My focus in this series is not only about ambiguity, but about how people respond to ambiguity and impact themselves and those around them. Those impacted could be colleagues, family or friends. As a leader, your ability to bring clarity to chaos is one of the single most important skills you can possess. So far, we’ve looked at three personas:.

• Part 1 introduced Aaron the Avoider
  
• Part 2 introduced Brett the Broadcaster
  
• Part 3 introduced Cal the Complicator
  
• Part 4 introduced Diane the Driver
  

The final persona is Sue the Scaler.

Sue was the VP of Program Management at Alloy Industries. Seven directors reported to her, each with about 20 people under them. She started at Alloy as a project manager two decades earlier, having worked her way up to her current VP position. She excelled at execution, and especially noteworthy was her ability to bring clarity to ambiguity.

When faced with an ambiguous situation, she methodically dissected the situation, separated knowns from unknowns, ensured those who needed to be involved in driving clarity had a seat at the table, drove to consensus, and did the follow-through to ensure clarity stuck.

When she was promoted to director, her mentor, Teresa, took her out for coffee.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com. 

It was one of the worst meetings in Greg’s project management career.  

“We are slipping by a month,” Greg said to his leader Kavita.

“How long have you known about this?” Kavita asked.

“Um, two weeks. I’ve been working hard to pull it back in but wasn’t able to do.”

“And I’m just finding out about this now? Why didn’t you ask for help?”

Greg stammered. “I thought I could handle it on my own.”

“This is really bad, Greg. We have customers relying on us to deliver on time. Sue, you work with Greg to see where we’re at and see if we can pull this thing back in. Hopefully it’s not worse than a month.”

“Will do, Kavita,” Sue said.

“Good, I need to northwind my management and let them know we may have a problem. Get back to me by end of day with your assessment. Clear?”

“Clear,” Greg said as he looked down, avoiding eye contact with Kavita.

“I’m disappointed you didn’t ask for help,” Kavita said as she left the room.

Asking for help. Something that by nature we know how to do. Whether it’s in the form of a baby crying, a kindergartener needing his shoe tied, or a teenager needing a parent’s help with a flat tire, asking for help is something each and every one of us has experience with. Yet in a professional setting, asking for help can be viewed as a sign of weakness; something that could reflect negatively on a person’s ability to deliver.
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This couldn’t be further from the truth.