad happens. And they tell me we prepared actually we thought about all those things. And then let us continue sailing and we have a dinner tonight and we celebrate. Everybody what? And we celebrate, we continue as long as it doesn't come, we stay on the on top. And the other ship, they goes into panic and they're like, my God. And they probably have even better equipments, they go into panic and they start all to strategize. So the captain send them into groups. What do we do if it hits? What if it hits from the South. What if it hits from the north? What if hits and they start for the next 2, 3, 4, 5 days. Speaking about the storm, while the storm didn't come yet. So tell me the quality of the first crew opposite to the second crew in sense of. Yeah. Imagine there's two startups or two companies. Imagine you go visit every ship. How do you see what's happening in each one of them?
Mino Vlachos: Well, with the first one, which is like business as usual for me, I would feel a sense of trust and kind of okay, like we're doing the. We're doing our job right. So we're doing everything. We're still taking caring, everything. But actually it's not here yet. So yeah, the celebration is actually unexpected but nice. But I don't know, it just gives me a sense of safety, a good sense of trust, of like, okay, we know what we're doing. Right. The second one, I think there's a part of me, maybe it is the addiction mind that's like, oh yeah, we can go deliberate and debate and argue and fight and go. Basically I have this negative energy. Where can I throw it? So actually it gives my negative energy a place where I can throw it on other people. And we debate and we fight, but actually we've never. We never actually sailed. Right. We never did the task. We weirdly probably put ourselves in a more vulnerable position because we went and distracted ourselves instead of just focusing on the mission.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah. And the storm hits. What's the likelihood that the first ship will survive it with grace where the second one, they are worn down, they're exhausted. They didn't sleep very well the last five days. They were. They strategized way too much. They were not any more sharp. They are working on survival instincts only. They don't have enough energy reserve and they're fighting through it where the other ones, they were really prepared, but they continue doing their daily tasks. So the difference in that the first ship continue doing the daily task where they did all the measurements and then they continue. They trusted in the vision, they trusted in the mission. And they did their job until proven not possible to cross. The second ship, they started to doubt the ship, doubt their capabilities of dealing with such a storm. Yet everything was prepared. So doubt, worry and fear took over the other ship. The ships start droning. Even before the incident happened. This is the most cases when we say, oh, it's uncertainty. Life is uncertain. Now I'm taking a breath in, but I'm not certain the next breath, I'll stay alive. You'll Be laughing. People will listen out. I'm like, how many times you heard about someone dropping dead? And those who think that anything is certain in life, they live in the biggest illusion ever. Nothing is certain. Not your second meal, not. Not your second breath. You do not know if you will wake up the next day. But that doesn't stop me as a leader of my own ship, my own body. I'll do my task. I wake up in the morning and I celebrate. Now you understand what's to sell. I go to sports, I go do my tasks. I, you know, I just really live fully. And when the storm happens, coming without me noticing, if the body cannot take it, it cannot take it. But if nobody can take it, I'll become even stronger. So this is where I put uncertainty. This is what yours. That's what life is. Either we know how to ride it, or we succumb to it.
Mino Vlachos: Yes. And I'll add to that one thing that I was just doing a leadership workshop this past week, and we were talking a lot about transitions. So transitions probably lift the veil, so the illusion is dispersed a bit, and we understand we're in uncertainty. So, like you said, we're always in uncertainty, Right? But we can delude ourselves that maybe things are predictable, stable, and maybe they actually are for a time, but it doesn't mean that's the permanent state. But during transitions, I'm entering a new role and becoming the new CEO. Like, whatever it might be, I'm starting a new company. These are moments where you're acutely aware of actually how uncertain life can be. And what we were talking a lot in the workshop was about bracketing, so it can feel endless. If we're on this long journey, as long voyage, we have to set checkpoints along the way. So we say, okay, yeah, I don't know where we're going to be in five years, but where are we going to be at the end of the day? Where are we going to be at the end of the week? Or if you're running a business, like, what are we going to be in the next six months? What is our intention for the next six months? Or if that's too long again, make it a month, make it a week, make it a day, make it an hour, make it a breath, like Maazen said, But you can start to create your own beginning and end to things, so that you can create your own sense of framing and your own sense of like, okay, for this one week, I'm just gonna do what I need to do and just do the tasks because I know what I need to do for this week. And then maybe we have to adapt in the middle if the storm comes. But generally speaking can help mentally, I think, to create our own structure, our own order out of this nebulous kind of very long time horizon that is often present in these leadership positions. And so we talked a little bit about uncertainty and how to manage uncertainty and how to get through uncertainty. Mazen, what is one kind of key piece of advice you'd give a leader who is experiencing uncertainty?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Check what is predictable, check what's possible within your control, go to the maximum of it and see know what is possible and what's not possible. You have to let go. And if you do not let go of what's not possible first, you're living in illusion. I don't like S doesn't make sense. And this is where uncertainty start to get the best out of you. So uncertainty is not a problem within the controllable and predictable. It start to be a problem in the uncontrollable and unpredictable where you're fighting it. Just think about it, why you're fighting uncontrollable, unpredictable. So it's not that uncertainty that's really bad for the self is the fight and non letting go when nothing can be done and nothing can be controlled in a certain situation, do your best and let go. It's a mix of two.
Mino Vlachos: What I will share is one piece of advice is constantly assess the situation. So I think a lot of times companies think very inwardly of like well, what do we want to do? Or even people who want to start a company, well, what am I good at? What I, what do I want to do? And really look outwardly in some for some part of it is what am I in service of what's happening out there, what's shifting, what is happening to the collective? What do people need really understand every moment, every day, every second, what's happening on the outside so that we know how to respond from the inside. And then organize your people right, like really lean on teams or lean on people, organize them, reorganize them, figure out what is needed, what roles are needed to adapt to the moment that you're in. Then divide those roles up, put the right people in those roles and then work together to manage something. And when you have camaraderie, it helps a lot. That's one of the things when you're an early startup founder, especially a lot of people feel alone, especially if they don't have co founders or a lot of CEOs feel very alone because they have no peers, they have no one to talk to. The board is the boss, the team is subordinate. And generally speaking, so these roles, you feel so alone at times and uncertainty, I think anxiety. They feed on aloneness and loneliness. So partner with the people around you so you can respond to the environment. And so with that, we finish this episode. Thank you so much for listening and we look forward to seeing you.