Patience in the face of ambiguity helps us avoid brash decisions driven by our emotions instead of our intel ects. We must use time to our advantage and temper our tendency to act too quickly. The leader of a large technology company shared with me the chal enges—and great bouts of anxiety—she faced when a large and wel -funded competitor entered her space. The new competitor was wil ful y misleading her company’s clients—claiming that her company’s customer service was subpar and that their pricing was inferior. But rather than rushing to draft a defensive marketing strategy and cal customers, this leader stayed the course and introduced a new round of enhancements that trumped the competition. “I refused to let our momentary angst derail our wel -thought-out plan,” she explained to me. “As a leader, my job was to promote tolerance for a lot of crap in the meantime.” The best leaders have a high tolerance for ambiguity. They don’t go nuts over the unknown, and they don’t lose patience when dealing with disappointments.
