Features

Published April 2010

Ambiguity Leadership: It�s OK to Be Uncertain

Randall P. White and Sandra Shullman

In today’s economic climate, uncertainty is a fact of life. For a leader to be successful, he or she must be able to navigate and ultimately thrive in it.

If you’re like most people, uncertainty makes you panic. It can ruin a plan. It can make you lose sleep. It can stop you in your tracks. Most people try to avoid it.

A few, however, seek uncertainty out — and they deserve our attention. They understand and manage it with philosophical contemplation, scientific trial and error, or entrepreneurial aplomb. We often call these people effective leaders. And the very nature of leadership, as required today, is ambiguous.

Research done by the Executive Development Group suggests that the ability to positively manage uncertainty may be an essential trait of effective leaders, often found in those considered high potentials. Evidence shows it can be measured and learned.

Based on interviews with numerous C-level executives around the world, Elizabeth Mellon, executive director of Duke Corporate Education, said mindset — more than personality and behavior — forms an observable pattern among some of the most successful leaders and that a fearless approach to uncertainty is required.

“C-suite executives reveal a high degree of being comfortable with discomfort,” Mellon said. “They accommodate ambiguity and the uncertainty it brings. They are confident in making decisions that move their organizations into uncharted territory because they know this ensures long-term prosperity. They have ‘solid cores’ that allow them to navigate the unknown and accept not knowing everything. And they tend to have a longer view because they see time as a continuum in which uncertainty will come and go as they progress. Being uncertain doesn’t stifle them.”

A Fact of Life

In recent months, media outlets have filled their pages with and dedicated ample airtime to stories about uncertainty. While we believe uncertainty sneaks up on us, in reality, it is present every day. In fact, one could argue that ambiguity is simply “the way things are” in a post-industrial organization.

However, few discussions of or models for leadership acknowledge uncertainty as a fact of life for practicing leaders.

“The classical leadership way of thinking that many business schools and many corporations used assumed a world that was controllable and predictable,” said Christine Williams, director of global people strategies and metrics at Standard Bank in Johannesburg, South Africa. “We have a hypothesis that emerging-market [non-Western] leaders are actually much better suited to the way the world is going. One of the things our leaders have always had to do was deal with masses of ambiguity, enormous amounts of change.”

Measuring Uncertainty

Measuring the ability to engage amid uncertainty is no more difficult than measuring any of the other important traits that we look for in self-assessments and multi-rater feedback. The traits of uncertainty tolerance can also be revealed through coaching and interviews.

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Sandra Ford Walston

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