“Business owners with a high tolerance for ambiguity can normally handle new and uncertain situations with relative ease, while business owners with a low tolerance for ambiguity would handle the same situations with more angst and unease.”
In a nutshell, this is the reason to develop your ambiguity tolerance.
As we discussed in last week’s blog post, ambiguity tolerance will save you lots of headaches when navigating the differences and uncertainties of other cultures and events – in business and in personal relationships.
Being able to approach ambiguity in a calm and thoughtful manner prevents unnecessary angst, misunderstandings, and emotional conflict.
However, as with most things in life, tolerance is often easier said than done and when it conflicts with fundamental human values, in some cases tolerating such behaviors can make you complicit in them.
Which leads us to the question…
Is Cultural Tolerance Dangerous?
Objective tolerance of certain aspects of another culture can sometimes walk a thin line between morality and injustice.
There are two dangers:
- Accepting values/norms that are inhumane or immoral means accepting injustice.
- You may lose your own values and cultural identity when becoming too tolerant.
It may seem impossible then to be both simultaneously too tolerant and immoveable in your own beliefs.
But there’s a middle ground: you might avoid both by promoting active tolerance.
As part of the first strategy for cultural integration – acceptance – active tolerance allows you to preserve your own values/identity, refusing to accept said injustices, while also learning about attitudes and behaviors and seeking to understand why they historically exist instead of dismissing them outright.
Active Tolerance = Respect
Some might consider tolerance as a weakness, a failure to stand up for one’s own convictions.
However, active tolerance is a strength.
It doesn’t mean you must accept things that are fundamentally and morally at odds with your own foundational beliefs.
Active tolerance enables a person to demonstrate all possible respect and understanding for conflicting opinions/beliefs, while also defending one’s own.
Respect and restraint are the essence of active tolerance.
What ignites a wildfire of unconstructive conflict when two people of differing values meet?
It’s not the differences, themselves, but the disrespect and refusal to acknowledge other perspectives and life experiences as valid.
When you “accept” something or someone, their experience or culture, that doesn’t mean you share their experience or agree with their point of view necessarily; it means you are actively making an effort to understand their perspective and not to invalidate their own values, beliefs, and experiences.
You accept that they have theirs, and you respect that they don’t share yours.
When performed correctly, active tolerance doesn’t equate to agreement, but rather to digging to the roots of the many cultural baobabs in this world and attempting to understand them, as well as the personal experiences of the individual.
It’s a willingness to see the world from the branches of another’s tree, even for a moment. Climbing there might not change your own perspective or your baobab’s roots, but it certainly will produce more understanding and growth in your own.
Next week, we’ll lay out an anecdotal example of active tolerance in action.
Success Across Cultures 