How To Embrace Creative Tensions To Solve Tough Problems

If you struggle with these paradoxes:

How can I express my individuality and be a team player?
How do I balance work and life?
How can I take care of myself while supporting others?
How can I manage the core business while innovating for the future?

then the new book, Both/And Thinking, by authors Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis, is for you. It will teach you how to navigate these types of paradoxes more effectively.

“When making a decision, we often find ourselves stuck between choosing one option over another, creating a vicious cycle that limits our capabilities and creates consistent tension,” explain the authors. “But there is a better way.”

As the book explains, that better way is both/and thinking versus traditional either/or thinking. This new way of thinking means that instead of choosing between alternative poles of paradox, you figure out how to engage both poles simultaneously. In other words, how to accommodate competing demands over time for a more sustainable solution.

“As we are faced with dilemmas – choices between seemingly opposing alternatives – we feel compelled to make a decision to feel a sense of control and comfort. These choices are filled with paradoxes – interdependent, persistent contradictions that lurk within each dilemma.

We must be aware of these everlasting paradoxes if we hope to effectively navigate through our most difficult decisions. While traditional either/or thinking has its benefits, many of the choices we face – the ones causing the most tension – can only truly be overcome using both/and thinking,” say Smith and Lewis.

Furthermore, Smith and Lewis teach that in bringing to light the existence of paradox in each dilemma, our minds become open to the possibility for more as we begin to deconstruct the dichotomy between one choice or another and we begin to apply ourselves towards making more creative, flexible, and impactful decisions.

Wendy K. Smith

Marianne W. Lewis

Today, the authors answer this question for us:

Question: What are the couple best next steps for a workplace leader to take after reading your book?

Smith and Lewis: We’ve found that effectively engaging both/and thinking involves using four sets of tools. Think ABCD – Assumptions, Boundaries, Comfort and Dynamics. Paul Polman was an early study. As CEO of Unilever, he implemented the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan to achieve a bold social and environmental goal while doubling profits. His work still inspires us and helps bring the Paradox System to life:

Assumptions – change the question. Polman didn't ask whether to seek profit or social responsibility. Instead, he sought to double profits while at the same time cutting the firm's environmental impact in half. Changing the question invites us to think more creatively about possible answers.

Boundaries - separate and connect. Separating opposing demands ensures that we pay attention to both. Connecting involves finding synergies and integration. Polman had distinct metrics, targets, and roles to separate financial and social targets and track each. He also connected to a higher vision that integrated both. In an interview with Polman, he told us - don't tell me we can't do both, Unilever serves 2 billion consumers a day, we must find a way to foster sustainable living through business.

Comfort - find comfort in the discomfort. Navigating tensions can raise uncertainty and defensiveness. Leaders, have to find ways to honor the discomfort, but not let it stand in the way of finding better outcomes. Polman often surveyed his leaders, asking them to surface and recognize the tensions, rather than avoiding them.

Dynamics – stay flexible. Navigating paradoxes involves ongoing change and experimentation. Doing so involves the humility and confidence keeps us pushing for new possibilities. Polman was constantly trying out new approaches with Unilever - entering into bold partnerships with competitors and watchdog organizations, shifting his senior leaders and board members to ensure diversity of thoughts and perspectives, getting rid of quarterly reporting to the analysts to avoid short term decision making. If these initiatives worked, he stuck with them. If not, he moved on and tried something else.

One of my favorite sections of the book is the chapter on Organizational Leadership, where the authors recommend leaders:

Link organizational tensions to a higher purpose
Build guardrails around paradoxical poles
Diversity the stakeholders
Encourage experimentation
Surface the underlying paradoxes
Honor the discomfort
Build skills for managing conflict
Personalize paradoxes for employees

Lastly, be sure to check out the final part of the book where you can take your personalized Paradox Mindset Inventory to score yourself on how well you engage competing demands – how you experience tensions and the mindset you adopt as you engage these tensions.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

Comments

How To Build A High Performing Sales Team

Based on Stephanie Friedman 's 20 years of sales experience, her new book, Built to Grow: A Handbook For High-Performance Sales Teams , is the perfect step-by-step, go-to-market field guide for startup founders. Friedman offers readers a structured and repeatable methodology for building a high-performing sales function from a company’s earliest days. The book is divided into three phases of startup growth— Experiment, Build, and Scale. Within each of the three phases, Friedman covers: Sales Playbook Hiring Revenue Management Customer Success Compensations Culture Internal Collaboration Some of my favorite takeaway tips from the book include: No matter how experienced your salespeople are, any high-performing sales organization should follow one simple but important rule: No call without an agenda. This helps reinforce the necessary discipline around call preparation and ensures your customers have the best possible experience when talking to your...

High-Performing Teams Are Made Of This

According to Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese, authors of the book, The Collaboration Imperative , high-performing teams have the following characteristics: People have solid and deep trust in each other and in the team's purpose--they feel free to express feelings and ideas. Everybody is working toward the same goals. Team members are clear on how to work together and how to accomplish tasks. Everyone understands both team and individual performance goals and knows what is expected. Team members actively diffuse tension and friction in a relaxed and informal atmosphere. The team engages in extensive discussion, and everyone gets a chance to contribute--even the introverts. Disagreement is viewed as a good thing and conflicts are managed. Criticism is constructive and is oriented toward problem solving and removing obstacles. The team makes decisions when there is natural agreement--in the cases where agreement is elusive, a decision is made by the team lead or executiv...

Decide

Many years ago, I worked with a person who could not make decisions. Neither big nor small decisions. That indecisiveness paralyzed our business in many ways. Unfortunately, the book, Decide: Work Smarter, Reduce Your Stress, and Lead by Example , had not been published. Had it, I would have shared it with my co-worker. Decide , published this past February, teaches readers how to make better decisions based on the real results they want to experience. The author, Steve McClatchy, explains how to use the two forms of human motivation -- Gain, or Prevent Pain , to make more effective decisions. For example, he demonstrates how inserting a Gain task in the middle of a Prevent Pain day can give you the energy you need to move forward and make the Prevent Pain tasks take less time through motivation. Deeper into the book, you'll be reminded about not only the problems with procrastination, but also about the benefits of procrastination, and, if you are ...

Coherence: The Secret Science Of Brilliant Leadership

Coherence: The Secret Science of Brilliant Leadership is the new book by author Dr. Alan Watkins . Trained as a medical doctor, Watkins is now an honorary senior lecturer in neuroscience and psychological medicine at Imperial College, London and an affiliate professor of leadership at the European School of Management, London. According to Watkins, coherence is the biological state achieved when elite performers experience maximum efficiency and super effectiveness, where body and mind are one . Coherence provides one of the most unique approaches to showing leaders how to be younger, smarter, healthier and happier -- which gives them the power to make decisions under pressure and achieve sustainable success. Prepare to spend quality time reading Coherence . It's not light reading. Kind of feels like a medical text book in parts. But, it's worth your commitment to it. I particularly found useful Watkin's discussion on culture , where he w...

5 Compelling Benefits Of Having An Ethical Culture

In Andrew Leigh's book, Ethical Leadership , he provides these compelling and important benefits of having an ethical culture in your business/organization: Customers prefer dealing with companies who put ethics at the center of their culture. Most employees would prefer to earn less working for an ethical company than being paid more and working for an unethical company. More than one in three people at work say they've left a job because they've disagreed with the company's ethical standards ( Trevino, L and Nelson, K - 2011 ) If you adopt an early warning system against misconduct it reduces the risk of you facing expensive litigation. An ethical culture helps you make your company a strong affirming place to work in. "The foundations of an ethical culture include values, attitudes, meaning, behaviors, purpose, and management practices," explains Leigh.

More Leadership Quotes From John C. Maxwell

The real gems in John C. Maxwell's book, Everyone Communicates Few Connect , book are the abundant leadership and communication quotes, such as these: To add value to others, one must first value others. People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude. All good communicators get to the point before their listeners start asking, "What's the point?" The first time you say something, it's heard. The second time, it's recognized, and the third time it's learned. In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand. People pay attention when something that is said connects with something they greatly desire. Maxwell also says that: Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could . The book covers five principles and five practices to help readers so they can connect one-on-one, in a group, or...

Six-pillar Roadmap For How To Move From Merely Surviving To Truly Mattering

In the new book, The Mattering Effect: Creating A Life Of Meaning And Worth , podcaster and author John R. Miles reframes today’s most common struggles and empowers individuals and institutions alike to break bad habits and reclaim a sense of worth and belonging. “Organizations have spent the last decade chasing 'engagement' and 'psychological safety,' yet global productivity is stalling and 60% of employees report they do not feel valued in the places where they spend their days,” shares Miles. He calls this “The Great Erasure”—a condition where high-achievers become highly visible to the organization while becoming invisible to themselves. In addition, Miles argues that many of today’s most common struggles—burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and disengagement—are not personal failures or mindset problems. They are the result of unmattering: the gradual erosion of felt significance within modern systems that reward performance while overlooking presence. Fortu...

Make It Easy For Your Employees To Volunteer

Start planning now for this year's National Volunteer Week, April 15-21 . That's the week when nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. will celebrate and honor their volunteers. If you are not already volunteering, what a great time to start. Make a commitment to yourself to start volunteering before that week starts! And, if you are a workplace leader who supports a volunteer program at your business, you already know that by encouraging employees to give back to your community you are: building teamwork motivating employees attracting new hires In fact, job seekers much prefer companies that have a strong volunteer program. And, a growing number of businesses are rewarding employees who volunteer by giving them extra vacation time and other incentives. Fortunately, throughout the U.S. there are hundreds of volunteer opportunities where employees can contribute individually, or where leaders can organize teams of employees to volunteer together on a routin...

3 Things To Avoid When You Give Your Next Speech

If you don't want to get your speech off to a bad start, the communications experts at Speechworks suggest you: Don't apologize (particularly about your anxiety or lack of preparation. Apologies put your audience on the defensive. Don't start by telling a joke (which may not be all that funny, or is irrelevant, or that may even be offensive to someone in your audience). Don't beat around the bush (including, don't list off a lot of people you want to thank. Don't waste your audience's valuable time) Instead: If you need to deal with your anxiety, practice like crazy . Rehearse particularly your first line over and over. Start your presentation by laying out for your audience a key issue that they are facing in their business . If you must thank someone, do it at the end, or thank your introducer briefly, pause, and then start right into the meat of your message .

How To Make One Bold Move A Day

Shanna A. Hocking ’s new book, One Bold Move A Day , is all about meaningful actions women can take to fulfill their leadership and career potential. Specially, Hocking reveals the transformative mindsets needed to make one Bold Move a day. Those are: Gratitude Mindset And Mindset Happiness Mindset Progress Mindset “Each of these four mindsets individually plays a special role in the process of continuously showing up for yourself and others,” explains Hocking. “Each mindset contributes in a different way to your success, but they all complement each other and together they will become the foundation to your Bold Move Mindset.” Hocking explains in her book that a Bold Move is one that challenges you to grow . “Sometimes it’s about capitalizing on an opportunity, and sometimes it’s about creating that opportunity for yourself,” explains Hocking. Keep in mind, too, that a Bold Move for you might not be the same as someone else’s. ...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog