I help teams work better together and over the last several years, I’ve witnessed an alarming trend: instead of striving to make sense of challenging topics or derive meaning from divergent insights, many people simply give up. “Just tell me what I need to know” has become a common refrain. As work feels palpably harder these days, making sense of dissonance becomes an insurmountable effort and meaning feels elusive. Our patience for ambiguity is shot.
I guess it should be no surprise. We’ve come off a global pandemic into a world of war, political polarization and a looming fear of uncontrolled technological change. Our brains are so overloaded our cognitive bandwidth is maxed out. The most recent Gallup global workplace report reveals that 77% of workers are disengaged, with significantly high levels of stress and worry. Stress erodes our ability to cope with uncertainty and ambiguity–just when we need it most. The result is a vicious and exhausting circle of anxiety and doubt.
Management literature is rife with advice for senior leaders navigating VUCA, a work environment marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. But VUCA isn’t just for the top of the house. Tolerance for ambiguity is a critical workplace skill for workers at all levels to successfully navigate the uncertainties of today’s world. Here are three ways to build it.
Adopt A Growth Mindset To Reframe Problems
Gone are the days when we can simply get through the workday leaning on our existing expertise. The half-life of skills continues to shrink, with technical skills expiring after a mere 2.5 years. Regardless of role or level, your most valuable skill is your ability to learn new ones. No matter how stressful or exhausting your work may feel, learning and curiosity are not optional. Instead of seeing ambiguity as a threat to your continued success, reframe it as an opportunity for growth and experimentation.
I recently worked with a frustrated HR team seeking to diversify their company’s managerial hiring. They had a clear sense of where they wanted to go, but an opaque understanding of what to do to get there. Convinced the unconscious biases of their mostly white male line leaders was preventing them from achieving their targets, they wanted a playbook to fix the managers rather than exploring other approaches. Once they realized they could identify promising candidates from within the company, they saw a new path to increasing diversity while still working to expand leaders’ mindsets. By reframing the parameters of their thorny challenge, they found new levers to pull. It took time and an intentional focus on their practices, a worthy investment in expanding the avenues to realize their objectives.
Challenge Your Assumptions And Invite Diverse Perspectives
At a time when we feel most isolated, our need for collaboration is at its highest. But the most effective collaboration requires us to challenge our assumptions and seek out divergent points of view. When a new challenge leaves you scratching your head, groupthink is the kiss of death. To escape the echo chamber of business as usual, push yourself to look for alternative perspectives, to actively seek opposite ways of addressing the problem.
Consider developing a practice that will broaden your horizons. When faced with a looming decision, especially one where you don’t have all the information you need or where you aren’t sure what the outcomes will be, give yourself the grace of a little extra time. Ask yourself one more question, probing just a little deeper on the issue you are trying to resolve. Invite one more thought, seeking out one more piece of information that doesn’t confirm where you are already leaning. And finally, listen to one more voice, engaging someone who doesn’t always agree with you for their thoughts and reactions to your problem. This practice of actively seeing one more question, one more thought, and one more voice ensures that you expand your outlook before tackling an ambiguous challenge with a firm decision.
Don’t Go It Alone
In their book, Immunity to Change, Harvard scholars Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey quipped that “the complexity of our world has surpassed the complexity of our minds.” And that was fifteen years ago! The overwhelming message is that one mind is never enough–together we are each other’s best defense against an uncertain and ambiguous future. Resist the pressure to tackle problems alone. Build your relationships at work. Social relationships help us to capitalize on the intersections of experience and expertise, ideas and perspectives, tapping into creative solutions generated together. Deepening social connections helps pressure test your ideas and gather viewpoints that lead to better decisions.
If you haven’t yet developed the networks you need, all is not lost. Start by asking for help. Even though you may feel awkward, asking questions is a gateway skill to developing the nuanced insights you need. And a vast body of research shows that asking for help makes you look smart, helps those you ask feel good, and encourages people to like you (helping build the very relationships you need). High quality workplace connections are critical drivers of satisfaction and innovation, shifting colleagues from transacting to relating, yielding mutual approaches to problem solving and collaboration.
A rapidly changing work environment tees up problems guaranteed to tax your expertise and challenge your experience. Ambiguity will try your patience at precisely the moment you need to move decisively. Not every situation will come out exactly as you hope. But don’t put your head in the sand, or expect someone else to tell you what you need to know. The murkiest moments require your best critical thinking and copious patience. By refreshing your curiosity, challenging your assumptions and extending your networks, you can deepen your tolerance for ambiguity and even make work a little less stressful in the process.
First published in Forbes.com.
