ACCEPTANCE OF UNCERTAINTY AS AN INDICATOR OF EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP;Randall P. White and Sandra L. Shullman.Executive Development Group, LLC

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ACCEPTANCE OF UNCERTAINTY AS AN
INDICATOR OF EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
Randall P. White and Sandra L. Shullman
Executive Development Group, LLC
Research and experience continue to reveal evolving modes of leadership behavior that
challenge the practice of consulting psychology. Leadership development that has taken
us beyond the notion of born leaders and stable environments has suggested that
flexibility is vital. This may be partly because of the constant evolution of the organi-
zation and its leadership challenges, from command-and-control to paradigms that are
participatory and recognize the importance of interpersonal skills, to an emerging
paradigm concerned with organizational learning. Consulting psychologists have iden-
tified a wide variety of leadership modes or ideals to fit these newer paradigms. Common
to many of these is the need to be comfortable navigating ambiguous situations. One of
the metrics that is indicative of this skill is the capacity to effectively process the
uncertainty that often accompanies ambiguity. We present preliminary data for a
potential tool for assessing this skill. We suggest that measuring an individual’s “apti-
tude for ambiguity” should be considered when identifying high performers for leader-
ship roles.
Keywords:
uncertainty, ambiguity, leadership, assessment, leadership development
The prevailing view of leadership in the behavioral sciences acknowledges, and even emphasizes,
complexity and nuance. In this article, we suggest that being an effective leader is contingent on the
ability to deal with ambiguity and its resulting cognitive–affective reaction, uncertainty. Those who
can keep the experience of uncertainty to a tolerable level can keep more options open and embrace
ambiguity as an opportunity to bring people and options together to learn and adapt as they
collectively find their way.
Organizations are increasingly complex, and their operating environments are increasingly
ambiguous and demand faster solutions. Competitive advantage often comes down to the ability to
respond ahead of anyone else to market demands. Just to survive, leaders may have to “outrun their
headlights” without crashing. The technology industry responds to this urgency by providing faster
tools. As the day-to-day velocity of organizational activity accelerates, ambiguity grows.
Randall P. White and Sandra L. Shullman, Executive Development Group, LLC.
Randall P. White (Greensboro, NC) and Sandra L. Shullman (Columbus, OH) are both partners with the
Executive Development Group, LLC and also serve as faculty for Duke Corporate Education, Duke University.
We thank David McLean for his editorial guidance and expertise; Katie White for her attention to detail,
hard work, and general advice; and Rob Kaiser for his encouragement on a draft of this article. Randall P. White
is also coauthor of The Ambiguity Architect
TM
discussed in this article and has a proprietary interest in this
instrument.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Randall P. White, Executive Development
Group, 1905-C Ashwood Court, Greensboro, NC 27455. E-mail: randy@edgp.com
Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research © 2010 American Psychological Association
2010, Vol. 62, No. 2, 94–104 1065-9293/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0019991
94
This
document
is
copyrighted
by
the
American
Psychological
Association
or
one
of
its
allied
publishers.
This
article
is
intended
solely
for
the
personal
use
of
the
individual
user
and
is
not
to
be
disseminated
broadly.
We assume that ambiguity is inherent in leadership. Initial efforts to understand this fact were
described nearly a decade ago:
Leadership is what crosses the frontier of what we did yesterday and what we’ll do tomorrow . . . the real
mark of a leader is confidence with uncertainty—the ability to admit and to deal with it. And just to be
clear, we think ambiguity is how it is and uncertainty is how you feel about it. So the effective leader is
always coping with his or her own feelings of uncertainty in the face of ambiguity. (Hodgson & White,
2001, p. 3)
Our research began as a quest to understand why so many people were transitioning poorly to
senior leadership roles (White, Hodgson, & Crainer, 1996). It became clear that the ability to
embrace the unknown as a strategic actor was critically important. This suggested that if a person’s
ease at confronting the anxiety of uncertainty could be measured, then one could more effectively
identify and develop leaders who are able to navigate their teams and organizations through
uncharted territory. We have been involved in the development and application of an assessment
tool—The Ambiguity Architect—that shows promise in assessing this capability for developmental
purposes.
Ambiguity and Leadership in Context
Over the past 100 years, prevailing models of leadership have evolved through three distinct
phases: command-and-control, participation and empowerment, and learning organizations. From
the beginning of the Industrial era through the mid-20th century, the command-and-control approach
to leadership was the prevalent mode of getting people to do things according to owners and
shareholders. Thomas Carlyle’s (1841) popular book
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in
History
described leaders as “light-fountains” of divine inspiration and, simply, “great men.” This
probably reinforced the belief, held by many, that leaders were born, not made, and preferably, for
some, they were males born to the right parents who attended the right schools (Domhoff, 1967;
Mills, 1956). The dominant mode of organization was to realize economies of scale through size and
routinized procedures designed to achieve efficiency in an operating environment characterized by
consistency and relative predictability. This model assumed that leaders knew what to do and how
to do it. There was little consideration of the possibility that the leader was not somehow a
knowledgeable expert. The leader’s influence was given by hierarchy and control, and the follower’s
role was defined by compliance and obedience to a chain of command.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, interpersonal relationships between leaders and followers became
recognized as vital to effective leadership. Prior to this, the idea that leadership is a mutual
agreement by leaders and followers was not widely accepted (Kelley, 1992). This phase gave rise
to notions of participation and empowered models of leadership where the leader has an idea of
where to go—a vision—but lacks either the technical expertise or the ability to get there on his own.
In this model, the leader’s influence and ability to realize the vision is assumed to come from the
active participation of followers and ultimately their commitment, not merely their compliance. This
era bore witness to both an expanded and diverse set of leader demographics and new forms of
organization, most notably flatter structures with power and decision making pushed down to lower
levels. These models seemed to acknowledge ambiguity but granted authority for dealing with it to
employees.
In the last decade of the 20th century, a new model emerged that repositioned the emphasis from
relationships to adaptation to novel problems. Senge (1990) suggested the concept of a learning
organization in which leaders are not expected to have a vision but are expected to know it is needed
and to rely on the collective wisdom of the organization to help define one. Ambiguity is a given
and is seen as a desirable state in which to incubate innovative and more powerful solutions. In this
spirit, Heifetz (1994) distinguished between technical problems that are familiar and can be solved
by known solutions and adaptive problems that have not been seen before and require solutions that
are not yet defined.
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FLEXIBLE LEADERSHIP SPECIAL ISSUE: ACCEPTANCE OF UNCERTAINTY
This
document
is
copyrighted
by
the
American
Psychological
Association
or
one
of
its
allied
publishers.
This
article
is
intended
solely
for
the
personal
use
of
the
individual
user
and
is
not
to
be
disseminated
broadly.

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