Exploring the Role of Ambiguity Tolerance in an Engineering Professional's Identity as a Leader

Engineering leaders acquire knowledge, skills, behaviors, and experiences throughout their career that are continually renegotiated in their ongoing sense-making of their personal narrative. While research has shown that interventions or developmental experiences are beneficial for leadership development (i.e. Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa, & Chan, 2009), very little research has been done on understanding how individuals in the engineering field come to their self-definition of what it means to be a leader in the engineering field. In coming to know their self-definition of being an engineering leader, identity can be explored from various aspects, including their perceptions of the meanings associated with a particular role (Stryker & Burke, 2000). This research endeavor explored identity through the perceptions of graduate students aiming to earn an Engineering Technical Management degree and their beliefs about leading in the engineering field. The survey results showed that our current professionals in the program see a correlation between their belief as self as a leader and their belief in their ability to perform but do not see a correlation between their belief in ambiguity tolerance with their belief in the ability to perform or their self as a leader. As leaders today need to navigate the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) landscapes, understanding leaders and future leaders' perceptions of how this belief in ambiguity tolerance becomes part of their identity as a leader is critical to knowing how to develop leaders in the engineering field.