The Surprising Truth About Motivation During Uncertainty

Alignment. Often thrown around as a corporate buzzword, alignment is the ultimate goal in any organization. Despite its importance, alignment is often seen as a best-case scenario or a nice-to-have (especially during times of uncertainty where high risk-high reward initiatives are more common).

Especially in the wildly unstable corporate world of 2026, it’s not uncommon for leaders to move forward before alignment is achieved (this is, undoubtedly, where the corporate jargon “building the plane while flying it” comes from). And while a case could be made for just diving in and getting started, recent research from Wiley Workplace Intelligence shows that alignment is way more than a buzzword. It is the key to motivation in uncertain times.

The Alignment – Motivation Connection

Motivation at work is often treated as a function of clarity, compensation, or even organizational stability. But in periods of uncertainty, those assumptions begin to break down. What sustains performance is not simply compensation, it is feeling connected to why the work matters.

We recently surveyed 1,347 people and our research clearly suggested that motivation does not disappear during uncertainty. Instead, it shifts. Employees continue to show up, contribute, and under the right conditions they even excel, but for different reasons than leaders often expect.

At the center of this shift there is a widening gap that has emerged between leadership communication and the daily employee experience. When employees perceive that leaders are out of touch with what work actually feels like on the ground, motivation erodes quickly.

In fact, the strongest predictor of declining motivation is not ambiguity, it is disconnection. When leaders appear removed from reality, when priorities change without explanation, or when communication goes silent, employees interpret that as a signal that their effort is unseen or undervalued.

Yet, the story is not one of disengagement. It is one of shifting motivators.

Top Motivators During Uncertainty

It isn’t easy (for leaders and individual contributors alike) when the future is unclear. Shifting priorities, policies, and an unsteady economy impact every decision a leader must make to keep their business afloat which can create a more agile working environment than people are naturally comfortable with.

Despite the discomfort that often accompanies instability, we found that employees remain highly motivated during uncertainty, but their motivation is anchored in more intrinsic and relational drivers.

We also discovered that autonomy plays a critical role, with 90% of employees indicating that having control over how their work gets done sustains their motivation. While the instinct from those in leadership positions may be to tighten control and increase oversight to improve productivity, our research showed the opposite is true and the more trusted an employee feels, the more motivated they are to perform.

These findings point to a consistent theme: employees continue to perform when they feel a responsibility to others, a sense of growth and progress, and ownership over execution. Motivation becomes less about external direction and more about internal commitment.

These motivators share a common theme: they reinforce the importance of agency. Respecting employee agency signals that even in the absence of certainty, their judgment, effort, and experience are valued.

Leadership Misalignment is a Top Demotivator

While consistent communication from leadership is (very) important for multiple reasons, our research found the strongest correlation between motivation and alignment. This does not mean communication is unimportant, but rather that communication alone is insufficient. Without alignment from leadership to the employee experience, even frequent communication can feel hollow.

The risks of misalignment are significant. When employees see leaders as disconnected, 93% report a decline in motivation. When priorities shift without explanation, that number is 89%. The same percentage say motivation drops when extra effort goes unrecognized. And when communication stops altogether, 83% report disengagement.

These are not subtle effects; they are organization-defining ones. They highlight that employees are not simply reacting to uncertainty itself, but to how that uncertainty is managed and communicated.

For organizations, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to move beyond a reliance on clarity and communication as the primary tool for driving performance. In uncertain environments, perfect clarity will always be slightly out of reach. The opportunity is to build systems and leadership behaviors that reinforce connection, trust, and ownership.

This means closing the gap between leadership perception and employee reality. It means explaining not just what is changing, but why. It means recognizing effort consistently. And perhaps most importantly, it means creating space for employees to take initiative, make decisions, and learn as they go.

Our research shows that motivation adapts, it doesn’t disappear. Employees do not disengage simply because conditions are uncertain, they disengage when they feel unseen within that uncertainty.

When leaders align their actions with the lived experience of their teams, motivation does not just persist, it grows.

Wiley’s suite of professional solutions provides a structure and common language to help empower entire organizations with the skills needed to get to the next level. From building better teams with The Five Behaviors^®, and improving understanding to create engaged, collaborative, and adaptive cultures with Everything DiSC^® on Catalyst™, helping you make confident hiring decisions with PXT Select^®, or unlocking the power of leadership at every level with The Leadership Challenge^®, Wiley has innovative solutions that help make the workplace a better place.

Wiley Workplace Intelligence conducts in-depth research on key workplace issues by gathering insights from individual contributors, managers, and leaders. Wiley Workplace Intelligence then analyzes these findings to provide actionable solutions that are shared in our blog.