CHAPTER FOUR
Embrace the Power of Doubt
We ourselves feel that what we are doing
is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would
be less because of that missing drop.
ANY PATH WORTH taking will have rises and falls. These ultimately give us the strength that can only come from life experience. They also evoke a colorful set of emotions, from doubt to the desire to escape to the joy of seeing someone touched by our service. We need the ability to persevere through the difficult moments.
Mother Teresa never gave up. She persisted in the face of crippling conditions of poverty and a seemingly impossible war. She devoted her life to serving the voiceless. She saved children and families in the midst of violent civil wars around the world, whether at the height of the famine in Southern Sudan or between Hindus and Muslims in India. This is a woman who assisted the destitute in Kenya, earthquake victims in Armenia, and radiation victims at Chernobyl. She never lost sight of her mission to serve the neediest, wherever they may be found. From the slums of Calcutta to the war-torn city of Beirut, Mother Teresa persisted and provided these people with a place of peace.
One might guess that such a strong woman, with her relentless commitment to those less fortunate, never doubted herself or her path, or accepted doubt in others. Her private writings, however, tell a very different story. Yet to the outside world, there was never any question as to her commitment. Mother Teresa not only faced but embraced doubts. She just did not let them slow her down. She stood tall against her personal spiritual struggle and overwhelming feelings of loneliness. She never stopped.
Embracing the Power of Doubt
Mother Teresa’s letters to her spiritual father, written in confidence, give us a rare glimpse into her deepest thoughts. She laid bare her internal struggles as she pursued her vision to serve the poorest of the poor. These letters show her questioning her faith and feeling tremendous doubt, distance from God, and spiritual isolation. She questioned the very source that brought her to her work—her relationship with God. Her belief in Jesus and the work he was doing through her had driven all her decisions. Yet working in some of the world’s most impoverished environments and seeing their terrible impact on people can call faith into question. It made even Mother Teresa doubt her core beliefs.10 She continued to doubt herself during critical times in her life as she sought to grow the Missionaries of Charity.
Doubt isn’t necessarily a crisis of faith. Obstacles are a daily part of life. You can have faith that something good is going to happen, but doubt how you are ever going to get there. When we embark on journeys into the unknown, it is important to acknowledge and process our feelings of doubt. Unprocessed doubt can lead to paralyzing fear, but using doubt to question yourself can strengthen your beliefs and free you from that fear.
It is courageous to realize that not everything is without risk. Courage is the ability to persevere toward your goal in spite of fear—as Ambrose Redmoon puts it, “the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”11 Indeed, what you do with your doubt in part will determine whether or not you can reach your goal.
Mother Teresa brought her struggles to the forefront of her thinking, as we can see from her writings. This path required great personal strength and commitment to working through these issues. By accepting that doubts occur and consciously acknowledging and even embracing them, Mother Teresa developed a way to positively work with them. Indeed, her relentless questioning gave her great, enduring strength that ultimately helped her to build the Missionaries of Charity into a successful global organization. How did Mother Teresa put her doubts to use?
First, she recognized that doubt only has positive power in the context of the vision. Embracing the power of doubt does not mean doubting the vision. If you were part of the Missionaries of Charity, you were signed up to serve the poorest of the poor. Within the security of that certainty, Mother Teresa was free to embrace the power of doubt at every other level, from any source. Powerful questions could illuminate better ways of achieving the vision. However, questions asked for the sake of asking questions, or out of fear of making decisions, had to be put aside, gently but firmly, by asking another question: “How would knowing the answer to this question help us do something better, now, to achieve the dream?”
Second, she knew that doubt could be beneficial regardless of its source. Many leaders need to be seen as infallible. Their attitude is, “I’ll ask the questions around here.” However, it is both unfair and ineffective for the leader to do all the questioning. Mother Teresa’s approach embraced each person’s question as holding the key to some improvement. When others talked, she listened. If a question led to an understanding of how to do better, she acted.
Third, she embedded the power of doubt in action, not mere words. She was always on the move, except when she stopped to listen or reflect. By setting a personal example of action, making and expecting continual progress, she put doubt in its proper place—as a guide when we are uncertain, not a refuge from the responsibility to act. Mother Teresa’s positive energy made it safe for her, and others, to bring their honest doubts forward. No one needed to fear that uncertainty would lead to indecision or paralysis. She embraced doubt regularly, not occasionally—and continued to act.
To put it another way, when it was time to make a call, she made it. Whether the issue was acceptance of donations from some devil or readiness to expand to a new location, once the questions had been asked and honestly answered, she took responsibility.
Processing through Questioning
Doubt is a fact of life for any honest person. The only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know much. But the challenges of leadership present a dilemma. How can you embrace the power of doubt to energize the quest for the truth without crippling your organization with indecision?
Once you start facing your doubts, questioning yourself and your organization’s plans, it may feel as if you will never be able to stop. Am I doing the right thing? Is there really a market here? Will customers really pay what we think they will? Do they really value our offerings? Can we make any money at these prices? How can we make these products at the cost we need to make any money? How will we find the people we need to build and grow the organization? Is our strategy sound? Are we focusing on the right problems? Will we make our numbers? Will our investors continue to support us? How committed are our top performers? What is our competition up to? And what about the economy?
These, and thousands of other questions, must be asked. And they must be answered, as best we can. And we can’t limit our expressions of doubt to the safe haven of a yearly planning meeting. The world is always changing, and if we don’t also doubt our plans, we will eventually pay the price of hubris.
But doubt has a price, too. It costs time, money, and emotional energy to keep questioning. And no one ever closed a deal, sold a product, raised capital, hired a superstar, or got a factory online by just asking questions. Successful leaders find courage in the face of fear so that they can lead their organizations forward. Unless the leader is willing to bear the burden of making a decision while doubt still hangs in the air, everyone will begin to fear doubt itself. Honest questioning will dry up, and good people will look elsewhere for a place to make their contributions. Having embraced doubt, the leader must finally decide as if there were no doubt at all.
Making Doubt Work
To embrace doubt productively, it is important to develop a reasoned, balanced framework and process to deal with it. The leader of any organization must continually assess its progress toward its goals, as well as question the validity of its vision in an ever-changing world. This assessment includes reviewing financial and operational successes and failures, customer and employee satisfaction, and stakeholder buy-in to the corporate vision. Are you profitable, with a clean balance sheet? What are your customer retention levels? Do you know if your customers are satisfied, and why? Are you growing your business, quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year? Is your employee turnover rate acceptable? Are you excited to be working there? Is your vision a motivating factor?
Mother Teresa started out with doubts about how she would get to where she knew she had to go, and she even doubted her faith. But she never wavered from her vision of the Missionaries of Charity, and she never gave up. As a leader, you can express in actions her principle of embracing the power of doubt to achieve strategic clarity, operational effectiveness, and organizational alignment.
LOU’S STORY: I was promoted to run global operations at one of the most powerful financial services companies in the world. It was a huge promotion, and other people were passed over for it. I had been successful in all my prior positions at the company, but this role was far more complex than any I had ever had. Many thought I would fail. I was excited but scared to death. I doubted I could do it.
I confronted my doubt directly by identifying the issues that needed to be addressed and acting on them. I chose those issues that were important to resolve in a manner consistent with what the company was trying to accomplish. By taking consistent action aligned with what we were trying to achieve, I began to get things done and started to build my credibility within the organization. As my credibility rose, my own doubt receded. Embracing the power of doubt helped Mother Teresa realize the vision of the Missionaries of Charity. You can use this powerful leadership principle to assess whether your own organization is on a path to realizing its vision. It will also give your people confidence that you are being thoughtful in constantly evaluating the organization and making the appropriate decisions for its future.