The February 2012 issue of Chief Learning Officer offers a special report on leadership development that makes an effective and topical preamble for The Ambiguity Architect and our work in understanding the importance of managing uncertainty as it relates to  leadership.

“Now you’ve got to work with huge amounts of ambiguity, help other people do that too, and manage risk,” she said. “You’re always trying new things, pushing the edge of the envelope — and you have to enable your teams to experience and also let them fail. That’s a whole set of leadership capability that we really didn’t have a huge dose of to start with.”—Diane Gherson, vice president of talent at IBM, CLO Magazine

That’s pretty specific to our work, but the report also describes an environment in which leadership is “granted” and subjective and harder to teach. All of this points to the value of ambiguity tolerance as a leadership trait.

For instance, globalization has forced GE’s leaders to think and manage in multiple layers, making critical thinking a top skill. They must have an acute sense of how these complex layers relate, and be able to assimilate business strategies across cultures. That is the framework in which executive leadership — across all global organizations — now operates.

“The information age has changed the world of leaders,” said Jeff Barnes, senior manager of global learning at GE. “Information is so quick. You don’t have time to really stop and think about it … your job [as a leader] has gotten so much more complicated.”

Read it all here.

Randy was interviewed while in Brisbane by Research News, the publication of the Australian Market and Social Research Society.

Glass ceiling author still waiting for more diversity among leaders

During his visit to Australia this year, Dr Randall White argued leaders need to be able to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, rather than just take a command and control approach.

As an international thought leader in the field of executive coaching and leadership development – and the ‘token guy’ in the team that wrote the 1987 hit Breaking the Glass Ceiling – Dr Randall White was invited to Brisbane to deliver a keynote address at the 2011 Organisational Psychology Conference.

At the same conference, Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) CEO Serge Sardo argued that Australian businesses needed to move on from the concept of ‘the leader’ to the concept of ‘leadership’ and building a culture within an organisation that nurtures new leaders. READ MORE.

On leadership:

White cites Joe Rost, who claimed that there are more than 300 definitions of leadership in the West alone, but when asked to define a good leader, he says, ‘Effective leaders create an environment where everybody can maximise their potential, whatever that is. I think effective leaders aren’t afraid to surround themselves with people who are better than them. They are open to asking for, receiving and giving feedback about their performance. They aren’t afraid to be confronted by people around them who are faster, quicker, brighter and more prescient. You start to see the best in leaders when they come to understand that it’s about the legacy that they leave behind them.’ READ MORE.

Diversity in leadership:

He says it’s also important to acknowledge that one of the best breeding grounds for leaders is a start-up.

‘Across a wide variety of industries, we see excluded classes of people – women, those who might be termed minorities – starting up their own businesses because they get to write their own rules and create their own culture. They bring different kinds of behaviour to the leadership enterprise. Start-ups give people the opportunity to try their hand at leadership whereas, if they were in a larger organisation, they might not experience as big a stretch.’…

Leaders don’t just come packaged as white, male and 6’1 ”
White says organisational psychology could be potentially very helpful in helping those in the market and social research industry develop leaders, because it encourages people to try out different ideas.

‘For example, let’s have more diverse teams because the greater heterogeneity the more likely the business is to achieve its objectives.’READ MORE.

Here’s an excellent interview with our friend and colleague Liz Mellon, speaking about her book Inside the Leader’s Mind.

Thinkers 50.

Liz Mellon walks with us among dozens of leaders, whether sharing their most public moments or abiding their most unguarded confidence to report her observations and present a behavioral prescription, not for success in itself, but for a sublime personal fulfillment that generates success.

Mellon, the respected academic-and one of the best professors of leadership I know-manages to write in the voice of a thoughtfully investigative journalist, as we are introduced to some of the most interesting organizational leaders in the world. Her keenly empathetic ear helps makes their examples accessible and helpful to leaders at all stages of development. Mellon reveals the sets of common behaviors that we can all study, understand and emulate.

Inside the Leader’s Mind: Five Ways to Think Like a Leader has an engaging cadence that carries us from planting mangroves in Malaysia with a CEO during his corporate training program to the cloistered boardroom blunders of the Deepwater Horizon debacle. Throughout the journey, we meet leaders who fail with bravado, relearn with aplomb and rise back with selfless humility.

Inside the Leader’s Mind articulates a vital catalyst for excellence in a chaotic business environment: ambiguity. As Mellon describes her “Five Ways of Thinking Like a Leader,” the reader is counseled to face realities of solitude and bruising public accountability and, at the same time, the reader is enticed by the narratives of those who navigate the perils to find immense joy as the leaders they set out to be.

Mellon informs the learning community, the psychological academy and all business executives who seek advancement in the highest echelons of global organizations with casually insightful scenarios from topical interviews both recent and revisited from her decades of leadership study.

We see that among globally diverse leaders, the commonality is the unknown. The deck has been reshuffled as powerful nations are digging out from collapse and emerging nations have never seen such golden opportunities.

Challenging the notions of leadership that were responsible for the world’s greatest financial crisis of a century, Inside the Leader’s Mind offers a new path that is as rewarding as it is courageous.

The good news is: nobody has enough information, so here’s your chance for greatness.

We’re finishing up a busy year, as harsher than usual winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere demonstrates that even the Internet can’t dig business out of a snow bank. Nature is still a significant contributor to the ambiguity we face as executives and leaders.

Fortunately, we’ve managed to stay a few steps ahead of bad weather and made it to all engagements in Paris and the United Arab Emirates in the past few weeks.

When we’re back in the States, if you believe our newspapers of record, business seems to be hanging on what the current president will do next and, even more vexing, who will be the president after 2012. Americans have lightened up a bit since the mid-term elections, but in our anecdotal comparisons, we’re still the world’s worriers. Embracing uncertainty—will I have a job, will my flight happen, will I have to take a pay cut—can be frustrating if not harrowing. We think this is why Americans are in such a funk.

In the rest of the world, people are upbeat. They don’t seem to care about who is running government. As we’ve mentioned before, in the emerging markets where we teach, things are now relatively MORE stable and certain than ever before. Chinese executives are noticeably happy. That’s just a hunch. And as a counter-point, we’ll offer John D. Hansen, et al, writing in the Journal of Business Venturing, who inform us that:

Americans SMEs are more willing to deal with the risks associated with making investments in projects that have uncertain outcomes or unusually high profits and losses…the risk-taking dimension of EO (entrepreneurial orientation) addresses a willingness to accept and even create ambiguity, particularly the ambiguity associated with engaging in high-risk projects. The finding that American SMEs are significantly more willing to take risks when compared to SMEs from all other countries seems logical based on the fact that the U.S. ranks lowest in terms of uncertainty avoidance (Americans are more tolerant of ambiguous future returns).

Okay, so maybe we don’t try to avoid uncertainty. But on average, we’re not so happy about it.

Since Phil Hodgson and Executive Development Group partner Randy White published Relax, It’s Only Uncertainty in 2001, we have seen not only validation among the executives we work with, but also greater interest in the challenges of ambiguity in business.

At this week’s SIOP Annual Conference in Atlanta, Sandy Shullman and Randy were encouraged and delighted by the collaborative responses to the two half-day presentations. There appear to be some emerging perspectives on the subject as it relates to the practical applications of learning professionals. People in the field see a need to measure tolerance for ambiguity and the uncertainty that it brings in their quests for  potential leaders in their organizations.

It became apparent to us that this “aptitude for ambiguity” is indeed a trait sought by learning organizations like yours and a trait that can be developed.

As with most of our work, our study of ambiguity is a process that is informed and advanced by the questions learning executives bring. Presently, we are further developing our 360 assessment Ambiguity Architect®, so these kinds of mini-focus groups are invaluable. If your firm is interested in learning more about our work on ambiguity, please contact us via e-mail.

In this month’s CLO magazine:

It’s nice to be needed. There’s been an uptick recently in coaching and executive education engagements in South Africa, India, France, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and, ever so gradually, the United States. Organizations are rethinking their business strategies after the financial collapse.

However, ambiguity abounds. There is an obvious tension — as if “nervous” is the new “strategic.” Management wants results quickly, with a heightened financial vigilance and intensified ROI expectations. We’ve watched participants text reviews of our performance during the sessions. One bad day in class and summary dismissal looms. Read full article here.

We’re seeing greater demands on executive education, but the good news is, businesses that are rebounding seem to acknowledge the role of learning.

Our coaching and classroom engagements during this quarter are taking us to England, Spain, France, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, India and South Africa. Given the United States’ role in the 2008 financial crisis, our role as AMERICAN executive development professionals gives us a little more baggage. Especially when our learners are bankers, as many of our clients are.

Dubai from space. Thanks, NASA!

It’s encouraging to note that many of the smaller banks outside of Europe and the US are finding themselves in fairly stable situations with promising opportunity, following the well-deserved dressing down (followed by an arguably undeserved bailing-out) of Western financiers. As executive coaches we’re also thrilled that financial clients around the world are investing in learning initiatives and leadership development.

Should I be surprised when the first eager question I get from an Indian executive is, “will we be covering ethics”?

We have been studying the affects that ambiguity has on leaders for two decades. The uncertainty that we all feel in ambiguous situations appears to be both a challenge and an opportunity. The ability to fearlessly grapple with ambiguity might be a trait that competitive businesses should seek.

The first of the eight “enablers” sought through our 360 assessment “Ambiguity Architect®” is described as “motivated by mysteries.” While the purpose of Ambiguity Architect is to determine a person’s ability to navigate uncertain situations, we find that many of the contributing traits of high rated participants to be those that are desired by scientists, research and development, inventors and entrepreneurs. If the business environment continues to grow in complexity and scale, and we have many reasons to believe that it will, are these roles that grapple with the unknown not increasingly important to leaders across many industries?

Our data suggests high performers can thrive in uncertain situations in which the ambiguity is not a choice nor desirable. We can only speculate much beyond this, but it is compelling to ask: can leaders learn to seek out uncertainty and ambiguity as a business strategy? Does skill at “being uncertain” become a positive motivator for creative solutions by lessening the severity of judgment for “dumb questions.” If we are operating in uncharted waters who is to say we’re on the wrong course? Perhaps there is a new mode or style of leadership that pursues uncertain situations because of these factors.

If there’s a fork in the road, take it: Leaders who used uncertainty to their advantage
by Dr. Randall P. White

Uncertainty is an increasing reality for today’s executives. Those who can thrive as they charge toward the unknown share a predictable mix of savvy, attitude, and behavior.

In this era of uncertainty, we’re watching our greatest leaders emerge. These are folks who ignore the pessimistic attitudes around them, the too many cashed reality checks on the state of the global economy, and the risk and do something completely new. They move toward the unknown as a deliberate leadership strategy. They have to: it’s the only way they know how to behave.

Although we don’t always know what these leaders will do, new research shows that leaders like these share a set of measurable behaviors, including a penchant for risk, a dauntless attitude, relentless curiosity, and great skills—and while some are teachable, many are not.

We recently studied executives around the world using an assessment instrument called Ambiguity Architect. The instrument measures an executive’s tolerance for ambiguity and rapidly changing situations. As we move toward increasingly uncertain times, it’s essential to know an executive’s ability to manage uncertainty.

We find that those who are most adept at leading through uncertainty perform better than their peers, have a greater likelihood of being promoted, and are comfortable leading an organization through the uncharted waters of change.

Surrounded by support
As president, Joe Leonard helped AirTran recover from one of the worst airplane crashes in history and shape the company into one of largest low-cost carriers in the nation.

AirTran’s predecessor, ValuJet, lost a DC-9 when it crashed and burned in the Everglades, killing more than 100  people. Years after the crash, skepticism was still high regarding low-cost carriers, and AirTran was strapped for cash. Things were so dire that most executives would have said “liquidate.”

But Leonard isn’t known for going by the books. He’d risen through the corporate ranks on the engines-and-rivets side of the business, and according to a story on Leonard in USA Today, he thrived on challenges. He was literally raised near the airport and took flying lessons at 13. To pay for them, Leonard would gas and park the planes.

Leonard illustrates a key behavior we discovered in our research on executives that can handle uncertainty: once he started at AirTran, he surrounded himself with support. Leonard quickly reached out to acquaintances from the industry, all veterans of commercial air carriers. He learned about AirTran’s assets and defects, and years of experience helped him realize that the airline still had good routes and a loyal team.

“We were all extreme risk takers,” Leonard told USA Today about AirTran’s reinvention. And, of course, they were tenacious—“never give up” was their key mantra.

Doing the unthinkable
In 2007, when many newspaper organizations either braced for or announced lay-offs, the Norway-based media company Schibsted had good news. Its earnings rose 28% in the fourth quarter. Online operations will generate about 20% of the company’s revenue this year. Meanwhile, many traditional news industries are folding, according to the New York Times (“While Others Struggle, Norwegian Newspaper Publisher Thrives on the Web,” February 19, 2007).

Schibsted’s success started in 1995 when the newspaper industry faced a career-breaking decision: go with the wave of new media or wait and see how it would all shake out.

Schibsted didn’t hesitate. As other organizations quibbled over how to charge readers for what they read online, Schibsted invested heavily in new media. Then the company did the unthinkable: gave its print edition away for free.

Schibsted continued investing in building the credibility and content of its online newspapers. It started charging companies to pay for ad space and let the readers read for free.

In 2000 and 2001, Schibsted didn’t bail out of its new media investments, even as many other organizations did, according to the Times article. Leaders in the company said they recognized early that the Internet would forever change the traditional print industry. They stayed true to that vision.

The trouble with technology is it seemingly changes just as people get the hang of it. Not so with Schibsted. In our research, we call leaders like these future scanners. They possess an almost intuitive sense about technology—the way many other executives have an intuitive sense about strategy. You can’t always train a future scanner, but you can find them. They are the ones who can take advantage of even the faintest signals of what the future can be.

Tackling tough issues
Google faces a different kind of uncertainty. Company buy-outs and mergers have brought growing pains and created a slew of sewn-together, fast-fix solutions for sales processes, according to a recent story in The Wall Street Journal, (“Google Push to Sell Ads On YouTube Hits Snags,” July 9, 2008).

So when Google’s ad revenues fell slightly short of stellar expectations, coupled with complaints from salespeople about a slow, paper-heavy process of purchasing ads, Google listened and then got busy.

In March, Tim Armstrong, Google’s head of advertising and commerce in North America, moved himself from his executive office to smack dab in the middle of the ad team’s cubicle spaces. He was determined to figure out Google’s YouTube sales process, according to the Journal. He emerged a month later with a list of 105 fix-its.

It would have been easy to pass off the work of tackling a tough problem to someone else. Instead, Armstrong launched Project Spaghetti to figure it out himself. It’s one of many oddly named projects Google launches (including Weed Days and Project Drano) to get to the source, not the symptom, of the problem.

Leaders like Armstrong do the dirty work. No one wants to get ensnared in a process like that, but everyone breathes a big sigh of relief when it’s done. You can teach an executive the strategy, but you can’t always teach them the “wanna.” Armstrong and other leaders like him have the wanna. It’s a behavior.

Armstrong, Leonard, and Schibsted probably all learned and developed the behaviors that made them successful long before they wore an executive suit. In fact, our research finds that most of these tell-tale behaviors started in childhood.

And there’s no doubt that with the uncertain times ahead, you’ll find some of your greatest leaders—especially if you know what to look for.

Dr. Randall P. White is co-author of the book Relax, It’s Only Uncertainty and is a co-developer of an assessment instrument called Ambiguity Architect. This instrument measures an executive’s tolerance and comfort for ambiguity and rapidly changing situations. For more information, visit www.edgp.com.

Published Monday, 01 December 2008 in American Executive.