Analyze Weick's Argument

Leadership as the Legitimization of Doubt

Think about what Weick says about leadership and doubt. Do you agree or disagree?

I fully endorse with Weick’s assertion in "Leadership as the Legitimation of Doubt”.
Doubts and Uncertainty exist in a project in various forms and to varying degrees. Foreseen unknowns can be handled with contingency and risk mitigation plans. A response mechanism would have been logically thought out for such scenarios.
The unexpected unknowns pose a bigger challenge in terms of detection and redressal. Doubts help raise factual questions and find answers in project environments. The attempt to clarify doubtful situations helps provide a sense of direction in what would otherwise be an unpredictable and perhaps an uncharted environment.

Sense making is the effort to grasp the unknowns lurking in the environment. It facilitates an individual in leadership role to adapt, innovate and be fluidic to a shifting project world. Weick’s statement urges leaders to use the instrument of “doubt” to unlearn what they think they know, to question the status quo, and use creative ways for problem solution. By leveraging animation, improvisation, lightness, authentication, and learning, a leader can comprehend and make sense of what is going on. In other words, they would be able to map out a model that would help describe the unknown. This map could be tested using data gathered from various sources including information garnered from human interactions. It would be refined, remodeled or abandoned based on how credible the information is. “Sense making”, as simple as it sounds, is still a complex concept. I believe Sense making is a core leadership capability.

The remarkable thing that strikes me about Weick’s assertion is that I have been using it all along at some level to wade through the inherent