I have always been very jealous of colleagues who are certain about things. Certain about the recommendation to the client; certain about how to handle a difficult team member; certain about their own career choice and path ahead. Certainty isn't something I experience much myself - I tend to get stuck playing out the different pros and cons, or (even if I think I am right) worrying about how others will react to my opinion - and I have often wished I could be clearer, firmer and more confident at work. So, one of the best things about my dalliance with existential philosophy over the last couple of years is the realisation that it's OK to be unsure. The world is complicated and ambiguous, and so are the people that inhabit it. One of the clearest and most powerful advocates for this idea is Simone de Beauvoir. Rightly famous for her hugely influential feminist work, The Second Sex, she also wrote extensively and brilliantly on many other topics. In The Ethics of Ambiguity she describes how human existence is deeply paradoxical: we are individuals, yet we are hugely dependent on others; we are minds, but also bodies; we are radically free, and yet massively constrained in what we can do. She criticises many philosophers who have tried to lay out simple answers to these paradoxes, and instead urges us: "Let us try to assume [i.e., accept and own] our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting". Of course - sometimes we do need to be clear and make a stand for what we believe in. But sometimes that can be dangerous - sometimes it is better to hold ourselves in the uncomfortable place of ambiguity and uncertainty, and avoid the rush to simplicity and clarity. We often talk about "wicked problems" (in the memorable description of Rittell and Webber) - where certainty can actually be damaging in blinding us to the subtlety and difficulty of the best path ahead. Uncertainty and ambiguity are therefore not bad, and definitely not to be eliminated. Some of my best coaching conversations happen when we are not trying to solve a problem or come to an answer - but rather when we are letting ourselves explore the complexity and ambiguity of the professional challenges we encounter, facing up to life's difficulties rather than trying to find a quick fix. The final word goes to the poet John Keats, who brilliantly captures this as the idea of "Negative Capability": "…several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason…"
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