Down-to-earth news for people who cultivate leadership in organizations...

The Paradox of Leadership

Jeni Nichols
Editor
jeni@sonomaleadership.com

I went to a "Summer of Love party" this weekend where we dressed up in our tie-dyed splendor and danced to the music of The Grateful Dead and The Beatles. I couldn’t help thinking how paradoxical that Summer of Love in 1967 really was. War was raging in Vietnam, while peace was raging in the streets—“a thousand people in the streets singing songs and carrying signs” (Buffalo Springfield). That street raging continued with songs and signs for peace until the National Guard was called in. Then there was still raging, but not as much in the streets.

I moved to California that year from the Midwest to go to college. So I was able to watch the war/peace paradox unfold right before my eyes. I felt this paradox personally; I was fearful and scared of the mobs at the marches, but also fired up and emboldened by the cause. All of these mixed, contrary feelings flooded back this past weekend as party goers flapped their tie-dyes and flashed their peace signs at each other.

Now, here we are forty years later in the month of July 2007—a sultry, steamy, sweltering July full of paradox. I want to slow down, seek out a shady nook, a breezy beach, a cool drink. Doesn’t the heat make you want to stop and shed the ambition, the commutes, the Blackberry? I don’t know about your summer, but mine is busier than ever with phone calls, e-mails, and voicemails from people who aren’t the least bit inclined to slow down, even on weekends.

I’ve come to this conclusion: Living with paradox is hard. As leaders, we confront paradoxes every single day. We have the choice to either accept them, challenge them, or leverage them to our advantage. While discussing this the other day with newsletter editor Linda Runyan, she suggested that living with paradox and accepting ambiguity is pure genius. I have to agree with this. And, it’s not easy to do unless, of course, you’re a scientist...

"The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being."--Madeleine L'Engle

I invite you to explore the paradox of leading in this Leader’s Almanac. Hopefully, it will heighten your awareness and make living with the inevitable paradoxes a little easier. We want to hear from you—your opinions, feedback, questions. E-mail us with the paradoxes you encounter as leaders.

Beth High calls living with contradiction “The Yin and Yang of Leadership.” Should leaders focus on teams or individuals? Should they be focused or flexible? Should they emphasize stability or change? Should they be idealistic or pragmatic? Is their goal to make their organizations efficient or effective? Read Beth's commentary to find out the answers and how to deploy the genius of the “both/and” to avoid the tyranny of the “or” when you hit a paradox.

Pat Schally recommends we not only observe paradoxes, but that we stay open to them, “be with them,” have fun with them. And by the way, have you seen any red BMWs lately? I have; I’m starting to see paradox out in the streets again, right before my wish-filled eyes. Thanks, Pat, no protest here!

Confession time: I have to admit that one of the perks of being a leader is having power. We’re entitled to it, right? If I’m not making the big decisions, I’m not in control. Ron Crossland points out in his article that it’s not so much making the decisions, but how we make them that counts. Ron gives us some good questions to ask ourselves before acting and exercising power. So, yes we can keep our paradoxical power. Good news.

And more good news. The Leadership Challenge® Fourth Edition has just been released. Read Jim Kouzes' thoughts about this new edition and some reflective observations on the these past 25 years of Leadership Challenge being a trusted guide in the leadership journey for over a million and a half leaders. It strikes me as paradoxical that the science of developing leaders has been a big part of corporate and military human resource strategy for a mere 25 years, while the art of developing leaders has been with us for thousands of years.

I’m living with paradox and accepting it. I’m also accepting this summer of love, this summer of 2007, despite the fact I’m conflicted about B/blackberries. (I turned mine off while I picked some today on my bike commute home.) Peace. Love.

Back to Top

by Jim Kouzes
Co-author of The Leadership Challenge and the Dean’s Executive Professor of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. 

Yesterday, I held in my hands for the first time the fourth edition of The Leadership Challenge, the first book I wrote with Barry Posner. This new edition was just released, and it arrives exactly twenty years after publication of our first edition in 1987. As I opened the new edition, I was just as excited and nervous as I was twenty years ago when opening the first copy of the first edition. (Of course our son, Nicholas, was much more thrilled about his copy of the newest Harry Potter book that he got at midnight last night than he was about Dad’s new book…but that’s another story!)

We are so grateful to all our readers for continuing to support our work, and we hope you’ll find the fourth edition is a valuable addition to your leadership library. As Barry and I relate in the preface, the fundamental purpose of The Leadership Challenge is to assist people—managers and individual contributors alike—in furthering their abilities to lead others to get extraordinary things done. Whether you’re in the private sector or public, an employee or a volunteer, on the front line or in the senior echelon, a student or a parent, we have written this book to help you develop your capacity to guide others to places they have never been before.

The Leadership Challenge has its origins in a research project we began over 25 years ago. We wanted to know what people did when they were at their “personal best” in leading others. What we found is that when they are doing their best, leaders exhibit certain distinct practices that vary little from industry to industry, profession to profession, community to community, and country to country. Good leadership is an understandable and universal process. Though each leader is a unique individual, there are shared patterns to the practice of leadership. And these practices can be learned.

Those familiar with the prior three editions of The Leadership Challenge will notice that the leadership practices and the commitments have remained the same over more than a quarter century. Nothing in our continuing research has told us there is a magical sixth practice that will revolutionize the conduct of leadership, and nothing in our research suggests that any of The Five Practices is now irrelevant.

This new edition, like the previous three, is full of real stories about real people in real organizations doing their best to get extraordinary things done. However, ninety percent of these stories are new and are presented here for the very first time. The most noticeable change from the previous edition is the inclusion of more cases from outside the United States. The Leadership Challenge has been translated into twelve other languages, and we wanted to bring leaders from around the globe more prominently into this new edition.

Thank you again for joining us in the exploration of a leader’s journey. We hope you’ll find the fourth edition to be an enjoyable read. Please let us know what you think, and please send us your questions and offer us your own perspectives on how leaders mobilize others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.

Jim Kouzes
July 26, 2007
(Printed with permission from the Author)

Back to Top

The Yin and Yang of Leadership
by Beth High
High Road Consulting

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Sam Howe, the CMO at Time Warner Cable. In talking about how people learn to lead, Sam was quick to explain how “very complex” the business of leadership is these days. “It’s easy to get lost,” he said, “problems are difficult and…[things] move much faster and you’re trying to do many things at once. I guess the leadership moment is trying to find something really simple to ground people with.”

A similar situation comes up in the movie “Apollo 14.” When the lunar capsule is in peril, mission control becomes understandably frantic with people scrambling to come up with answers and ways to help. Ed Harris, portraying NASA flight director Gene Krantz, focuses the team with the simple message: “Work the problem, people.” In a moment of extreme complexity, Krantz calls on simplicity to address the complexity of the situation and to focus the team.

I was struck by the clear and similar paradox presented by both Sam and Krantz. Webster’s defines paradox as seemingly contradictory statements (or situations) that may nonetheless be true. Krantz and Sam’s simple-for-complex models sure square with Webster’s. As a leader today, you are asked to handle the complex. Yet doing that effectively requires that you handle it simply and directly. And I would venture to say that the leadership field, like life itself, is full of such paradoxes.

It appears then that these two seemingly contradictory concepts--simplicity and complexity--exist together in leadership like yin and yang. They are opposites, yet they are interdependent and they support each other. It got me thinking about other paradoxical questions a leader must address. Should they focus on teams or individuals? Should they be focused or flexible? Should they emphasize stability or change? Should they be idealistic or pragmatic? Is their goal to make their organizations efficient or effective? The answer to all these questions is an emphatic yes.

So how do leaders embrace the paradoxes inherent in their roles? Maybe the ancient Chinese philosophy of yin and yang holds a clue. Highly simplified, this philosophy embodies the notion that even though two things are opposite they are still connected and essential to creating a whole. For a leader, acceptance of this concept may translate into a shift in thinking from either/or to both/and, thus creating open pathways for innovation and exploration.

In his blog, (thepracticeofleadership.net/category/paradox/), George Ambler discussed this idea. He draws from a book called “Polarity Management” by Barry Johnson who points out that leaders often view situations as problems to be solved. This problem-solving mode is reinforced by the business world and, before that, instilled by our educational system, both of which tend to reward good problem solving skills. The trap in this binary or black-or-white mindset, however, is that it deceives you into thinking there is only one right answer. Author Johnson refers to this as the “Tyranny of the ‘Or.’” The opportunities come when leaders can look beyond black-or-white to the rainbow of results yielded by more creative both/and solutions. This is the panorama afforded by paradox.

When you come right down to it, leadership is as much an art as it is a science. Accepting this paradox and exploring the yin and yang of it may give leaders the faith to look ahead into their unknowns.

Back to Top

Surrounded by Slippery
by Pat Schally
CPCCCertified Business and Leadership Coach

Paradoxes surround us, we swim in them, yet they remain slippery concepts, somewhat hard to grasp. The ultimate guide to them, in my view, is Charles Handy’s book “The Age of Paradox.” Handy writes that paradoxes, which are everywhere we turn, are as common as two sides of the same coin. In fact so many things contain contradiction that Handy decided he wanted to break them all down into different categories, which he does very handily in his book.

Leaders struggle with paradox because it does not lend itself to the singular; there is never a simple or right answer to any aspect of life.  And, as we all know, life would be far easier if in fact there was just one right answer. Perhaps all we really need to do to accept this oppositional duality is just observe, simply note that there are paradoxes that we confront everyday in our lives and be comfortable with them.

Some time ago, I invented a concept that I called the Paradox of T&M, with T being time and M being money. Common thinking goes that if you have time (T), you do not have money (M). Conversely, if you have M, you not have enough T. We get so busy making money, that we sacrifice time doing what we want to do as well as time that could be well spent with family and friends. If we have a lot of T, conventional wisdom holds, then that must mean we are not working hard enough and therefore not earning a living or increasing our net worth or M.

As a coach, I could challenge my statement by saying that none of the above is always a fact. The goal, in my opinion, is to effectively do both—have M along with T. A smart person, motivated to change, could look at what they are doing in their life and figure out a way to harmonize the seemingly opposite polarities of T&M.

The public is reminded about paradoxes anytime they read their morning newspaper. Why just the other day, my local paper, The Contra Costa Times, headlined this article: “Studies Uncover Paradox of Obesity, Heart Attacks.” Seems that what we’ve always believed to be true, that being overweight is bad for your heart, is in fact not true at all. Apparently obese people seem to statistically have a better chance of surviving a heart attack than their slimmer counterparts. (Note to Weight Watchers: You may need a new marketing strategy.)

Are there obvious paradoxes in you, in your life? Once you accept that they exist and observe them, it becomes somewhat like “reticulated articulation,” which means, for example, that if you are considering buying a red BMW you may suddenly start seeing them all over the streets, in parking lots and driveways, everywhere you look. Your keen awareness has seemingly “made” red Beamers pop up all around you. The same is true for paradoxes: the more you see them, the more you’ll see. They’re everywhere, everywhere this world is, there is a world spinning and swimming in paradox.

So stay open to paradoxes, observe them, have fun with them. And, in the process, you may even discover that while paradoxes are slippery and not amenable to solutions, "they can" as the Handy man says, “be managed.”

Back to Top

The Paradox of Control
by Ron Crossland
Factoid Junkie and Poet

My late partner and I used to discuss one of our more memorable experiences while working with a Fortune 50 company and with the senior executives of its largest, most profitable business unit, a roughly $20 billion enterprise. We’d decided to run an experiment of sorts on the dicey issue of control.

To begin, we separated out the top five senior-team executives from their top 20 senior vice presidents and gave them the following task: Discuss and record the top three things you need in order to be more successful as leaders. Next, we had the group square off and declare their number one answer. The senior execs told their VPs something like “We need for you to show more initiative.” Predictably, the VPs responded with something like “We need for you to give us more authority.”

The battle had begun. Over the next twenty minutes, feathers flew and voices rose, with each group interrupting the other, each side increasing their volume or shifting their strategies to gain the attention of the other group. Fundamentally both sides said they would provide each other with what they wanted ONLY when the other side went first. If the senior execs provided more autonomy, the VPs would initiate more. And if the VPs would initiate more, the execs would grant more authority. Stalemate.

Power is not a zero-sum game. Nevertheless, it is admittedly not easy to give up authority or power even when there is good reason to do so. Control clings fast, is tenacious to the end. A leader might know that it’s for the best yet still wonder what his role is, what his scope of power and authority is if he gives over these responsibilities to his juniors. And what happens, heaven forbid, if these authorized others mess it up and do less than they should?

To answer these paradoxical questions, leaders must explore their heart and mind by fully answering the following questions.

• Why do I hire excellent talent and then micromanage them?
• What exactly do I fear will happen if I loosen the reigns a little more?
• To what degree am I willing for others to excel beyond my abilities?

Answering these questions in any meaningful way requires more than a little courage. At the end of the day, control issues can lead managers to become too aggressive. And others will often respond to this by attempting to acquire control in similar ways which makes them aggressive as well. The control cascade that ensues can lock-up inventive abilities, cause the best talent to underperform or quit, and simply slow things down.

The single most powerful method I know that leaders can employ to monitor their control needs is this: Before acting, ask yourself how you would feel if someone in higher authority than you did to you what you are thinking of doing to your direct report? This process of imagining yourself in your direct report’s shoes will influence how you go about exercising your power. Hopefully, it will also birth better ideas on how to influence others under your charge without dampening their abilities or compromising your authority.

Sonoma Leadership Systems would like to welcome our newest contributor, Ron Crossland. Ron has worked with talent from the boiler room to the boardroom, a range of experience that has taught him that regardless of position, individuals’ work matters. He has helped individuals, teams, and organizations develop better leaders, create more innovation, forge better internal and external relationships, and inspire greater performance. Ron is currently president of Ron Crossland & Associates. He is a poet and writer, an intuitionist, a factoid junkie, and a research synthesizer and is a speaker for company meetings, industry association events, and other venues. He is co-author of The Leader's Voice: How Your Communication Can Inspire Action and Get Results! (New York: Select Books, 2002).

Jeni Nichols, Editor; Lauren Parkhill, Managing Editor;
Sam Taylor, Publisher;
Linda Runyan, Copy Editor

Back to Top