image of a foam coffee cup with brown outer sleeveThe Leadership Caffeine™ series is intended to make you think and act.

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Harvard Business School Professor, Linda Hill’s, description of context faced by everyone in a leadership role in this era: “overload, ambiguity and conflict” is spot on. It is a much more articulate labeling of what I describe as, “the leadership blender.” And it reflects the state of existence of a large percentage of leaders as they strive to do more with less, faster, and with more impact.

You could not ask for three more challenging contextual sets of circumstances than overload, ambiguity and conflict. Our typical responses to these environmental characteristics practically guarantee mistakes and sub-optimizing.

Overload generates physical and psychological stress as we struggle to prioritize and substitute in half-baked attempts to multi-task. The results often reflect the lack of focus and the rushed plans to navigate issues. We sense and respond, where often, sense and think and then respond reflects the more appropriate sequence of events.

Ambiguity tends to freeze the action as we struggle to gain a contextual toe-hold on something new and different. Instead of creating our own contextual boundaries through a series of experiments, we pause, waiting for conditions to clear up enough for us to comfortably move forward. By the time things become clear, more agile leaders and competitors have already staked out their own boundaries in what was formerly an ambiguous environment. Their context defines not only the rules of the game but the playing field.

Conflict is much about prioritization and navigating competing interests for resources. When faced with conflicting priorities in an environment demanding speed, the default call is often to say, “yes” to everything, expecting those that are right or effective to rise to the top. In reality, this approach dilutes precious resources and blurs the lines of importance. People are left to wonder where the boundaries are.

What’s a Leader to Do?

The effective leaders I’ve observed in environments characterized by overload, ambiguity and conflict all have their own approaches and techniques, however, they share a common trait: they have control over what I term, their “inner game of leading.”

They are hyper-aware of their role in parsing the noise and helping their team members learn to navigate forward through the fog. They operate with a focus on creating a marketplace of often, conflicting ideas, where people are challenged to both diverge and ultimately converge in their thinking and actions.

They understand the need in fast-paced circumstances to insert occasional pauses—in musical notation, to place the fermata over the caesura—to allow people to consider and rethink. And they understand how to come out of a pause and promote deliberate, quick experiments that facilitate learning and improved decision-making. They manage the game-clock to the circumstances striving for the right level of urgency at the right time.

They rush towards ambiguity, comfortable in their discomfort with the lack of a clear way forward. These effective leaders understand that the winner today is the firm or team who connects external events and systemic or structural changes in markets and industries to new solutions and approaches. They strive to be the disruptor, rather than defend against disruption.

And while these behaviors characteristics may paint the picture of some super-being—an uber-leader, all-knowing in the face of adversity—it’s not that. These individuals often defy categorization in their styles. They aren’t uniquely servant leader or throwbacks to the “great person” theory of leadership. They’re just individuals attuned to their role in helping others move forward. They understand how to apply the tools of group problem-solving and decision-making. And they have an internal orientation system—a leadership g.p.s. that guides them—along with a spirit and energy for adventure that proves infectious in group settings.

Their command of the inner-game helps them fight through the paralyzing potential of self-doubt and the debilitating effects of hubris and arrogance. They are uniquely and distinctly attuned to their role in setting the stage and adjusting the lights and creating the environment for the real actors to do their best work.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I’m not certain when the world of work began to resemble today’s most advanced video games, where sensory overload, extreme ambiguity and conflict define the environment, but it has happened. The timeless behaviors of leadership are still relevant, but everything about the context has changed. Surviving and leveling-up require you to cultivate a very clear and self-guiding inner game of leading.

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Art Petty serves senior executives and management teams as a performance coach and strategy facilitator. Art is a popular keynote speaker focusing on helping professionals and organizations learn to survive and thrive in an era of change. Additionally, Art’s books are widely used in leadership development programs. To learn more or discuss a challenge, contact Art.