“What happens now?”

I've always liked the word wonder. There is something rather enticing and rosy about curiosity, and imagining what is possible. But wondering takes on a different character when the possibilities could be good, bad, and anything in between, and the outcomes have severe consequences.

Imagine wondering when you would hear back from a recruiter about a job you really need/want, after interviews that went well. Or why your boss has not replied to your project update email at a time of organizational restructuring. Or why the doctor's office is taking another day to call about your seriously ill best friend’s MRI.

We often think of uncertainty as not having enough information. Sometimes that is precisely the problem. But sometimes, we do have a great deal of information. We know what has happened, understand the possibilities, and perhaps even know what needs to happen next. What we don't know is how things will turn out.

Some people cope by being fatalistic about it. Some resort to faith. Others draw boundaries around how much of their lives, work, or sanity they will let uncertainty affect. But very few of us can wish away that thorn in our sides.

When information isn’t enough

Uncertainty can change how we interpret communication, or the lack of it. A delayed response, a curt statement, or an absence of updates can acquire enormous significance when the stakes are high. We revisit conversations, extrapolate from scraps of information, and search for clues.

Information is not bland data that gets transmitted from one person to another. What is shared — or not shared — between people in relational, professional, and all other worlds we inhabit, can be an extremely potent thing. It simmers beneath “hoping for the best,” “fearing the worst,” and “wondering” about everything in between. Sometimes, it boils over into questions or tentative follow-ups, composed while we're on tenterhooks:

“Any news?” “Do you think things will work out?” “Are you thinking what I am thinking?” “Thank you again for speaking with me last Friday. I wanted to follow up on the next steps.”

Sometimes we're looking for information to help us decide what to do. Sometimes we're seeking reassurance. Or closure. And sometimes, perhaps, asking is simply something we can do when we have very little control over what happens next.

Now let psychology gently make room for interpersonal communication.

What happens between people?

What happens between the person asking and the person being asked?

Consider a spouse caring for someone seriously ill, repeatedly asked for updates. Or a recruiter genuinely interested in a candidate but still waiting for a decision from the hiring team. Or a manager who cares for her employees, but doesn’t know what an organizational restructuring will mean for their livelihoods.

How do you respond to someone who desperately wants reassurance when you have no reliable basis for providing it?

“I'm sure everything will be fine” may communicate care and optimism, but also confidence that the circumstances don't justify. “I don't know” may be entirely honest. But is it necessarily helpful? And silence, whether prompted by an inability to share information, competing demands, or simply avoiding an uncomfortable exchange, can intensify the uncertainty for someone waiting.

Often what one person needs from the conversation isn't what the other thinks they're asking for. And often, neither of them is entirely sure.

Now consider what happens when the people involved are not similarly situated. Hello, social and I/O psychology.

The asymmetry

One person may have access to information that another does not. One may have the authority to make a decision while another must wait. A team may be unable to move forward until someone else provides a crucial information or decides what happens next.

A delay that is an administrative matter or inconvenience for one person may be a profound disruption to another's life or work.

The uncertainty may be shared, but the ability to influence what happens, and the consequences of waiting for one’s employment, health, or peace of mind , may be very different.

What does that difference do to the questions people ask, the answers they receive, and the interpretations they make? And what makes communication supportive, responsible, or even possible, when people must navigate consequential uncertainty from very different positions?

These are some of the questions worth examining in an Interpersonal Communication Lab (ICL) learning experience — whether among colleagues navigating organizational change, professionals communicating difficult information, or people trying to support others through serious illness and upheaval.

Not simply to find better or “more effective” words, but to understand the dynamics that make the thorn of uncertainty prickly.