ambiguity in decision making

You will hear the advice that you “need to get out of your comfort zone” in order to grow. When someone gives me that unwarranted advice, I usually respond, “When I find my comfort zone, I will tell you.” 

For some of us, our comfort zone is rarely experienced in the workplace. Phone calls, meetings, difficult conversations, presentations, working in a team, collaborating across the organization – Every day can be uncomfortable!

When every day can be overwhelming, how can you make confident decisions?

The reality is that oftentimes you won’t have all of the information necessary to make a fully informed decision. 

Work (and life) does not always present right or wrong answer solutions based on information we are able to gather.  As a kid in school, you had all of the information you needed to provide an answer, that answer was graded, and it was right or it was wrong. Now, you have to act and make decisions using the information available plus your expertise. When you don’t have a lot of information available, it can be very uncomfortable.

You can position yourself to be comfortable with making decisions in the face of ambiguity by knowing you can handle the feedback either way. 

You can build up this confidence by taking smaller risks in the form of smaller decisions. In this way, you’re exercising your decision making abilities in order to grow your skills. Be prepared to learn from both your successes and your failures. This will build your confidence in decision making. 

When you are ready to accept and handle that this decision might not be the best one, the amount of anxiety will lessen, even though the level of uncertainty remains the same. 

Consider the outcome if you made the wrong decision – is it that serious? Oftentimes, it is trivial, and you will be able to pivot quickly. While you’re building up experience in smaller risks and smaller decisions, your ability to handle the result of your decision will grow. You can build confidence that even if you made the wrong decision, you can handle the outcome. Knowing you can handle the outcome either way will lessen your anxiety about making a decision.

This situation never goes away in your career. In fact, it becomes more frequent! The more you learn through dealing with ambiguity, the higher you will rise, and the more ambiguity you will face. But your skillset will grow to be able to handle it!