Before “VUCA” became a buzzword in leadership seminars, it was a thing in Tolkien's Middle Earth.

The term—Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity—was coined by the U.S. Army War College in the late 1980s to describe the post–Cold War world, where the old order had dissolved and new threats emerged without warning. The term has even greater resonance today. Technology upends industries overnight. AI reshapes careers faster than university curricula can adjust. Supply chains stretch and snap like rubber bands. And the binding glue of social trust feels increasingly brittle. Every modern leader operates in a fog where yesterday’s map no longer fits today’s terrain.

And yet VUCA isn’t really new. If there was ever a team that lived in a VUCA world, it was the Fellowship of the Ring from J. R. R. Tolkien’s masterpiece trilogy The Lord of the Rings. If you’re not familiar with the story, the Fellowship consisted of 9 individuals from radically different backgrounds, banded together with a shared mission and almost no precedent for what lay ahead. Their story is a master class in how paradox awareness—the ability to hold opposing truths in productive tension—is the indispensable tool to navigate the chaos.

Volatility: When Gandalf Fell and the Mission Shattered

The Fellowship began with hope, unity, and clear purpose: to destroy the Ring of the Enemy and save Middle Earth from his dark tyranny. They make it as far as the Mines of Moria when suddenly, their wizard-guide and leader Gandalf falls into the abyss battling a Balrog. Overnight, the group’s anchor is gone. Their emotional ballast, strategist, and moral compass is gone.

It’s a familiar leadership crisis. The sudden loss of a key leader or some other stabilizing factor can make teams reactive. They panic. They grasp for control.

Aragorn the Ranger stepped into the leadership role, but he immediately faced an impossible paradox: two necessities that indicated opposite courses of action.

• To cement his emotional connection to the team and secure their trust, Aragorn needed to give the Fellowship space to grieve.
• To escape the orcs that were pursuing them, he had to muster them immediately for a march to the distant forest of Lothlorien.

A polarized leader would choose one of those options. He might emphasize empathy and compassion and build strong bonds by taking time to grieve together and acknowledge their loss. Or he might just focus on saving their lives by getting them marching. Aragorn didn’t choose one or the other. He acknowledged their shared grief and he got them moving. Both at once. Volatile times require a leader who can hold competing needs in tension.

Uncertainty: The Lonely Work of Accepting Help

After leaving Lothlorien, the Fellowship comes to a decision point where they must either go East into Mordor or West to the relative safety of Minas Tirith. Boromir the warrior argues they should go West and use the power of the Enemy’s Ring against him. Falling momentarily under the dark influence of the Ring, he actually tries to take the Ring from Frodo by force.

Frodo escapes, but as the Ringbearer, he now faces a dilemma is between two necessary things that now seem irreconcilable: 

• He needs the protection and the support of his fellows.
• He has the responsibility to carry a burden that no one else can bear.

When Boromir’s moment of weakness confirms how the Ring can twist even noble hearts, Frodo sees two options: choose heroic isolation by heading East alone or stay with the fellowship and humbly embrace his need for their support. A polarized leader would choose one or the other. 

His first impulse is to say “I will go alone.” 

Invisible to the others, Frodo pushes one of the boats into the river and quietly slips away. His faithful servant Sam, however, suspects what Frodo will choose, sees the empty boat sliding into the river, and plunges into the water after him. Sam is willing to drown rather than be left behind. Frodo returns to save Sam’s life.

In that moment, Frodo sees a way forward that is not Either/Or. He honors both his solitary burden and his need for support by leaving the rest of the fellowship behind and allowing Sam to go with him. No one can carry the Ring for him, but Sam’s faith and sacrifice becomes scaffolding that holds him upright.

In organizational life, this tension between ownership and dependence is familiar to every leader standing before an unmarked path. Paradox-aware leaders learn to accept full responsibility and their need for help. They draw on the strength of others while accepting the accountability that only they can shoulder.

Complexity: When You Need What You Can’t Trust

After Frodo and Sam break with the fellowship, they need secrecy, speed, and guidance. They’ve lost Gandalf, parted from Aragorn, and are now alone in enemy territory with no clear path to Mordor.

Then Gollum appears.

He knows the way they need to go—an asset beyond price. But he also knows what they’re doing and could easily betray them. Gollum himself is a study in complexity. Having been mastered by the power of the Ring, he must obey the Ringbearer. His overwhelming desire for the ring constantly tempts him to betray them. Part of his mind loves Frodo, another part wants to kill him. Frodo now faces another impossible choice 

• Kill Gollum, and he loses their only guide.
• Trust him, and he risks betrayal.

A polarized leader would choose either to trust Gollum or to kill him. The need for guidance and secrecy are both real and urgent. But the fate of the quest depends on secrecy and direction, even though those two necessities pull in opposite directions.

Frodo makes a paradox-aware choice: he spares Gollum’s life and binds him to the company under watchful vigilance. Sam, ever the realist, embodies the tension. He keeps a wary eye on Gollum, half-guard, half-caregiver. The two hobbits together hold the paradox that no single one of them could manage alone—Frodo’s mercy balanced by Sam’s caution.

What makes this choice profound is how the story proves its necessity. In the end, when Frodo himself is overcome by the Ring and he lacks the will to destroy it, that earlier act of mercy becomes the hinge of salvation. Gollum is still alive to see Frodo claim the Ring for his own in the heart of Mount Doom. Gollum attacks Frodo and in the struggle falls, with the Ring, into the molten core of the mountain—the only place the ring could be destroyed. Gollum’s treachery completes the mission that Frodo’s strength could not.

Paradox-aware leaders resist the urge to pick sides when confronted by necessary opposites. They recognize that those opposites, in the end, are mutually dependent. They harness the tension between those opposites to innovate non-obvious solutions. In every complex challenge, what looks like contradiction may be the only road to completion. This is as true in a modern organization as it was on the road to Mordor.

Ambiguity: Acting Without Knowing

As Frodo is making his final approach to Mount Doom, Aragorn achieves an unlikely victory on the Pelennor Fields and takes command of the armies of Gondor. Because he has no access to essential information, he now has to make decisions in ambiguity. He does not know whether Frodo is still alive. Even if Frodo is alive, Aragorn has no timetable for when Frodo will reach his goal. Aragorn does not even know how much of the Enemy’s strength remains behind the Black Gate of Mordor, though he suspects it’s an overwhelming force. In this context he has two options for crafting a strategy:

• Hope that Frodo is still alive and will eventually succeed in destroying the Ring.
• Assume the worst and put up the best possible fight with the army he has left.

A polarized leader would choose one or the other. A hope-based plan would dictate waiting patiently for news, any indication of Frodo’s plight. An assume-the-worst plan would dictate fortifying, digging in, making sure that any ultimate defeat would at least cost the Enemy dearly.

Aragorn did not choose Either/Or. The strategy he chose was based on the hope that Frodo was still alive and if that were true, then the best possible use of Gondor’s army was to buy time for Frodo by distracting the Enemy’s attention away from his own lands. Aragorn led his small army to a direct assault against the Black Gate.

That’s the essence of paradox-aware leadership in ambiguity. It refuses to make a false choice between opposing principles—in this case, hope and pragmatism. Polarized leadership choices pretend to have certainty. Paradox-aware leaders embrace the limits of their own knowledge and experiment their way forward.

The Leader’s Superpower

The Fellowship’s story is a master class in leading through a VUCA world. Paradox-aware leaders provide uncommon balance in moments of volatility. Their choices provide durable wisdom to counter uncertainty. They navigate complexity with a firm Both/And footing when guiding principles seem to contradict. They refuse false Either/Or choices when confronted with ambiguity.

Paradox-aware decision making will serve you just as it did Frodo. It turns what looks like contradiction into creativity. It’s how great leaders, like Aragorn, and you, transform chaos into progress.

When Frodo wished the Ring had never come to him, Gandalf reminded him how his own choices and actions would, in time, shape his circumstances. Gandalf said, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

The same is true for you. And paradox awareness helps you choose wisely.

If you’re interested in exploring the paradoxes at work in your own life and leadership, I recommend the free Leadership Strengths Self-Assessment that you can find here:

https://www.thelpc.com/leadership-self-assessment