Embracing Ambivalence: The Counterintuitive Trait That Produces Superior Leadership Outcomes

For decades, corporate culture has venerated the decisive leader—the confident executive who speaks with unwavering certainty and seems to have all the answers. This archetype dominates business literature, leadership seminars, and boardrooms worldwide. Yet according to a groundbreaking article by Naomi Rothman in The Wall Street Journal titled "The Best Leaders Aren't Decisive. They're Ambivalent," this entrenched belief may be fundamentally flawed.

Rothman, a professor of management at Lehigh University with over two decades of research into leadership decision-making, presents a compelling case that turns conventional wisdom on its head: the most effective leaders aren't those who project absolute certainty but rather those who embrace ambivalence.

The Paradox of Ambivalent Leadership

When most people visualize successful leadership, they imagine someone decisive and resolute—a figure radiating confidence and conviction. This perception is so pervasive that organizations routinely promote decisive individuals into leadership positions, assuming that certitude equates to competence.

Rothman's research reveals a surprising reality: ambivalent leaders—those who experience and tolerate conflicting emotions while holding contradictory thoughts—consistently outperform their more decisive counterparts in critical leadership metrics.

Ambivalence in this context doesn't mean indecisiveness or weakness. Rather, it represents a sophisticated cognitive approach that acknowledges complexity and embraces nuance. Ambivalent leaders recognize that most significant decisions involve competing priorities, complex trade-offs, and inherent uncertainties.

How Ambivalence Enhances Leadership Performance

Rothman's findings demonstrate several ways ambivalence strengthens leadership:

• Enhanced Information Gathering: Ambivalent leaders seek more information and consider more alternatives because their internal conflict drives them to explore multiple perspectives. In a Brazilian study of 164 consulting teams, ambivalent leaders consulted with more team members more frequently than their decisive counterparts.
• Superior Problem-Solving: In a murder-mystery experiment involving 182 teams, leaders randomly assigned to take an ambivalent approach correctly solved the mystery 67% of the time—significantly outperforming teams led by individuals who supported their initial theory (34%), opposed it (33%), or made no evaluation (28%).
• Cascading Positive Effects: The ambivalent leader's behavior cascades throughout the organization, creating teams characterized by intellectual curiosity, constructive dissent, and innovation. Team members under ambivalent leadership demonstrated increased information-seeking behaviors and critical thinking.
• Better Reception to Criticism: Ambivalent leaders demonstrate greater openness to criticism and feedback, viewing it as valuable information rather than threats to their authority or competence.
• Improved Negotiation Outcomes: Teams led by ambivalent individuals achieved better results in negotiations, more frequently reaching win-win solutions that satisfied multiple stakeholders.

The Organizational Cost of Decisiveness

Traditional leadership models that prize decisiveness over ambivalence exact a steep price. Organizations led by individuals who project absolute certainty often suffer from several pathologies:

• Confirmation Bias: Decisive leaders frequently seek information that confirms their existing beliefs while dismissing contradictory evidence.
• Premature Consensus: Teams under decisive leadership may reach consensus too quickly, foregoing rigorous exploration of alternatives.
• Diminished Innovation: When leaders present their views with absolute certainty, team members become reluctant to offer alternative perspectives or creative solutions.
• Strategic Rigidity: Organizations led by highly decisive individuals often struggle to adapt to changing circumstances, having committed too firmly to a particular direction.

As Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck's research on growth mindset has demonstrated, organizations that embrace uncertainty and view challenges as opportunities for learning consistently outperform those with fixed mindsets. Ambivalent leadership aligns perfectly with this growth-oriented approach.

The Perception Problem

Despite its effectiveness, ambivalent leadership faces a significant obstacle: perception. As Rothman notes, one of the best ways to convince others you possess leadership qualities is to provide definitive answers, even about subjects you know little about. This creates an unfortunate paradox where the leadership approach most likely to produce excellent results (ambivalence) is also least likely to get someone promoted into leadership positions.

This perception gap helps explain why so many organizations continue promoting decisive individuals despite evidence suggesting ambivalent leaders deliver superior outcomes. The very qualities that make someone appear leader-like in selection processes may undermine their effectiveness once in the position.

Research-Backed Evidence

Rothman's findings align with other research on leadership effectiveness. A 2020 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that leaders who displayed epistemic humility—an awareness of the limitations of their knowledge—fostered greater team learning and performance than those who projected complete certainty.

Similarly, research from the Harvard Business School has shown that leaders who ask questions rather than provide answers create more learning-oriented organizations. Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety demonstrates that teams perform best when members feel comfortable expressing uncertainty and asking questions—behaviors modeled by ambivalent leaders.

As Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and author of "Think Again," writes: "The hallmark of wisdom isn't knowing everything—it's knowing what you don't know." This sentiment captures the essence of why ambivalent leadership proves so effective: it begins with the humility to recognize the limits of one's knowledge and perspective.

Cultivating Productive Ambivalence

Rothman outlines three strategies for cultivating productive ambivalence in leadership:

• Acknowledge Internal Conflict: Rather than suppressing contradictory thoughts or feelings, effective leaders pay attention to them, viewing internal conflict as a resource rather than a liability.
• Pursue Internal Conflict: Leaders can actively cultivate ambivalence by writing down ambivalent memories or deliberately considering trade-offs. Engaging with art forms that evoke complex emotional responses also fosters productive ambivalence.
• Build a Culture That Values Questioning: Most importantly, leaders must create organizational cultures where questioning assumptions is valued and systems exist to ensure diverse perspectives are considered in decision-making processes.

Implementing these strategies requires courage—the willingness to appear less certain in a business culture that often rewards displays of confidence. However, the research suggests this courage pays dividends in improved decision quality and team performance.

Organizational Applications

Organizations seeking to leverage the benefits of ambivalent leadership might consider several practical applications:

• Revise Selection Criteria: Leadership selection processes should evaluate candidates' comfort with ambiguity and willingness to consider multiple perspectives, not just their ability to project confidence.
• Reward Intellectual Curiosity: Performance evaluation systems should recognize and reward leaders who demonstrate intellectual curiosity and the ability to integrate diverse viewpoints.
• Formalize Dissent: Organizations might implement formal mechanisms for considering opposing viewpoints, such as assigning "devil's advocate" roles in important decisions or requiring consideration of multiple scenarios.
• Model Ambivalence at the Top: Senior leaders should model comfort with uncertainty, openly discussing the pros and cons of major decisions rather than presenting them as obvious choices.

Google's Project Aristotle, which studied what makes teams effective, found that psychological safety—the belief that one won't be punished for making mistakes or expressing concerns—was the most important factor in team success. Ambivalent leadership naturally creates this psychological safety by demonstrating that uncertainty and questioning are valuable.

The Leadership Development Opportunity

Most leadership development programs currently emphasize decisiveness, clear communication, and confident action. Rothman's research suggests these programs might better serve organizations by teaching leaders how to productively harness ambivalence.

This might include training in:

• Recognizing and tolerating conflicting emotions
• Exploring multiple interpretations of available data
• Seeking and integrating diverse perspectives
• Communicating confidence in process rather than certainty in outcomes
• Creating psychological safety for team members to express doubts

These skills represent a significant departure from traditional leadership development, which often focuses on projecting authority and making quick, confident decisions.

The Future of Leadership

As organizations face increasingly complex, uncertain environments, the value of ambivalent leadership will likely grow. The ability to hold contradictory ideas simultaneously, to question assumptions, and to adapt based on new information becomes increasingly vital in a rapidly changing business landscape.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a powerful illustration of this reality. Leaders who acknowledged uncertainty while remaining committed to learning and adaptation generally navigated the crisis more effectively than those who projected false certainty or clung to pre-pandemic plans.

In this context, Rothman's research doesn't just challenge conventional wisdom—it points toward a more effective leadership model for complex, uncertain times. By embracing ambivalence, leaders can make better decisions, build more adaptive organizations, and create the psychological safety necessary for teams to thrive amidst uncertainty.

Conclusion

Rothman's article delivers a profound challenge to established leadership paradigms. The evidence suggests we've been promoting and celebrating the wrong leadership qualities—valuing decisiveness when ambivalence produces superior results.

This insight carries significant implications for how organizations select, develop, and evaluate leaders. Rather than seeking individuals who project unwavering confidence, organizations might achieve better outcomes by elevating those comfortable with complexity and contradiction—leaders who question themselves and remain open to alternative perspectives.

As business environments grow increasingly complex and uncertain, the capacity for productive ambivalence may become not just advantageous but essential for effective leadership. Organizations that recognize and embrace this reality will likely outperform those that remain attached to outdated leadership ideals centered on decisive action and unwavering certainty.

The path forward is clear, if somewhat paradoxical: by embracing ambivalence, leaders can achieve the decisive results organizations ultimately seek. Perhaps it's time we questioned our certainty about what makes a great leader.