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. 

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

Now we meet Diane the Driver.

Diane was a seasoned PM known for her discipline to keep project teams and stakeholders focused through successful completion. Her latest project was to implement a new company-wide HR system. Dave was a new hire and was staffed on the project as a product manager.

Dave did a great job of building relationships with the business users. Diane was under mandate to hold the schedule firm, which meant she had to keep scope to plan of record to ensure she met her date. Everything was going well into user acceptance testing. During UAT, Jeff, one of the business users raised two “small” enhancements that were previously deemed as out of scope with Dave.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

One of my previous employers utilized a methodology to help its employees assess skill strengths and opportunities for improvement. The methodology contained a broad set of core competencies. My favorite core competency was dealing with ambiguity.

The two operative words in the phrase are dealing and ambiguity. Dictionary.com defines ambiguity as an unclear, indefinite or equivocal word, expression, or meaning. Pretty ironic that the word ambiguity has a clear meaning.
My focus in this series is not only about ambiguity, but about how people respond to ambiguity and impact themselves and those around them. It’s not limited to a person’s professional life; ambiguity can manifest itself in virtually any aspect of a person’s life.

Those impacted could be colleagues, family, friends or loved ones. I believe that, particularly as a leader or project manager, your ability to bring clarity to chaos is one of the single most important skills you can possess. AI can certainly help you think through ambiguous situations, but it takes the leader/PM to confidently and rationally drive that clarity across affected stakeholders.

To that end, I’d like to highlight five ambiguity personas in this series. This will help you identify where your strengths or opportunities lie so you can be better at dealing with ambiguity.

Meet Aaron the Avoider on ProjectManagement.com. 

“If you do this, you’ll definitely increase revenue,” Mark said. Mark was a brash young consultant out to make a name for himself on his first consulting gig since graduating with an MBA. The client, Paula, was an experienced sales manager. She patiently listened to Mark’s presentation filled with consultant-speak and tired cliches. It was the “definitely increase revenue” claim that got her to chime in.

“Increasing revenue is always a great thing. Tell me, Mark, where have you done this before?” Paula asked.

“Well, our firm has done this with a lot of clients.”

“That may be true, but you’re pitching me on work that you specifically would be doing for us. I’m curious as to where you’ve specifically succeeded with a project like this and your experience with increasing revenue. Where have you done this before?”

Mark stammered for an answer. “I would have a team working with me that has the experience to deliver.”

“Mark, I’ve been around the block a lot and can tell when someone isn’t being up-front with me. You’ve never done a project like this before, have you?”

“Well, yeah; when working on my MBA we did a case study on this. I’m confident I can do the work and deliver results for you, Paula.”

Paula smiled politely. “Very good, Mark; let me think about it, OK?”

“Certainly. Can I call you next week?” Mark asked.

“I’ll be out, but I’ll give you a ring if we decide to pursue further. Thanks, Mark.”

Paula got up from her chair, shook hands with Mark and led him out of the office.

“Sheesh, what a poser,” Paula thought as she walked back to her desk, knowing she would not be calling Mark back.

Fred was livid with his performance appraisal. He had consistently been a strong project manager in his organization for several years, having received top-of-tier raises and bonuses from Gary, his previous manager. Earlier in the year he was reorganized into a new organization led by Janet, a seasoned and well-respected leader in the company. While Fred’s raise and bonus were respectable, he was not rated in the top tier of the organization. The two sat down to discuss his performance appraisal.

“Janet, this is the first time since working for this company I haven’t gotten an outstanding rating. I delivered everything on time, on budget, and within scope. Gary always gave me an outstanding rating and I did everything this year I’ve done in the past. What gives?”

“I’m glad we’re talking about this, Fred. Do you remember the discussion we had when you first joined my organization?”

“I do,” Fred said. “We talked about needing to be excellent in our delivery.”

“Yes, and what else did we talk about?”

“Thanks for meeting with me today,” Ann said as she sat down with Jim.

“Sure.”

“Jim, I’m starting up a new customer relationship management project and my boss suggested I talk to a couple of other project managers to get some lessons learned.”

“I’m happy to help. First off, on my last project we delivered our intended scope, came in under budget and ahead of schedule.”

“That’s impressive,” Ann said. “How did you do it?”

Jim went on for a about 30 minutes talking about what a success the project was, and how there was a lot Ann could learn from their project.

“That all sounds great,” Ann said. “If you had it to do all over again, would you do anything differently?”

Jim paused for a moment. “Well, our user representative wasn’t pulling his weight.” I would have demanded he be replaced.”

“So your lesson learned is about the user assigned to the project?”

“That’s right.”

“OK, thanks for the time, Jim,” Ann said as she got up and left.

“Something’s not quite right about this,” she thought as she went back to her desk. She decided to interview a couple of the leads on Jim’s project and got a different story. They told her how the project was in chaos from the beginning, how the claims of under-budget and ahead of schedule were only after management granted additional budget and schedule relief due to an unplanned overage and schedule slip, and that none of the leads would work with Jim again.

In 7 Tips for Better 360-Feedback Evaluations, I discussed a situation where a non-profit leader whom I coached was reluctant to use 360-feedback evaluations due to an experience with a prior leader of the organization.

It was a textbook example of not only an unwillingness to improve based on feedback, but an unwillingness to even get feedback in the first place. The leader only underwent the 360 because the board he reported to required it. Those in the organization providing feedback insisted on it being anonymous, as they were concerned about retaliation from the leader.

An executive coach (not me) was assigned to administer the 360 process, gather the feedback through interviews, help distill the feedback, then present the feedback to the leader. The leader refused to accept the feedback and would not participate in any corrective action discussions.

The experience was so bad that even long after the leader had left the organization, those who remembered the process didn’t want to do it again with any other execs. Everyone lost, and the organization suffered as a result.
As someone who develops content intended for mass consumption, I am no stranger to feedback. Some feedback is positive, some more constructive. Some is helpful for taking action, while some falls into a vague “this stinks” bucket.

I get feedback from anonymous sources, as well as those as close to me (like my editor/wife, Patty). While I’ve learned to be better at accepting constructive feedback, sometimes it still hurts—particularly if it’s something that I’ve tried to address previously.

I recently stumbled upon a leadership trend called “conscious unbossing.” It caught my attention, not because I knew what it was and wanted to learn more, but because it was such an odd phrase that I couldn’t unsee it and had to find out what in the dickens it was.

Claude and Copilot gave me very similar definitions:

Conscious unbossing is the deliberate choice by talented professionals to opt out of—or step back from—leadership roles in favor of career paths that better align with their personal wellbeing, values, and definition of success.

Okay, I can buy this; a professional makes a conscious choice to not climb the ladder and organizationally lead others. Some were meant to be a thought leader and are more sustainably content than in a people-leader role.

Chasing a promotion because a professional thinks that’s what they’re supposed to do as opposed to what fits into their life doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen many professionals who opted to move into individual contributor (IC) roles because they wanted to have thought leader impact without the stress of being a people leader. The Claude/Copilot definition holds water in my book.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

I recently stumbled across Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report. One statistic jumped out to me: Global manager engagement has been consistently dropping from 31 percent in 2022, 30 percent in 2023, 27 percent in 2024, to 22 percent in 2025.

In plain English, this means in 2025, only 22 percent of managers surveyed were genuinely enthusiastic and invested in their work. The other 73 percent were coasting or entirely checked out. Individual contributor (IC) engagement has been roughly flat—20 percent in 2022, 18 percent in 2023 and 2024, and 19 percent in 2025.

Think about this for a minute. Less than 25 percent of managers and ICs jump out of bed each day fired up about their job. It’s also interesting to note that the engagement gap between managers and ICs has narrowed from a 10-percentage point difference in 2022 to just a three-percentage point difference in 2025.

On the bright side, among U.S. organizations, the 2025 manager engagement number is 36 percent, and in best practice organizations the number jumps to 79 percent. While these numbers are encouraging, it doesn’t mean there’s not a problem. Managers (including project managers) are responsible for translating an exec’s why and what into how. If managers aren’t engaged, then driving the how becomes more risky.

Taking the position that a professional, whether a manager or IC, needs to do whatever is in their power to improve their engagement, I’d like to give you five things to consider to improve engagement for both you and your team:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.