I had just finished reading a great article in the December 4, 2007 Wall Street Journal, entitled: Welcome the Millennials, when I sat down to check e-mail and was excited to see a note from a long-time associate (and great person) describing her latest career step.  After a number of years as a superstar soloist (an individual contributor), she has been promoted to her first management role.  Thinking about my associate’s great news and the article about the new generation of professionals moving into the workforce, I found myself wondering what one piece of advice I would like to pass along to every new leader. 

I settled on a purposefully vague answer.  It would be: learn to embrace and leverage ambiguity. Strange perhaps, but that is my final answer.

We live and work in a world that is inherently ambiguous and seemingly more-so every day.  Whether you are dealing with the unique challenges of working with and leading individuals from more diverse generations than at any point in our history, or you are challenged with plotting business choices in a world where everything changes in the blink of an eye, one thing is certain: few decision paths are crystal clear.  Leading others, choosing strategies, responding to disruptive change-these are just a few big examples of where there will always be many options and few if any guarantees.

A few years ago, I attended an executive leadership program at Kellogg (Northwestern) entitled: Reinventing Leadership-A Breakthrough Approach.  This remarkable experience (I highly recommend this program for many reasons-email me if you want to hear them) was filled with some fascinating exercises.  One in particular stands out in my mind. 

The Exercise:

There were 40 participants from 8 countries and all held titles of Director or higher.  It was the first day and we had run through introductions, the course overview and our first two small group breakout exercises.  After the second exercise, the instructors summarily chastised the entire group for lack of creativity in the solutions, poor team and time management, lack of role clarification.  Their criticisms were abrupt and the mood in the room went negative quickly.  We were sent off for our 3rd exercise–a fairly complex problem/situation and soon it was time for the report-outs.  The instructors sat silently during the report outs, no questions, no comments, no facial expressions and no eye-contact.  After the last group completed their report-out, the instructors continued their silent treatment.  People attempted to ask questions and draw them in and had no success.  This went on for the longest five or ten minutes I’ve ever been through.  People become agitated, vocal, sullen and even angry.  One person indicated that, "This is b.s." and left the room  for coffee.  At the peak of the discomfort, one of the participants jumped in with: "I think this is part of the exercise.  Pierre and Paul (the instructors) are looking for us to pull together as a team and come up with some creative and viable solutions."   

From that point onwards, the room of 40 professionals from a variety of cultures began to self-organize.  Leaders were identified.  Role players grabbed specific tasks and the process began to work.  Thirty minutes later, there were some compelling solutions presented.  After constructive debates, the group settled on an approach, looked at the instructors and said, "That’s it."   They smiled, the silence was broken and the cloud lifted from the room. 

The lesson of course was all about ambiguity.  We were faced with a tough case, instructors who moved from almost angry at our prior poor performance to silent and stone-faced.  And we were on our own to sort out our structure, roles and approaches and to choose a path.  We were faced with totally unexpected instructor behavior (not something you will likely ever see in a classroom) and we went through the range of human emotions in response.  It was truly disorienting.  And brilliant.  Every participant understood that in the face of ambiguous circumstances, the leader must step up, sort through the emotions, provide context and help people orient on tasks and to develop solutions (that are not clearly visible as right or wrong).

The takeaway:

Back to my advice to the new leader.  Learn to leverage and embrace ambiguity. The lack of prior context or a pre-established path provides you with tremendous opportunities to lead, to create and motivate and inspire.  Ambiguity is the creative clay that you use to mold your situation to the benefit of your organization.  You will make mistakes, but the bigger mistake is to get frustrated and metaphorically do what one participant in our class did-give up and head out for coffee.  Don’t expect the answers to be readily apparent, and don’t expect the situations you find yourself in to look and feel the same.  As the author Ayn Rand indicated, "Always check your premises."   If the world goes silent on you, rethink what it is that you are supposed to do.