How to Turn Doubt Into Your Creative Superpower

Todd Henry [00:00:02]:

Several years ago, I was working with.

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A creative team on a high stakes.

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Project, and the client wanted something bold and fresh. Pressure in the room was palpable. Early in the process, one of the younger designers timidly raised her hand and said, I'm not sure this is the right direction.

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You could feel the air tighten.

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The team had already invested hours pushing down that particular path. And here was someone introducing doubt. A few people immediately rush to defend the original concept, eager to prove certainty. After all, certainty is comfortable. It signals competence, decisiveness, control. Doubt, on the other hand, can feel like weakness. But here's what happened. Instead of shutting her down, the creative director leaned in.

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He asked her to explain.

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That small crack of uncertainty led to a conversation that completely reframed the project. They began exploring alternatives, questioning assumptions, and eventually landed on an idea that was similar to, but far stronger than anything they'd thought of before. The client loved it. That experience reinforced something that I've seen over and over again in creative work. Doubt isn't the enemy. In fact, it's often a doorway to breakthroughs. We live in a culture that worships certainty. It's true, right? In school, we're rewarded for the right answer.

Todd Henry [00:01:28]:

In business, admire confident leaders who speak with conviction and certainty. Even in our personal lives, we tend to measure intelligence by how quickly someone can provide a solution, a clear cut answer. Certainty feels safe. It protects our status. It shields us from risk. It lets us feel in control. And maybe that's the illusion, right? Because the truth is the problems worth solving, the ones that actually matter, rarely come with ready made answers. They can't be controlled.

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If you're a leader, an entrepreneur, an artist, anyone making decisions in a fast changing world, you're operating in a space where the right answers often don't exist yet. And in that space, certainty can become a trap.

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Why?

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Because certainty narrows your vision. When you're convinced you know exactly where you're going, exactly what you're doing, you stop paying attention to new information. You get tunnel vision. You filter out disconfirming evidence. You double down on your chosen path, even if the landscape around you has shifted. Certainty breeds rigidity. Doubt, on the other hand, expands your field of vision. It slows you down just long enough to ask what else might be true.

Todd Henry [00:02:43]:

It opens the door to curiosity, to experimentation, to learning. Far from being a liability, doubt is often the spark that ignites creativity. Think about music, for example. Some of the most memorable riffs or lyrics come from moments when the artist says, I'm not sure this works, but let's try it, right? That willingness to wander into uncertainty, to follow a hunch without knowing where it leads, is what gives rise to originality or think about leadership. The most effective leaders aren't the ones who bulldoze ahead with false confidence, but those who create space for their teams to voice questions, to challenge assumptions, and to surface unseen risks. Doubt forces us to pause. And in that pause, we discover better options, richer perspectives and stronger solutions than we would have if we clung to our original sense of certainty. That's why I'm so excited to welcome to the show today Dr.

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Bobby Palmer. He is a professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business and the author of a fascinating new book called Radical Doubt. Bobby argues that doubt is not something to suppress or avoid, but something to embrace. It's a signal that we've got more to learn, more to notice, more to piece together. In our conversation, we dig into how leaders can transform doubt from a paralyzing force into a productive one. We talk about the brain systems that kick in when we face uncertainty, the moral lenses that shape our choices, and how to create cultures that value learning over quick fixes. And most importantly, we explore how doubt, when handled well, can unlock creativity, resilience, and long term value. So whether you're leading a team, making art, or simply trying to navigate your own decisions with, with a little more wisdom, this conversation will help you see doubt in a new light.

Todd Henry [00:04:29]:

Not as a weakness to overcome, but as a strength to cultivate. This is Daily Creative. Since 2005, we've served up weekly tips to help you be brave, focused, and brilliant every day. My name is Todd Henry. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:04:48]:

This is my 18th year teaching here at the Darden Business School, and I get to work with really amazing students and executives and. And one of the things that I've learned over the years is that many of them think that being smart means getting the right answer.

Todd Henry [00:05:01]:

That's Bobby Palmer, author of the new book Radical Doubt.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:05:05]:

And this kind of prototype we have in our head of being smart is like reciting our multiplication facts, our multiplication tables, right? If someone asks you what's 2 times 2? And if you can't say 4 right away, it suggests that maybe you're not that smart, maybe you'd have more work to do. And that way of thinking about being smart works up until a point, until we encounter problems that are really uncertain, where we can't memorize ahead of time what the solution is. And I have to help my students and so many executives that I work with move from thinking about being smart as being a right answer getter to being smart as someone who makes better answers. And to make better answers, particularly in a world that's dynamic and uncertain, you really have to learn to leverage doubt. And so let's step back for a second and just think about what doubt is. There are lots of different definitions in kind of the academy. And when we think about research, I tend to think about doubt as the presence of multiple conflicting interpretations. It's a deeply human way of thinking about doubt when we don't know which way to go.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:06:07]:

When we see a stimulus and we can interpret it in multiple ways, it kind of freezes us and paralyzes us and most of us because we have learned that being a right answer getter is what it means to be smart. Hate that feeling of being stuck or not knowing what to do. And instead what I found is that when we can learn to identify that feeling of actually I've got more to learn. I've got some things I can get curious about. I can look around and try to make a better answer in this moment. It kind of frees up resources for people not to get paralyzed in that moment and actually start to do the work to make better answers. Rather than feeling like you're on this quiz show and you have to get the right answer at the end a second someone asks you something.

Todd Henry [00:06:48]:

That response that you mentioned, the freezing up the, you know, I'm afraid I'm going to get it wrong is very common in the business world. I'm sure you encounter leaders all the time. I know I encounter leaders as well all the time who are they're paralyzed by a decision not because they don't suspect they know the next right thing, but because they're afraid that they're going to be wrong. A why is that our initial response? I mean I assume self protection is part of that.

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Right?

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But why is it so hard for us to overcome what we know is not the right impulse? And yet we continue it's that it's the old business saying of nobody gets fired for hiring IBM.

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Right?

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It's the same thing of like I want the surefire thing. Why is it so hard for us to overcome that impulse?

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:07:27]:

Really common these days to hear that we've got to learn in the presence of uncertainty. And I think that's exactly right. That's what the book is about. But learning is just as much a social and emotional phenomena as it is a cognitive phenomena. And when we think about it only as hey, let's flip the switch and start to learn about what would be the better decision in this context or who the right client would be or the right supplier. We underestimate the significant amount of one stress that we might be under. Like who am I if I don't know the right answer? The way that we might be able to protect our status in the group. How will my team think of me? And frankly, many organizations don't really have the patience for learning.

Todd Henry [00:08:07]:

Right.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:08:07]:

There's all kinds of incentives and systems set up to have the right answer yesterday. There's all kinds of short term pressure that makes it really hard for leaders, even well intentioned leaders, to kind of stick their toe into uncertainty and say, let me try some things out, let me experiment, let me learn. As important as it is, I think there are elements of our organizational design that try to weed it out.

Todd Henry [00:08:29]:

And there are also different, different time frames, right? Like the right answer now may not be the right answer for four or three years from now. And so I think part of the uncertainty and the doubt and the, and well, not the doubt because the doubt, doubt is actually a good thing.

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Right?

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It leads us to the answer making.

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But I do think that some of.

Todd Henry [00:08:50]:

The paralysis comes from, you know, I.

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Know this is the right thing to.

Todd Henry [00:08:55]:

Do, but I don't know what the implications are going to be in the short term. Do you find that as well?

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:09:00]:

Oh yeah, you know, because we can't imagine clearly what the future might hold. And when you pair that uncertainty with risk, people get really risk averse.

Todd Henry [00:09:12]:

Right.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:09:12]:

But if we can imagine a future on the flip side that is really positive, that is really exciting, that's another way in which sometimes we can get trapped into not paying attention to doubt.

Todd Henry [00:09:23]:

Right.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:09:23]:

There's two sides of this. One is the fear. What I call our protect system kicks in.

Todd Henry [00:09:28]:

Right?

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:09:29]:

This is typically our fight flight free system. We're imagining a future that is somehow dangerous, whether it's socially or physically where we come off looking not as good as we want to look. But the other side of this is our pursuit system where we get really excited about a solution. We get locked into this new initiative is going to solve all our problems and we forget to look around and notice what might trip us up. I work with just as many clients and business leaders who thought they had the right answer. They were excited, they were given the resources to make it happen. And then they were blindsided by something that they should have seen coming, but they didn't because they didn't pay attention to doubts that they had.

Todd Henry [00:10:08]:

So I want to talk in a minute about how we can become aware of those doubts. But you just touched on what you call the brain's trio, right? The pursue, the protect, and the pause and piece together system.

Todd Henry [00:10:18]:

So how do these systems interact when.

Todd Henry [00:10:21]:

We encounter moments of doubt? And why is engaging that pause and the piece together system so critical for navigating ambiguity and regulating those initial intuitions that we have?

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:10:31]:

When we think about the brain as a series of interconnected systems, and our pursue system is what gets us excited, it's really, you know, another way of talking about it is our mesolimbic pathway. And both the pursue system and the protect system are what create our experience of certainty and clarity. We know there's a threat or we know there's some prize or reward. And all the things in our perception kind of bend to get us to go after that or to flee from the thing that we're perceiving as threatening. But when we have multiple, conflicting interpretations, that's when our pause and piece together system kicks in. Other folks have talked about this as our behavioral inhibition system. It inhibits action in order for us to look around and learn about what's going on. Are there pitfalls in our environment? Are there things further down the line that I should be aware of if I do this? What might happen? We start to hypothesize about what might happen if.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:11:27]:

And by engaging that pause and piece together system, we're starting to do the work of learning. And so, you know, experiencing doubt not as a failure or not as something that indicates that maybe we don't know the right answer, but as your brain telling you, wait, we've got some more to learn here. Let's proceed with caution. Let's not completely abandon our course of action, but let's just notice what's happening around us.

Todd Henry [00:11:57]:

You know, I love looking at doubt in that way. Not as a sign of weakness, but.

Todd Henry [00:12:01]:

As our brain's way of saying, slow down, pay attention. There's something more to learn here. Doubt becomes less about paralysis and more about curiosity. And when we approach it that way, it naturally raises the question, how do we sort through what we're noticing? Because in a moment of uncertainty, our choices aren't just tactical, they're deeply moral. We all filter decisions through different lenses, whether we realize it or not. For example, sometimes we lean heavily on principles, rules, or values that we believe should never be compromised. Other times, we think about consequences. What outcome will create the greatest good or prevent the greatest harm.

Todd Henry [00:12:39]:

Then there's character asking, what this decision says about who we're becoming. Finally, there are relationships. How will this choice affect the trust and connection that we have with other people? The challenge, of course, is that if we rely on just one of these lenses, we risk missing something, something really important. That's why it's so critical for us to hold all four in tension when we're navigating doubt and making decisions.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:13:06]:

The world is complicated. And when we're making any decision, that decision has implications on the organization's finances. It has implications on our systems and processes, our relationships. And one of the ways in which we create certainty is by systematically ignoring parts of the problem to feel like we have the right answer or that we can optimize a certain part of the problem. And so we can create better outcomes for our organization if we, for example, lay off part of our workforce. But if we don't pay attention to our relationships or the set of principles around treating people with dignity and respect, there are things that we fail to imagine in the future. And so by looking at all of these four things together, and that it creates doubt, right? It creates doubt to look at the same stimulus through multiple lenses. And what does this teach me about how I should care for others? What does this teach me about potential consequences I want to avoid or potential benefits I might gain? That's a hard thing to do, to build the capacity to look at the same stimulus through multiple lenses.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:14:05]:

But you're enriching your understanding and reducing the likelihood that you'll get derailed by something that you were blind to.

Todd Henry [00:14:13]:

I know a lot of people listening to this, right, Are maybe in the middle of a, of a difficult project or difficult decision, trying to navigate making decisions for their clients. Maybe they're responsible for stewarding resources on behalf of a client and making decisions about where to place bets, you know, things of that or their organization. They know that there are a lot of people relying on them. And I think that these lenses that you talk about, it's so easy for us just to focus on, okay, what.

Todd Henry [00:14:40]:

Is the most surefire, the most certain.

Todd Henry [00:14:42]:

Way for me to get to the place I know I need to get right now just to make sure that everything is okay versus what is the best way for me to create value that's going to be meaningful and lasting for the organization, for my clients?

Todd Henry [00:14:56]:

To what degree do those sort of short term compromises affect and cloud our.

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Ability to understand opportunity?

Todd Henry [00:15:05]:

Right?

Todd Henry [00:15:07]:

How do we forfeit long term opportunity on the altar of sort of short term accomplishment? And what role does doubt play in that for sure.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:15:16]:

You know, one of the most tangible ways that I think organizational leaders experience this is when they're given a difficult decision. There's this, you know, just common sense understanding that you have to make a trade off and we've got to, we've got to survive the moment, we've got to survive the quarter. So that means either not paying employees more or not improving a process or a product because we're trying to meet earnings estimates or things like that. And people build this habit of very quickly making decisions because it's like performing expertise. Okay, we'll go with stakeholder A versus stakeholder B, consequence A over consequence B. And what that does over time is it makes it a lot harder for us to achieve what we intend to achieve because we've made these little decisions that get us one step closer to what we see in front of us. But we lose sight of the bigger picture of where we want to go. And the role of DAO is critical in this aspect.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:16:12]:

One is to put that short term decision into a larger frame and say, okay, it might get me to the next quarter, but how does this position me to think about? How does this position me to achieve our mission or our purpose or to create long standing value for our stakeholders? A second piece is that typically these kinds of difficult decisions are presented to us in ways where the options are kind of binary or they're not deeply thought of. And to create options that allow us to get closer to our goals without sacrificing important values requires engaging with doubt. And this is where I think a lot of creative practice, like diligent creative practice, is so helpful. And folks who do this work have accustomed themselves to saying, you know what I'm going to, I'm not going to get to the answer right now. I'm just going to generate some possibilities and I'll come back and evaluate, excuse me, I'll come back and evaluate those possibilities at a later point. And that discipline of thinking through what's possible, what are the strengths and weaknesses of multiple options, what's an experiment I can run that can get me closer to. All of those things require patience, they require careful attention, and they require being okay, not getting to a short term answer in the moment.

Todd Henry [00:17:26]:

I've had a lot of conversations with artists, music producers, people who are making a product, and there's a very kind of feel it out as you go.

Todd Henry [00:17:34]:

Process with regard to making music.

Todd Henry [00:17:37]:

When, when you're recording music, even though studio time is expensive, everybody's time is expensive. Musicians time is expensive. There's a lot of sort of this.

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I have an idea.

Todd Henry [00:17:47]:

Let me, let me play around with this idea.

Todd Henry [00:17:49]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:17:50]:

And it's the willingness to be tolerant of those little side trails, even though it's like, well, I don't know, I'm not convinced. I have doubt that it's right. That little experiment can lead to all kinds of untold opportunity.

Todd Henry [00:18:05]:

And it might be great or it.

Todd Henry [00:18:06]:

Might be terrible, but the cost is very low.

Todd Henry [00:18:09]:

Right.

Todd Henry [00:18:09]:

In doing that. But in some ways, what I'm hearing from you is that we need to open the filter a little bit, right. In terms of what we're willing to entertain and not go so quickly for what we feel to be the certain outcome, but instead to open the filter and allow more of that, more of those experiments and questions into our process.

Dr. Bobby Parmar [00:18:30]:

Yeah, you know, it's one of those, do you want to go fast or do you want to get to your destination? And getting to our destination means that sometimes we've got to experiment with paths that we didn't anticipate or deal with, you know, pitfalls or obstacles that we didn't imagine when we set out on our journey. And to your point, sometimes they can be even better than we imagined. And if we close ourselves off to those possibilities because we're so laser focused on the next step, then we forego all of those serendipitous things that can make our life so enriching.

Todd Henry [00:19:02]:

So, as we've heard today, doubt doesn't have to be the enemy of progress. In fact, when we reframe it as a signal rather than a setback, it becomes a powerful tool for learning and for wiser decision making. Instead of rushing to certainty, doubt invites us to pause, to notice, and to weigh our choices through multiple lenses, principles, consequences, character and relationships. So as you go about your work this week, when you feel that twinge of uncertainty, resist the urge to shut it down. Instead, ask, what is this doubt trying to teach me right now? Which lens am I using and which ones am I ignoring? Because sometimes ignoring lenses is a strategy we use to create certainty, false certainty. Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is to embrace the pause and allow doubt to sharpen our vision rather than to cloud it. Thanks again to Dr. Bobby Palmer for joining us today.

Todd Henry [00:19:59]:

If you want to hear the full.

Todd Henry [00:20:00]:

Interview, you can do so@dailycreativeplus.com it's absolutely free. Just go there and enter your name and email. Thank you for listening.

Todd Henry [00:20:09]:

If you found today's conversation helpful, please.

Todd Henry [00:20:11]:

Share it with a friend or leave a review it really helps other people discover the show. My name is Todd Henry. You can learn more about me, my books and my speaking@toddhenry.com until next time, stay brave, focused and brilliant.