Survival Skill of the Month

Ambiguity: The ability to manage when there is doubt, when there is no right answer

"It has been said that maturity for the individual is the ability to live with ambiguity, with the knowledge that little is clear-cut, that life's most difficult situations are unclear, that mankind's most profound aspirations have costs as well as benefits and that absolute good and absolute evil do not exist."

~ Leo Cherne

Tactics:
Harvard Business Review’s Breakthrough Ideas for 2006 annual survey predicts that characteristics important to managers in the twenty-first century will be their ability to deal with ambiguity or, as they describe it, environments of “risk, uncertainty and doubt.” For the most part, our children’s lives are more about getting the “right answer.” As adults their world will be more about making a judgment call when there is no right answer and having the self confidence to do so. A study conducted by the Fugua School of Business at Duke University concluded that high performing managers were actually not risk averse, but were comfortable in making choices, and that they had a high level of self-confidence and optimism to guide them.
For our children therefore, it is important that they develop their own problem solving skills, their own sense of self confidence about making decisions and a comfort with the consequences of those decisions, including failure. So, give your child the opportunity to make decisions for themselves. If they have a conflict or an issue that needs to be resolved, ask them what they think. Use questions instead of answers. Share with them some of your stories from your youth when you made decisions that were not always the best. Tell them how you adapted and dealt with the outcomes.