11
How to Make Peace with Paradox
The fundamental state of leadership is not about being a wild card. It is not about being “authentic” in the sense of unloading our store of pent-up frustrations. It is about being purpose-centered, internally directed, other-focused, and externally open. “Letting the boss have it” is not the answer. Entering the fundamental state of leadership is much more demanding than that.
—Robert E. Quinn1
The simple answer (deceptively simple) is that to be a more effective leader, you must be yourself—more—with skill.
—Gareth Jones and Rob Goffee2
I checked my lipstick and looked directly in the mirror—painful enough given the harsh hotel bathroom lighting—to deliver my carefully crafted speech to my reflection: “Halle, I have a partner of 23 years who is a woman. I am gay. I know I should have told you at some point in the last 10 years, but I just could not find the courage.” Actually, I only thought the last part, as a lump formed in my throat and the deepest part of my intestines clenched after I said the I am gay part out loud in the mirror.
I was getting ready for dinner with one of my favorite clients, who had become a friend over the years. We had worked together in multiple organizations on several large-scale executive development projects over the years. At that time, she was the head of talent development for Invesco, a large asset management company in Atlanta. Halle was savvy, quick witted, and could get more done in an afternoon than I could in a decade. Her bandwidth to coordinate projects that colleagues did not initially view as priorities, involving partnerships between multiple functions, was extraordinary. She was, in short, an executive whiz. As you might imagine, she had worked with various and sundry consultants of all varieties. Luckily for me, she found psychologists in particular to be an interesting lot. We developed a closer than normal alliance when—at the risk of getting fired—I told her something she really did not want to hear. Over the years, Halle had taken me in and always had sage advice about what I should do with my business, helping me understand that my differentiating strength is my ability to customize a psychological principle and apply it in a tailored way to a unique business situation. Her advice was invaluable, to the point where I would sometimes ask, “Are you sending me a bill this week or vice versa?”
Most recently, Halle had instructed me to get certified on the Hogan series of leadership assessment, despite my protests that I had completed enough psychological assessment training in graduate school to last a lifetime. Hogan Assessment Systems is a leading provider of quantitative personality assessments designed specifically for the practice of leadership. Hence, I was in Atlanta going to Hogan school, and one of my conditions was that Halle have dinner with me.
I was excited to see her, as she had won a battle with ovarian cancer and had been declared healthy almost a year before. We hadn't had real quality, in-depth time to talk live and in person since that wonderful news. We'd grown closer over the years as she had transitioned from one company to another and had struggled with the formidable challenge of managing the tough treatment necessary to combat ovarian cancer.
We'd had many conversations about what really makes a difference in life and work, spirituality, and meaning. While discussing the book Autobiography of a Yogi,3 Halle laughed and said, “Karissa, you look like you are in the box and ‘normal’—whatever that means—prancing around in those Armani jackets, but you are out there. You have a freak flag to fly that is all your own!” Autobiography of a Yogi, by the way, is certainly not a standard leadership development or business text, but it never fails to stretch the mind of anyone from the Western part of the world, especially a successful Western executive.
Don't worry. I am not suggesting that you need to read the classic story of the man who was one of the first to bring yoga to the Western world to stretch your mind and be authentic. However, I always challenge my clients to see and relate to the many paradoxes of personal and business leadership: Eastern approaches vs. Western approaches, theory and practice, short term and long term, the good of the team vs. the individual, and so on.
Right before our dinner that night, I was wrestling with a personal paradox myself. The gulf between the depth of our relationship and the fact that I had not shared a very basic part of who I was—yet another freak flag—with Halle was eating at me. It just did not feel right. I had several bullet points to defend my lack of self-disclosure such as irrelevance, we live in different cities, and I am in a professional role. And my best and finest bullet point: She is so smart, she has this figured out. The great thing about the last bullet was that it applied to all my clients! Despite those fine bullet points, I felt fake and inauthentic because I could not find the courage to be truthful about my life. Hence the rehearsal in front of the mirror. As you have probably already figured out, I am a cautious soul as opposed to an open book.
I slid into our assigned table at a fashionable sushi joint in midtown. Halle arrived and I was taken aback by how fabulous and healthy she looked. We settled in, ordered drinks, and just I was taking a deep breath and getting ready to out with it literally, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “I am really glad we are having dinner tonight. I got the news today that my cancer is back, and the prognosis is not good.”
My gut tightened, and a deep sorrow literally brought tears to my eyes and hers. I said absolutely nothing. I sat there for a few minutes, processing what I thought Halle might be feeling along with the emotional tide that was coursing through. She broke the silence by saying, “I was relieved to be having dinner with you because I knew that you would not try to fix this or put a positive spin on it. That we could just be with the reality and that I would not have to put on a brave face.” Halle continued with authenticity, “I don't feel good about it and I am not grateful yet.” She expressed her anger and sadness full-throttle. Several minutes later, she added, “But I do feel grateful to have had the last year as a healthy person.”
I smiled at that comment, as one of her strengths that I appreciated was her seemingly indefatigable optimism through cancer, career crises, and basically anything. Her strengths of optimism and gratitude were starting to blossom in the space. We relaxed into the conversation and I was her confidante as we cried and laughed and talked about what the prospect of dying in the shorter term meant to her. What did she think was important? She was most sorry to be leaving her husband of over two decades alone early.
That was the last time I saw Halle, as she took leave from work, spent quality time with her family, and passed away 18 months after that dinner. My hotel room rehearsal was wasted energy, as my gayness seemed inconsequential in the context of our conversation that evening.
That evening became a wake-up call for me on several levels. Halle's comment—that she trusted she could share the terrible news with me and I wouldn't try to “fix it” or make her feel as though she had to put on a brave face for my benefit—was a recognition of one of my deepest gifts. In allowing people to be who they are and feel exactly what they feel, my clients grow and become bigger, grander versions of themselves right in front of my eyes.
How was it that I struggled to be authentic in the very act of creating space for others to be whomever they needed to be?
Here comes the paradox, or the apparent contradiction. I am someone who is brave enough to be with people as they face their own mortality, but too chicken to say out loud that I am gay. Something about that whole paradox struck me as a “developmental gap,” as we coaches like to say, or maybe I had outgrown the fear that had defined a much earlier part of my life, especially with people I really valued.
You have paradoxes of your own if you dig deep enough and really start working at authenticity in a meaningful way. We are all a paradox. We humans are a mixture of courage and cowardice, brilliance and buffoonery, and morality and hypocrisy. There is no way to be authentic as a leader without understanding and effectively making peace with the paradox that is you, the paradox that is other people, and the paradox that is rampant in making business decisions in the twenty-first century. The title of this chapter, “How to Make Peace with Paradox,” is a playful nod to the realities of negotiating with real-life situations and finding ways to be true to yourself, paradoxes and all, more times than not.
Paradoxes aren't ever “solved,” but managed and negotiated over and over. Making peace with paradox is about the fact that you and I will need to manage our personal paradoxes in different ways at different phases of our lives and careers.
Why Should Anyone Be Led By You? is the title of a thoughtful book on authentic leadership by Gareth Jones and Rob Goffee and also a damn good question. Take a minute and let that one sink in. If you can get past feeling threatened, the question is powerful. Many recurrent human dilemmas are underneath those seven words. Should people follow you because you are similar to them or because you are different? What is so special and unique about you? What are the strengths that set you apart? How do you use your strengths? What are your weaknesses that you should hide? Or should you hide your weaknesses? Many of us have been told to hide our weaknesses at various times in our lives. And our uniqueness has not always been met with applause from the herd. Our differences may have been met with outright rejection and harshness.
The words of Jones and Goffee instruct us to be ourselves, but not too much. Don't offend. Don't rock the boat. “Being yourself” turns into a complicated thing by the time we are teenagers and start processing all those messages. We internalize a mixture of messages and have certain patterns of behavior that become routinized and, in many cases, unexamined. We know what works and what doesn't—we think.
This chapter will challenge your view of what works in a quest for what might work even better. We will look at not just what works or is average but what is amazing. We will use the lens of positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship to deepen your journey toward being more authentic.
Your power and presence as an authentic leader come from who you are, paradoxically including strengths and weaknesses and similarities and differences from other people. Your uniqueness is in the mix of towering strengths and outrageous flaws and the ways you are like others and the ways you are different from your reference groups. Learning to deploy that unique blend that is you, to make extraordinary things happen in business and your life, is the central challenge of authentic leadership. This chapter delves into the realities of deploying who you are at a deep level to the task of leadership.
Who Are You (Really)?
Becoming a more authentic leader requires that we challenge ourselves to go deeper than personality, competencies, and goals. We must wrestle with those paradoxes that are a part of the complicated system of you. Who you are and where you come from at a fundamental level really matter. In the words of the classic English rock band the Who, “Who are you”? We psychologists use the word identity to capture the notion of who you are at a fundamental level. Being willing to grapple with identity by dealing with tough, threatening questions takes practice and commitment. But maintaining an accurate concept of who you are on an internal level and what signals you send to others is a must if you want to become a more authentic leader.
Let me give you an example of what I mean by “grappling.” As an executive coach, I am often asked to meet potential clients either live or on the phone. It is essentially a job interview for me. The typical executive meets with two or three coaches and chooses the coach he or she feels most comfortable with in many executive development programs. These meetings often feel like beauty contests for the coach, but I make a concerted effort to really give the client a sense of what it is like to work with me as a coach, as opposed to sounding like an advertisement or telling a client what I think they want to hear.
I once had two beauty pageant interviews with executives in two different organizations on the same day. Ironically, both executives had been asked to work on the fact that their team, peers, and boss perceived them to be arrogant. Both were super smart and had unique skills in particular technical domains. The first potential client explained that he had just gotten feedback that he was perceived to be arrogant, and had been asked to work with a coach. His first few questions were centered on how exactly this coaching thing works. We went into all that. Then, he asked me if I had questions for him. My question for him was, “Are you arrogant?” This was not a good choice to make a good impression in a beauty contest! He paused for what seemed like a long time. And he said, “I don't know. If you would have asked me that six months ago, I would have said yes, but I am really over my head technically right now for the first time in my life.”
We delved into that a bit on the phone and a lot during the next year. He selected me and I was excited to work with him. He was not in his comfort zone dealing with the “are you arrogant?” question, but he somehow knew it was an important question if he was going to really grow as a leader.
Moving on to the second beauty contest interview of the day, the first half of the conversation moved along with niceties. I explained how coaching generally works again. Then, the client said “the key issue is that I am perceived to be arrogant.” Remember my notion that authentic leaders must be willing to really grapple with tough questions of identity in an ongoing manner.
You know what's coming. “Are you arrogant?” I asked.
No pause. “There is no way anyone could work in this place without being confident,” he declared dismissively. “I've been promoted three times in five years. The issue is not whether I am arrogant. The issue to be addressed is the perception.” He went on to put me in my place in multiple ways within the next 10 minutes.
This was not a battle that I was choosing to fight. I moved us on to another issue as quickly as I possibly could and ended the call with some final niceties. As you probably have guessed, he did not pick me to be his coach. The first guy was willing to grapple with fundamental questions of identity and at least on that particular day, the second guy was not willing to go there. Issues of identity are not part of most everyday conversations and they are threatening by their very nature. Very few people will look in the mirror in the morning and think “I am arrogant and people don't really like me” with pride!
We all like to keep a stable, clear idea of who we are that is generally positive. But in periods of growth that involve moving out of our comfort zone, we have to be willing to examine and reexamine issues of identity. We have to be willing to look at deep value conflicts and sides of our character and personality that are not virtuous, effective, or pleasant. In the process of grappling, you are also likely to also become more aware of signature strengths and gifts that you may not fully acknowledge, either. Becoming more authentic is not possible if you aren't willing to move outside your comfort zone and do the grappling work. Grappling is a process of self-discovery and investigation that is ultimately gratifying, if not always fun.
Three Selves That Won't Magically Align
One of the ways in which I stir my clients to grapple with key identity issues is through the introduction of three concepts: the ideal self, the real self, and the ought self. All three concepts have a rich history in psychology, but they were first articulated together by E. Tory Higgins4 and referred to as self-discrepancy theory. (Remember, central to being authentic in practical terms is this idea of multiple selves and selves awareness that was discussed at length in Chapter 5.)
The ongoing articulation and understanding of all three of the selves described by Higgins is a useful practice for authentic leaders. However, the most important of the three for authentic leadership development is the ideal self. The ideal self is who you want to be. It is you at your best and is essentially a personal vision of who you desire to be. The ideal self is usually less conscious than the real self. Your real self is who you perceive yourself to be, just like it sounds. We all carry around in our heads a perception of ourselves that we can usually articulate quickly. I ask my clients questions such as “who were you in that situation?” or “what role did you play in creating that particular outcome?” Answers to such questions usually come pretty quickly and usually generate constructive dialogue.
The ideal self is more complex, and generally less top of mind than the real self. However, the clear articulation of the ideal self in a form that is meaningful for you as an individual is powerful. It sets in motion a desire to be more like your ideal self as well as a flood of positive emotions, including hope, optimism, and physiological energy.5 The articulation of the ideal self is an intellectual and emotional exercise. By articulating a vision of your ideal self, you are also figuring out what has personal meaning for you as a unique human being and leader. Prompts such as “tell me a story of you at your best” or “tell me something that you accomplished that you are really proud of” tend to ensure we are getting at both emotion and uniquely personal meaning, and not just doing some intellectual exercise as we are using the ideal self as a conceptual tool. Ultimately, most of my clients have an ideal self-proclamation that is unique to them. Some are bullet points. Others are paragraphs.
Let's do an experiment. Stop for three minutes and just write down what comes to mind when you think about you at your best. This process is worth a bigger investment of time, but jotting down your first thoughts is a great place to start. What themes do you notice? What really matters is that the output is personally meaningful to you.
The third self, the ought self, is a great tool to use when you are feeling pressured to compromise. The ought self is just like it sounds: who you ought to be according to other people, including authority figures. Clearly drawing the contrast between your ideal self (who you think you should be) vs. the ought self (who others think you should be) in specific, pressure-filled situations can be extremely helpful.
Let me offer an example from reality. One of my clients had articulated a desire to have more balance in her life. She was a service-oriented person and had a hard time saying no. Part of her ideal self-proclamation was that she honored all the commitments in life, including her commitment to family. She had planned a vacation with her family and casually mentioned to me during our update that she was canceling the trip because an important project was running behind schedule.
I started investigating and found out her boss had looked relieved when she told him she was thinking about canceling her vacation. I asked my client several more questions, and we discovered together that her ought self had taken over, and she had lost track of her ideal self after that conversation with her boss. It became clear to both of us that her ought self had kicked into high gear and drove the decision to cancel her vacation. I, of course, asked her how this decision jived with honoring commitments to all the people in her life, which was part of her ideal self.
We both agreed that her real self really wanted and needed a vacation. The clarification of all three selves was not a panacea. However, the conversation did open the door for her to reconsider the decision to cancel the vacation and raise her awareness regarding the tensions between her ideal self, ought self, and real self. She wound up shortening the trip but still going, which allowed her to feel that she was honoring all of her commitments.
Using the conceptual tools of the ideal self, the real self, and the ought self is a valuable practice for both personal and leadership development. Next, we will turn our attention to the notion of leadership itself. We will focus on managing the unique set of paradoxes that is you on a daily basis. You can be an authentic leader in one moment and not so authentic in the next. (Me, too.)
Authentic Leadership Is a State of Mind
What is your state of mind right now? Is your monkey mind in charge and are you thinking about your grocery list while skimming this book? How about your mood? Irritable? Fussy? Relaxed? Our states of mind and heart vary and can change rapidly. The notion of cultivating a state of mind that is productive, or a winner's mind-set, is often discussed and accepted as a key to success in our culture. However, we tend to think most often of leadership as an assigned role or title, or we gravitate toward lofty, rather complicated, highly varied and often confusing definitions of leadership.
For example, Brittney Helmrich,6 a writer and editor at Business News Daily, asked 30 entrepreneurs for their definition of leadership and titled her article “Thirty Definitions of Leadership.” From her interviews, she came up with 30 rather lofty, somewhat abstract definitions. If you are at work, you could likely walk down the hall and talk to 10 people and write a similar article.
Not much is discussed as often and understood as little as leadership. I cajole most of my clients into coming up with a definition that makes sense to them, even if they steal it from Warren Bennis or Peter Drucker or Business News Daily. The litmus test is whether my clients can give me an example or anecdote of how the definition relates to their personal leadership. If there is no example, my radar for being worked starts going off and they get a look. Being worked, simply put, is when my clients are just saying something to get me off their back. You know what I mean. We have all done it. There is no real thought or heartfelt meaning behind what is being said.
Robert E. Quinn, a professor at the University of Michigan and a leader in the emerging field of positive organizational scholarship, offered up a pragmatic twist on all of the leadership pontificating. Quinn described leadership as a fundamental state of mind, and you are a leader when you enter what he terms the fundamental state of leadership. This hit home for me on a practical level, as I have noted over the years how hard it is for executives to process how they behave as leaders while in the midst of 500 e-mails, the crisis du jour, and/or dealing with two or three bosses in a matrix organization.
All of my clients write a one-page leadership development plan. We have updates twice a month. It is not uncommon for them to say how nice it is during our updates to step back and actually think about what they have been experiencing from the point of view of who they are as leaders, and who they want to be as leaders. Often, I watch as my clients enter a leadership state of mind and begin to make connections they have not been making in the midst of the daily grind.
From my own point of view, authentic leadership in particular is best described as a fundamental psychological state. Just like any psychological state or state of mind, you can't stay in it all the time. But with practice, you can cultivate the fundamental state of authentic leadership and be in that state of mind more often. As Quinn points out, this notion of leadership as a fundamental state makes more sense in contrast to the normal human state. Quinn describes the “normal” state as:
- self-focused
- externally directed
- comfort-centered
- internally closed
In contrast to the “normal state,” Quinn describes the fundamental state of leadership as:
- other-focused
- internally directed
- purpose centered
- externally open
Self-focused is quite familiar to most of us, meaning we are out to meet our own personal goals and put our own interests first. When we enter the state of leadership, however, we shift and become other-focused. Practically speaking, we do not forget our own agenda, but we do put the overarching goal of the team or business first and are as aware of others as we are of ourselves.
Paradoxically, helping my clients become more other-focused with questions typically lifts their moods. In other words, they become livelier and more positive when they focus on others rather than themselves. Often, in those coaching updates, I witness my clients shifting and beginning to take on the perspectives of other key players in the organization, including their boss, direct reports, and peers. It takes prompting and reprogramming the mind-set regularly, but we can all be more other-focused.
In a normal state, we humans tend to be externally directed, meaning we are thinking about how we are perceived and working hard at getting resources, often in a win-or-lose way. For example, when you are constantly trying to impress your boss to get a bigger budget, you are externally directed. You are not likely to forget which person is your boss or lose awareness of the resources you need. However, when you enter what Quinn terms the state of leadership, you become more internally directed and monitor your own leadership behaviors. You ask yourself those tough questions, such as “am I behaving as my ideal self or am I behaving arrogantly?” When you are in an internally directed state, you grapple and deal with lack of alignment between your ideal self and your real self in a straightforward manner and habitually take steps to live more in alignment with your ideal self. You can also experience the positive emotions associated with living in alignment with your own values when you are internally focused.
The third component of Quinn's state of leadership is being purpose centered as opposed to comfort centered. The normal, comfort-centered state is reactive to the environment and strives for protection. We try to avoid pain and get pleasure. In contrast, the purpose-centered state is about your overarching goal or purpose. Being purpose centered allows you to get out of your comfort zone and into a growth zone because you are not thinking about your comfort, you are thinking about a bold, audacious goal instead.
The fourth component, being internally closed, means you are executing what you know will work and missing subtle cues that you might need to adapt or change it up. In the state of leadership, or what I am adapting to say the state of authentic leadership, you are externally open, noticing what is working, and paying attention to all cues. You are continually adapting what you are doing at least in small ways, and have your radar attuned enough to pick up on necessary changes.
Let's take this from the textbook to reality. I worked with a newly formed team that was a mix of people from two newly merged companies. Like most merged companies, the companies had vastly different policies and cultures. Everything you learned in Chapter 10 about organizations as cultures applies to this situation.
The leader of the team was from company A. The rest of the team was about half company A and half company B. In general, those cultural differences melted away as the whole team entered a state of authentic leadership on most days and were highly purpose centered. They were working on an intense project to integrate two information technology systems in a period of six months. They had countdown-to-going-live posters all over the place, and the team spirit was contagious. The pressure to perform and visibility were high. As a result, they were spending more time with each other than their families and becoming very cohesive.
Tragedy struck one of the team members when both of his parents were killed in an automotive accident. The leader from company A called the team together to let them know what had happened, and that he would be sending flowers from the team and traveling to go to the funeral. After the meeting, one of the team members from company B said, “You know the company won't cover your travel or the flowers. That is just not our policy.” In the merge, all of the human resource policies of company B replaced those of company A.
When confronted with this fact, the leader of the team (from company A, who'd always kept budgets for flowers and such when tragedy struck employees) got red in the face and entered the normal human state and became internally closed, self-focused, externally directed, and comfort centered in the span of two minutes. He quipped a few curse words and declared, “I will just do it myself.” The other team member from company B was shocked, as he had never seen the boss lose his cool.
Meanwhile, the greenest, youngest, lowest-paid member of the team had been following along behind and listening to the conversation. That team member said, “Let's all chip in for a gift, and some of us should take off and make it a road trip to go to the funeral.”
The other two took a minute to process what he said and were jolted into a state of leadership. All three became other focused (focusing on what would be most helpful for the team member who had lost both his parents) and purpose centered (being there for their colleague has value and meaning). To the boss's credit, he also used the incident to be externally open and internally directed as he recounted his personal learning about how to relate to this new culture as well as his learning about himself during our next update call. He said he had learned that he could be rigid at times. He shared this lesson with his wife, who agreed wholeheartedly and laughed at his newfound self-knowledge. In the realm of being externally open and continually learning, his view was that every team member chipping in and half the team making the road trip had meant more to the bereaved employee than him making the trip and the company paying for the gift could have possibly meant.
Much to your likely relief, I rarely offer my clients the whole conceptual model that we just went through! However, I have found four questions that can shift my client's mind-set toward a state of authentic leadership. Any one of these four can take us into productive developmental conversations way below the surface of things. Play with one or more of the questions below on a regular basis and notice what happens to your mind-set.
The deceptively simple questions are:
- What is the perspective of your boss, colleague, or peer? (other-focused)
- How is this behavioral choice in alignment or not with your values? (internally directed)
- Shift up a few thousand feet. What is the overarching goal? (purpose centered)
- What have you learned in the last few weeks? (externally open)
The vast majority of us spend some portion of our time in a state of authentic leadership in which we are other focused, internally directed, purpose centered, and externally open. The goal is to increase the amount of time we spend in the state of authentic leadership and not rely on our environment to move us in that direction.
The Workouts
- Identify a trusted friend or colleague and ask them to complete a 30-minute exercise with you. The first step is to think about a time when you were at your most authentic. Tell the story to your trusted friend or colleague. Then, have your trusted friend or partner do the same thing. Discuss the similarities and differences between the two stories.
- I use a simple exercise to make the concept of the ideal self tangible for my clients. Give it a try. Imagine you have accomplished your goals as a leader and are being true to yourself at the same time. What do you see? I ask them to respond to the prompt on at least three separate days and write for a minimum of 15 minutes. They have to keep writing for 15 minutes, no matter what and no editing. Take the output and highlight the themes. You are on your way to creating an ideal self-proclamation.
- One of the paradoxes identified by Jones and Goffee is a recurrent challenge for a lot of my clients. The paradox is “be close and be far,” meaning be approachable but also keep an appropriate distance that allows you to make authoritative decisions when necessary. How do you navigate that one? Do you tend to be too distant or too close? What could you do that would help you make peace with that particular paradox?