Uncertainty

Author: Dave Crisp

11 May

There’s a whole list of professions – engineers, doctors, nurses, IT specialists, police, even accountants, for instance – that are believed to have particular difficulty leading or working with teams or managing human resource issues generally. If there’s any truth to this it’s because these professions must constantly strive for certainty and defend against the unpredictable happening. Rigid adherence to standards and procedures can help prevent mistakes we know will sometimes occur despite them with devastating consequences, but it can make dealing with other people a challenge.

At the same time, we hear of great doctors with superb bedside manners, accountants who become trusted advisors of diverse individual needs and risk-sensitivities in investing and other delicate, human feeling-oriented tasks being successfully managed by individuals within all of these professions. Yet we still find people continually writing them off prejudicially as inevitably incapable of working well with people. It’s a bit of a joke, but it perpetuates stereotypes and, for some in the professions, justifies them not trying to improve.

The bottom line is that working with people can be messy and unpredictable. Ask two people the same question and you’ll get different reactions. Some responses will be unpredictable no matter how versed you may be in psychology. Most of the time you can feel fairly confident you know the range of likely reactions, but some will inevitably surprise you and will fall way outside the range of anything you might guess. This causes some people who like everything as neat and tidy as possible to give up or shut down.

The fact is everyone can deal with uncertainty with a little practice. Most professions have whole branches dealing with predicting risk. Just put those words in Google or Yahoo Search (here or here) and you can see how much thought goes into this area. But try searching for "predicting risk in human relationships" or "…in working with people" and it’s a very different story. We don’t have a science easily accessible to people for understanding what they’re up against even though this is a critical reality in every sort of work today.

Bookmark and share this post

Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 3 Strategic - Thinking, Fix The Jerks

2 Responses for "Uncertainty"

Craig Allen May 14th, 2007 at 11:30 am 1
Hi Dave,

Stephen Covey in the Seven Habits books has suggested that creating certainty in human relations (not only keeping commitments, but also regularly making new ones – and of course fulfilling them) is a key to building trust, and pays big dividends eventually. It would be interesting to see him, or someone else, address how risk and uncertainty tie in to that.

Commitments that are clear-cut to make and fulfill are the low-hanging fruit of human relationships (e.g. following through on “let’s have lunch some time”). The meaningful stuff comes where it is impossible to know if the commitment will be fulfilled (if you take the drug I prescribe, the expected benefit is worth the possible side-effects).
Dave Crisp May 14th, 2007 at 12:15 pm 2
Thanks for the comment, Craig. Your point that effective managers take the initiative to make it clear to staff they keep commitments is a good one. By doing this they introduce a type of certainty into the work environment that isn’t there otherwise. If staff know they can depend on the manager, including that the manager helps keep the environment an OK place to try new ideas, then they feel they’re able to contribute and that, in turn, helps them to be committed, productive and engaged. They’ll try more in future to the extent they believe the certainty of support is there.

Click for RSS feed here:
or
...or for email updates:

Uncertainty

2 Responses for "Uncertainty"

Leave a reply

Blog Categories

Recent Comments

Site Pages/Articles

Blogroll

Archives