On Wednesday, November 11, second-year fellow Khadija Lalani gave a professional development competency presentation on dealing with ambiguity.
Ambiguity is all too familiar to us; we come into contact with it on a daily basis. As our group discussion began, Khadija challenged us to think of ambiguous moments and situations as opportunities to learn and develop professionally. Accepting the challenge of ambiguity, she said, would allows us to overcome an overwhelmed mindset and better handle risk and uncertainty.
Khadija then led us in a brief activity where we asked each other one of the most common interview questions: “Describe a crisis and how you handled it.” As we shared our stories of handling crisis, themes for effectively dealing with ambiguity emerged - remaining confident, maintaining a calm attitude, developing a plan, being comfortable with imperfect information, utilizing your network, and engaging creativity, among others. Naturally, certain strategies were more appropriate for certain situations of ambiguity, but all of the strategies are great tools to know how to use when dealing with ambiguity.
After identifying strategies to deal with ambiguity, we launched into a case study where we had to find a way to raise revenue for a town whose taxpayers did not favor tax increases. Beyond the fact that the case was a situation of ambiguity, we were also provided limited information about the town and had to answer without asserting contingencies. Each team engaged other professional development competencies - creativity, perspective, and problem solving - when solving the case. After we presented our solution plans, Khadija highlighted clarifying questions and managing up as two other competencies we could use as tools when dealing with ambiguity.
My takeaway from Khadija’s presentation was the strategy of “biting off little bites” when dealing with ambiguity. To illustrate this strategy, imagine your boss asks you to find a rock. (The rock is symbolic of any work project request.) Instead of spending all your time searching for the perfect rock, only to bring it to your boss and find out that it is not what he or she is looking for, it would be more effective to go out and pick five rocks to bring back to your boss and ask for feedback on how to best proceed. Additionally, asking your boss what he or she does not want is a great clarifying question that helps manage expectations.
To read more about dealing with ambiguity, check out the GW Organizational Development and Effectiveness Learn Now Guide.