Leadership and Ambiguity might strike you as on odd theme for a coaching conference. Popular notions of leadership emphasise decisiveness, boldness, a willingness to act - ambiguity sounds such a wussy word, doesn't it - lacking clarity, definition - it's scarcely an aspirational word.

And yet, the coaches in this room have many decades of business leadership behind us (and ahead of us, too, I hope), so we know that managing, sometimes even creating, ambiguity is an important leadership tool.

We know that we live in an uncertain world, and an increasingly litigious world, all of which makes it increasingly difficult for business leaders to be as transparent and straightforward as they would perhaps like to be.

For a CEO with a number of ambitious direct reports, it's important to maintain a certain amount of creative tension between them, but it does make giving them fearless and frank advice about their career prospects problematic.

And that's just one example of the ambiguities that high-potential executives witness. CEOs deal with so many stake-holder groups - all of them needing to be handled deftly, and as their leadership team watch their CEO spinning away, inevitably a certain amount of cynicism starts to creep in.

Very often the people we coach are line managers, and the decisions they make are comparatively straightforward; so, to them, black and white, right and wrong, are yes/no issues.

As coaches, we are frequently consulted as our clients struggle to interpret the ambiguity in their organisation to their direct reports. The language of much that passes for corporate communication is ambiguous, usually by design, and is often not reflected in corporate behaviours. Emerging leaders value the respect of their direct reports, and are frequently embarrassed by the perceived need to spin a corporate message which is at odds with their direct experience.

Indeed, the very skills that caused them to be identified as emerging leaders are usually characterised by technical excellence - that is clear, precise, unambiguous outputs. They've spent their entire business lives so far trying to be totally accurate - devoid of ambiguity, but very often it is their perceived inability to deal with ambiguity that can lead to career stumbles in the next stage of their development.

Problems arise when idealistic talented people pass judgement on their colleagues on the leadership team, and start articulating questions like "Why can't I be a leader without compromising my values", and "How come people who play politics get rewarded, and people who don't, get ignored". These people tend to be characterised by the belief that somehow virtue is its own reward - that if they work hard, and achieve great results, that's all that should be expected of them, and reward and recognition should be automatic.

Now it would be easy to dismiss these idealists as naïve, but in many ways, these people are innate leaders, and exactly the sort of people who really add value to the firm, so it's important they stay motivated and committed.

What to do?

For the coaches, our course is clear. Our role is to maximise the career potential of our clients, by building on their strengths, and eliminating weakness, so that when the next promotional opportunity comes along, they are the obvious and outstanding candidate.

That can sometimes mean acting as a cheerleader for the firm, when our client is saddling up for their next round of retrenchments, and is wondering if it's all worth it - or they're privy to information as a member of the management team that they know could potentially have a damaging effect on their workmates - or they're concerned about the transparency of a process that they think could backfire on the firm - or any one of a hundred little issues that can arise.

Over the years I've developed my own technique for keeping recalcitrant idealists in the corporate boat. My colleagues would I'm sure have many other techniques to consider, but I'm going to share mine with you today in the hope that you may find some practical application for it in assisting your own colleagues to cope with ambiguity.

In my experience, the most successful technique is to appeal to the essentially interventionist nature of the idealist. Idealists have an innate urge to fix things, and usually find the opportunity to do so irresistible.

Capitalising on that desire to make things better is a very effective way of making the point that among the responsibilities and privileges of power is the opportunity to make changes, and drive culture.

And frankly, the prevailing times will suit those people who have traditionally been seen as not great at managing ambiguity.

The greater emphasis on transparency, the push by shareholders for greater accountability, the increasing awareness of the role of business in the community, the rise of the stakeholder classes means that ambiguity is not quite the strategic tool that it once was.

Many of those currently in leadership roles in organisations are responding to pressure from funds managers for greater clarity, more defined timelines, and more specific information around issues like succession planning, and much of the pressure is being applied, publicly, through the media.

In these scenarios, ambiguity carries big risks, and a leader who is anything other than perfectly straightforward and truthful is a walking time-bomb. I'm not going to name them, but we all know who they are!

So perhaps the relationship between leadership and ambiguity needs to be re-calibrated. The very nature of competition, which is the life-blood of the capitalist system, means that there will always be times when we can't be absolutely truthful. Mergers and acquisitions, new product launches, staff changes are all common instances where ambiguity is the tool of choice, and we do that, not because we are dishonest, but because we have to preserve our competitive position.

And that's fine - but I do think we have to be honest with ourselves about the relevance of ambiguity in the business context. It seems to me that ambiguity is sometimes a useful short-term tactic, but that it has no future as a long term strategy.

With another hat on, I've spent a large part of my life thinking about the importance of brands, and the unspoken values that underlie them. And the cornerstone of all great brands is trust. It's the cornerstone of the reputation of all great firms. It's the cornerstone of every important human relationship. It's the cornerstone of all our beliefs in our major institutions - and when we are persistently ambiguous, in our dealings with our stakeholders, or our customers, or our employees then they lose trust in us.

A consistent pattern of ambiguity causes our people to doubt what we stand for, or to fret that we are trying to hide something, and that's damaging to our businesses and to our brands.

To return to the people we coach, I do believe that when it comes to promotion, reward and recognition, we would be far better served by managing the expectations of emerging leaders with greater transparency and truthfulness than seems to be the case.

When a number of people view themselves as being in line for a particular promotion, all but one of them are going to be disappointed, and too often the process leaves more casualties than it need.

Coaching is a key contributor to the development of the leadership talent pool. One of its many benefits is that it's a subliminal message to the person being coached that they are valued, and admired in their organisation, and that knowledge really helps them in the inevitable down times.

I also know that the people I coach really value straightforward truthful feedback from their leaders on their career prospects, even if they don't always like what they hear.

At a slightly more junior level, I am currently developing an enrichment programme for one of the companies I'm involved with, for the express purpose of retaining our bright young stars, acknowledging that our flatter management structures can't always keep pace with the rate of their ambition.

The program is designed to turn out a more well-rounded business person, who can take a broader, more strategic view beyond their line responsibilities. So the program will include elements of further education, exposure to our political and cultural institutions, work/life balance, values and ethics, involvement with non-government organisations in the not-for-profit sector, and so on. What we hope to accomplish is an enriched environment for these individuals, while managing their expectations on when and how their next career opportunity will come along.

This programme will also expose them to the ambiguity inherent in corporate life, and my great hope for the project is that it will assist in the development of the necessary coping skills, and that they emerge as strong, motivated, and ethical, with a contemporary take on what it means to be a leader.

What we now know, of course, is that the old command and control, army model of leadership is increasingly irrelevant in a business context. It's predicated on recruitment and promotion techniques that are demonstrably ineffective, it stifles innovation and risk-taking, its rigidity and inflexibility mean that the sort of people who rise to the top are often the antithesis of leaders - they jump to every bit of pressure from financial analysts and journalists, and seem incapable of taking a long-term view.

As a model it is inefficient and expensive, and as a mechanism for encouraging ideas and innovation it's a dead loss.

Contemporary leadership thought values diversity as a source of ideas and innovation, with the role of the leader increasingly seen as the person who identifies, recruits and nurtures ideas leaders for the organisation, because they recognise that ideas leaders are the real wealth generators. Contemporary leadership also recognises that the public sector, the private sector and the not-for-profit sector are inextricably linked, and all three sectors are accountable to the communities who sustain them.

That realization of the inter-connectedness of things is an important insight for business leaders - we don't operate in a moral vacuum - the notion that business is somehow only responsible to its shareholders is a fallacy.

Sure-footed business leaders have a moral compass that guides them through the maze of ethical dilemmas they face on a daily basis, and like a literal compass, true north never changes. All the things your mother told you are true. Truth, honesty, decency, courage, fairness, honour and generosity are all the hallmarks of the trust that good leaders engender in their teams.

And to return to where we started, I'm willing to bet that when your mother articulated all those things she wanted you to be when you grew up, she never said, "I particularly want you to be ambiguous". What was meant as an occasional tool, has exploded into a noxious weed, obscuring our way, blocking out the light, and hemming us in.

And finally, by lessening our reliance on ambiguity, and strengthening the clarity and purpose of our communications with our emerging leaders, we provide them with the right settings for the successful careers we all wish for them.