Chapter 13. Facing the Paradoxes of Leadership: Eight Rules

Peter Koestenbaum

A paradox, or polarity, consists of two conflicting paths of action that do not have a single solution. They both make good sense but are incompatible. These are typical situations of life and business. "I love to play golf, but I need to make a living" is a simple but not uncommon dilemma.

Experience Life as Paradox

When you experience and interpret life as a series of paradoxes, you are in control. You are a manager and your signature project is not progressing with the speed and success you desperately want. How can you reenergize it to "rev up" the passion and expand the creativity for innovative strategies? Best is to see this not as a linear but as a paradoxical assignment. On the one hand, you push hard to increase the energy and spur unremittingly to act smarter. On the other, you are tempted to give up—for to continue the struggle is just too much trouble. Let it be!

Now that you have a paradox to work with, you apply the principles below. The first is to explore in greater depth the truth and the value of both sides of the dilemma. It is not only that you are drawn to succeed; you are also drawn to peace and quiet, to serenity and decompression.

Which will it be?

Do Not Rationalize but Feel the Pain

Just as there is pain in truth, so there is truth in pain. In Argyris' well-known exercise, the "right-hand column" might say, "I can take it like a 'man,' like an adult. I am always positive, affirming." Here is the rationalization.

The left-hand column might contain, "I am scared to death. I don't know what to do. I feel like crying." Here is the pain.

Only as you probe the depths of the paradox will it reveal its healing power.

Polarities Need Each Other

Polarities require each other to make sense. We know light because of darkness. We know life because of death. And we know we are awake only because we sleep. Reflect on that. In business, the concept of the individual does not make sense if not contrasted with the reality of teams. Conversely, organizations cannot be comprehended but for knowing they are made up of individuals.

Stability is not noticed if there is no change for contrast. Nor can we spot change except for an underlying reality that remains constant.

Forcing a choice in a polarity is to try clapping with one hand.

Alternation Beats Prioritizing

You look for danger signals to detect polarities that are becoming excessive. Too much concern with short term creates problems with investors looking for growth. Then it's time to think long term. When quarterly returns begin to slide, it's time to reassess grand strategy to fix the problem. Catching excesses early is good prophylaxis against polarity pathology. Prioritizing is difficult; alternating, as in recreation, is easy.

There Is Power in Dialogue

Communication is not two bunkers with short-wave radio stations, but a solar system with two suns. Dialogue creates a common field of awareness with an emotional alliance, a sense of community, and a personal bond—all of which can supersede individual differences and alienating confrontations. Dialogue can settle intractable conflicts.

Paradoxes Provoke the Mind to Breakthroughs

Forcing the mind to confront an apparently insurmountable dilemma, such as short term versus long term, challenges it to "extrude," or give birth to, a new form, a neonate, that has these polarized antecedents as parents. Often, the breakthrough is no more than to be happily reconciled with the demand to work harder and smarter, ratchet up the level of commitment, and literally stop worrying about the conflicts. It's not unlike learning to play the piano with two hands rather than just one. It requires a decision, a snap in the mind, to accept that your two hands playing different melodies can actually perform at the same time. Learning how to swim, drive, fly, and skydive is, for the uninitiated, absolutely impossible. Yet once you make up your mind that it can be done, voilá, you can actually accomplish it!

You solve a paradox with a dimensional change in attitude and commitment, with a transition from negative to positive evaluation, and lethargy to energy—and not just in prioritizing. That is a decision. And it is a breakthrough!

Each Choice Changes Your Environment

Each decision changes your world—for the world responds. You must make a decision in order to understand what the next decision is to be. This is the nature of competitive games, from soccer to chess. Each time you make a choice, you enter a new scenario. Your next step is determined by this new scenario—and not by the last scenario. This simple and obvious insight can make it more manageable for you to make difficult decisions.

Given a paradox, such as your daughter's ballet performance as opposed to the decisive negotiation on the hostile takeover with which your company is threatened, you worry about making the wrong decision. But the consequences of decisions are not written in stone, for you keep making new, subsequent, decisions. Each functions as a new entry into a spreadsheet. One choice—and your whole universe changes. You start anew with each decision. This is unsettling as well as reassuring, for whereas you get few definitive answers, you nevertheless are permanently in control. With enough experience and sufficient self-confidence, you can rescue yourself and get value out of virtually any scenario that your prior choices have brought about. Your worries are now under control. Here, indeed, practice makes perfect.

Practice Democracy

Resolution of paradox lies in the democratic personality structure and the democratic institutions of society. These value diversity and change it to inclusion, from negative to positive. At the center of our political thinking is the commitment to democracy. We deal with polarity not with a public massacre but with freedom of speech. Democracy is a breakthrough transformation on how people experience contradictions and how they respond to them. Thoreau said it well: "The fate of the country...does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning."

Conclusion

These eight rules in themselves can transform employees and managers from dealing with otherwise paralyzing paradoxes and polarities to performing in a way that leads to progress, productivity, and competitive advantage.

How much is that worth to a business and an organization?