What tennis can teach us about ambiguity
Ambiguity can make even experienced teams freeze or rush ahead too soon. Drawing on an unexpected lesson from the tennis court, this article explores how timing, awareness, and pattern recognition help leaders and teams navigate uncertainty with greater confidence and clarity at work.
I recently took a cardio tennis class, which is more about raising your heart rate than worrying about the fundamentals of the game. Being new to tennis and pretty challenged in any sport requiring hand-eye coordination, I decided this could be a nice way to begin playing. In one drill, the instructor alternated tossing the ball to either side of my body so I could both run my tail off and practice switching hand positions. First to my dominant left side—use forehand. Then to my right—use backhand. Then back to my left—forehand. Then right—backhand. Forehand. Backhand. Forehand. Backhand.
“You feel it, Sabrina? You’re getting into a rhythm.”
Yes! This was making sense. With the drill over, it was time for a little match to put our skills to the test. But as soon as the balls started coming at me, I felt like I was playing a completely different game. There was no rhythm. The balls came straight at me or landed in spots way too far to reach. I contorted my body in every possible awkward position in a desperate attempt to make some sort of contact between ball and racket. It was comical.
“Sabrina, tennis is about timing. You’re either guessing where the ball will land too early or moving to where the ball has gone too late. When the ball hits your opponent’s racket, that’s when you know where to go.”
I hadn’t even realized that I was playing the game that way. During the drill, I knew exactly where the ball was going to land, so I was there to hit it. But in the match, there was no set pattern, and I was responding at the wrong time. After the class, I kept thinking about this idea of timing—and not just in tennis, but in the work my team does every day. I co-lead a team of project managers in a transformation consultancy focused on solving problems that haven’t yet been identified and creating things that have yet to exist. It’s all about ambiguity.
As a result, my team must not only embrace but thrive in ambiguity. We are constantly adjusting our plans along with the pace of creativity, new client developments, and unforeseen changes to scope. It’s difficult to know what our next move should be when we feel like we have balls firing at us all the time. Sometimes, we try to get ahead of it, blindly guessing where the ball is going to travel well before it’s even been launched our way. At other times, we convince ourselves that we can’t begin to predict where the ball might come from or when it will land, so we stand motionless, waiting until that ball hits us squarely in the nose—or, worse yet, we miss it completely. How can we prevent being so far in front that we have no clue what direction to head, or so far behind that we are always playing catch-up?
Surprisingly, the same tips my instructor gave me on the court can help anyone who has to deal with ambiguity on the job:
- Wait for cues: Control the urge to act just for the sake of doing something. Instead, channel that energy toward sense-making—review your plans, the notes from the latest meeting, and the briefs for the upcoming deliverables. Look for connections you didn’t see before.
- Open the aperture: Be in tune with what’s going on around you. Lift your head up, literally. Focus and use all of your senses instead of multitasking like crazy. Don’t take everything at face value.
- Recognize patterns: Use the past—your own experience and that of others—to inform a similar situation in the future. Not all moments are as unique as they feel.
- Trust your instincts: Overthinking can be paralyzing, or even worse, counterproductive. Have the confidence to lean into what feels right and go for it. That doesn’t mean you won’t make a mistake, but at some point you need to trust yourself to make a judgment call.
- Keep moving forward: When you make a mistake, acknowledge it, learn from it, and then move on. Getting mired in the past only distracts you from what’s ahead and weakens your ability to get your head back in the game.
Your response rate will continue to improve as you build up your experiences to draw from and your confidence at the same time, so that you are able to interpret and act on more subtle signals much earlier than before.
What tennis is teaching me is that there’s a reason I never played hand-eye sports—I really am pretty terrible. But I’m reminded that even in moments when I feel like the ball is flying at me at 100 miles an hour, I have the power to slow things down and not let ambiguity overwhelm me. It’s all about timing, knowing when I have just enough information to move in the right direction, one ball at a time.
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