Comment: When rats, snakes, and thawing cadavers turned up on my university campus in Brisbane, it reminded me that leadership often isn’t about heroics. It’s about holding enough ambiguity to give other people stability; it is about providing steadiness, rather than claiming certainty.
Every day the news cycle seems to bring reports of political turbulence, economic fragility, and dizzying technological change. Our ‘new normal’ is one of constant uncertainty and if that sounds exhausting, that’s because it is. In this context, real leadership is less about having the right answer to every challenge and more about staying steady enough so others can find their footing and their own answers.
One event sheeted this home for me. In early 2022, the Brisbane River rose six metres in six hours. The university where I was working was directly in its path.
The first call from security was unnerving: “Rats are fleeing the riverbanks and overrunning campus buildings.” Ninety minutes later came the follow-up: “Actually, rats aren’t the problem. It’s the snakes chasing the rats.” And then the third call: “We’ve had a power failure and 183 medical cadavers are thawing.”
With a satellite phone in one hand and a torch in the other, I gingerly made my way across campus, wondering if this was payback for telling generations of students that challenge and learning are inseparable.
My lesson that night was uncomfortable but clear: leadership sometimes means admitting you don’t have all the answers, yet deciding a way forward nonetheless.
My team and I didn’t have a crystal ball to tell us how the city would survive the floods and start the recovery, but we made the decision to close the university for a week. Was that longer than strictly necessary? Almost certainly. However, this decision did give our 40,000 staff and students what they needed most: certainty to prepare for the following days and space to focus on what really mattered—their loved ones.
That episode has stayed with me, not because it was heroic (it wasn’t), but because it revealed something the textbooks miss, a responsibility leaders are increasingly required to take on today: the unglamorous but essential task of carrying ambiguity.
It’s the leader’s privilege to see the complete picture of the organisation they serve. It’s also their duty to communicate challenges and opportunities in ways that give people confidence to contribute fully, even while the ground shifts beneath them.
That doesn’t mean hiding the urgency or threat of a situation. Pretending everything is fine can be as damaging as declaring the sky is falling. It does mean being candid about what you don’t know. It also means understanding that progress typically does not come from authoritarian brilliance, it comes from creating the conditions where everyone can bring their own strengths and insights. This is not shirking leadership responsibility; this is about ensuring there is the solid ground on which others can build.
In the university setting, leadership is about equipping talented staff and students with the foundation they need to pursue ambitious ideas. Ambition brings risk and, at times, failure. But the record is clear: the extraordinary contributions of universities have disproportionately advanced society. Sustaining that impact requires leaders who resist the temptation to control outcomes by claiming certainty for themselves. Instead, it demands people who focus on building confidence in others, supporting their teams by standing steady rather than standing tall.
Why does this matter beyond one flooded Australian campus? Because the same principles apply whether you’re confronting climate change, higher education reform, or economic transformation. These knotty challenges demand leaders who acknowledge complexity and create environments where people feel supported enough to bring their best ideas forward.
Having vermin and defrosting anatomy shape a leadership philosophy is hardly the kind of origin story anyone would choose, but it was a useful experience all the same. Messy—even absurd—yet the lesson is serious: if we can carry uncertainty, trust our teams, and create space for people to focus on what matters most, we have already fulfilled our most important role.
In a world this unpredictable, steadiness may be the most radical, and valuable, contribution a leader can make.
This article was originally published on Newsroom.
Professor Nic Smith is the Vice-Chancellor of Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.