by Jane Perdue | Paradox & Polarity
I used to tease Frank, an accountant where I worked some years ago, about his hope that life would track more like a balance sheet — all the ins and outs offsetting perfectly, all neat and tidy.
Truth is, neat and tidy rarely applies to life, love and leadership.
Getting life, love and leadership right is messy, time-consuming and requires real commitment. This reality surfaced recently in a chat with a colleague when he remarked collaboration was more trouble than it was worth.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ~African Proverb
Borrowing an acronym from the military, collaboration is full of VUCA – volatility, uncertainly, complexity and ambiguity. Yet, when a shared effort goes right, the rewards are well worth the trouble.
4 takes on the power of collaboration
1. Collaboration is volatile – hang on, fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.
Multiple opinions, experiences, styles and preferences come into play when working with a group. Sure it’s a balancing and sharing act, yet the variety of inputs yields a richer outcome than what you could have produced alone.
If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention. ~Tom Peters
2. Collaboration is full of uncertainty – what a great way to expand one’s comfort zone and sphere of knowledge.
Unpredictability and surprise expose us to ideas and emotions we may not encounter on a singular journey; some are beneficial, some not. Yet all add to the breadth and depth of our experience.
When you come to the edge of all the light you have, and must take a step into the darkness of the unknown, believe that one of two things will happen. Either there will be something solid for you to stand on or you will be taught how to fly. ~Patrick Overton
3. Collaboration is complex – embrace it.
It can be confusing, confounding, crappy and chaotic, too. Embrace them, too! Go it alone if you seek simplicity. If you and/or organization seek growth, engagement and innovation, pass out the hip waders and head for the deep end of the pool. That’s where the group can really challenge and support one another in the way to excellence.
The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. ~Douglas Horton
4. Collaboration is ambiguous – add being tolerant of it to your toolkit.
Ambiguity is the breakfast of leaders. There’s no room in today’s complex world for cut-and-dried, black-and-white answers to everything. Many of the realities of business are dualities to be perpetually managed — things like stability and change, task and relationship, impose and facilitate.
Success requires you to do both because they identify a relationship that’s ongoing and which raises issues that don’t go away. A diet of all stability leads to atrophy and demise; a feast of all change yields bedlam and uncertainty.
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. ~Gilda Radner
Emmanual Gobillot writes in Leadershift, “traditional leader behavior that focuses on command and control becomes irrelevant.” Can’t wait for that day to get here!
Communal social power and transformational leadership rest on a base of collaboration.
Are you ready to play?!
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Leadership, Paradox & Polarity, Power
Leon, a retired executive, and I were meeting in one of those charming little independent coffee shops that are so conducive to great conversation.
We met a Chamber of Commerce meeting. We discovered we had a shared passion for leadership and the power of connection. Beyond that, our views of the world are widely different.
Oh wait. There’s the one other passion we share.
Healthy debate.
That really vigorous kind of discussion that challenges your thought processes and forces you to look at life, love and leadership from a vantage point outside your comfort zone.
The topic we’re dissecting: Should contrarians be included in your inner circle? Or not?
2 widely different contrarian views
Leon’s view. Leon is passionate, wildly so, that all the people in your work and personal circles must always be a right fit. Kinda like how all puzzle pieces fit together. He believes in alignment of thought and purpose. People who don’t align, well, they’re gone. Out, not included. No compromises. No apologies. Leon said he learned the value of this perspective years ago (of course, learning it the hard way) when he was leading his own manufacturing firm.
My view. I love having a mismatched collection of people around me at work or play. My only requirement is that there be respect and tolerance for the difference of opinions. No I’m right, you’re wrong kind of finger-pointing.
Leon’s rationale. People whose beliefs, ideas, skills, values, etc. aren’t aligned with yours create discord and failed outcomes. Remove them from your life before they negatively impact your success and muddle your thinking. Contrarians not allowed, period.
My view. Contrarians bring a richness, a layer of complexity, that forces me to grow. I don’t always agree with what they have to say and sometimes find the discussion uncomfortable but that’s OK with me.
Leon and I are sitting on opposite ends of this continuum.
Where do you sit?
Image source: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Character, Paradox & Polarity
Thanks to a recent great post by Dan Rockwell, aka The Leadershipfreak, I took a walk down memory lane, thinking about “bonehead” career moments.
That was an enlightening and humbling walk for sure!
In light of current events, one of those bonehead positions really stood out: attacking people whose position is different from yours.
My early career was spent in labor relations, a field that all too easily lent itself to adversarial positions—my position is right, yours is wrong, I’m better than you.
Enter *Mike*
Mike had joined the law firm our company used to fill the lead chair position (primary spokesperson) for labor contract negotiations. As I was second chair, this made us bargaining table partners.
He had a first-rate mind—and an extraordinary capacity to balance tolerance and rigidity, inquiry and advocacy. Some of his first counsel to me:
Just because the folks across the bargaining table think differently than you do and hold different values, that doesn’t make them an enemy to be bashed. They aren’t your adversaries. You can learn so much from them if you’re open to it. And I guarantee that negotiating will take on a whole new light for you.
Cue *earth moving moment*
If I’m open to it…I hadn’t been open it to. Shoot, I hadn’t even considered it.
As I thought about it, focusing on who was right or wrong was limiting…
…and judgmental.
…and uncivil.
…and unproductive.
While I didn’t have a name for it then, Mike had taught me about getting my big on:
- taking the high road and the broad view
- being inclusive rather than exclusive
- acknowledging that different opinions, values and views should open vistas, not close doors
Cue *a whole new way of living, leading and working* for which I’m forever grateful to Mike.
Ready to get your big on?
Image source before quote: Gratisography
by Jane Perdue | Leadership, Paradox & Polarity
Consider these words from Gary Hamel, ranked as one of the world’s most influential business thinkers by the Wall Street Journal.
Organizational success in the years ahead will hinge on the ability of employees at all levels to manage seemingly irreconcilable trade-offs – between short-term earnings and long-term growth, competition and collaboration, structure and emergence, discipline and freedom, and individual and team success.
What do short-term earnings and long-term growth, competition and collaboration, structure and emergence, discipline and freedom, and individual and team success all have in common? They’re polarities.
What’s a polarity? A condition, act, or person that contains seemingly contradictory qualities that are both right and equally necessary for success over the long-term.
Effectively managing a polarity requires top-notch leadership abilities in being able to differentiate between either/or problems to be solved and both/and trade-offs to be perpetually managed. If you’re seeking success over the long-term, polarities must be managed with a both/and approach.
In Built to Last, James Collins and Jerry Porras phrase it beautifully when they counsel to leaders to “avoid the tyranny of the OR and embrace the genius of the AND.”
The opposite of an ordinary fact is a lie. But the opposite of one profound truth is complemented and given life by another profound truth. ~Nils Bohr, Nobel Award winning physicist
How effective leaders manage paradox and polarity
Besting those “irreconcilable trade-offs” as Hamel so aptly describes them requires leaders to have mastery of several personal both/and behaviors.
Let’s take a look at several of them.
Effective leaders have both confidence and humility.
They have sufficient self-confidence to recognize and appreciate their own self-worth, yet manage to balance their faith in themselves with valuing and acknowledging the contributions of others.
Effective leaders practice both passion and caution.
They’re filled with purpose as well as the thoughtfulness and awareness to know that others hold a different purpose. They appreciate that differences aren’t bad or wrong, just different.
Effective leaders know how to both connect and challenge.
They with their strengths; understand their weaknesses, and use that wisdom to challenge themselves to fulfill their biggest and best potential. They do the same for those around them.
Effective leaders know there’s both a time to pull and push.
Sometimes those who are being led need to see the light; other times they need to be the candle. Effective leaders help and guide them either way.
Effective leaders are good at both inquiry and advocacy.
They strive first to understand, and only then use their voice to promote, celebrate, and teach others so they can develop their fullest potential.
Effective leaders both dream and do.
They dream their castles in the air, then build them.
Effective leaders both rejoice and reflect.
They look inward to understand the why, the why not, and the how to be better. They celebrate often and share the joy, the pain, the silliness, and wonderfulness of it all.
Sending smiles and inspiration to all in learning to master these polarities and in being the best leader you can be!
Image source: Dreamstime
by Jane Perdue | Kindness, Leadership, Paradox & Polarity
I marvel at the amount of time spent:
…on seeking to define and/or differentiate leadership and management.
How about just doing the work; focusing on people, principles and results; and not get hung up on labels?
…trying to prove that a specific list of leadership characters traits is the one and only.
Perhaps we should agree that the list of worthy traits is long, that most are needed, and that our time will spent leading than in creating a finite list that tomorrow’s business needs will change?
…espousing that one can only lay claim to being a leader if they have followers.
How about agreeing to disagree and respecting each other’s opinion?
…vehemently asserting that leadership is only measured by results.
Can we agree to disagree on this one too, yet respect each other’s opinion?
…attempting to prove that managers do things right and that leaders do the right thing.
Can we say that supervisors, managers and leaders both do things right and do the right things?
Life is big and complicated and fun and challenging and full of ambiguity. So are those things we call leadership and management and supervision.
Rarely is life, love and leadership an either/or end game. It’s more of a both/and dance in which we balance, shift, and juggle managing the opposing, contradictory, and complementary elements of a longer term truth.
In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras phrase it beautifully as “avoid the tyranny of the OR and embrace the genius of the AND.” That’s a beautiful way to dance!
What say you?
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Character, Paradox & Polarity
“Kathleen was way out of line. Going to her boss to complain about her performance review was over the top. We had no choice but to write her up.”
“Why didn’t you have a choice?”
“We can’t have our executives burdened with such mundane matters.”
“Did Kathleen talk to her boss about her concerns?”
“Of course she told him about her disagreement during the review.”
“Anything after that?”
“She wrote a five-page letter two days after the review and asked for a follow-up meeting with her boss.”
“What happened in the follow-up meeting?”
“It hasn’t happened yet. We’ve kept her boss pretty busy with our annual business strategy and budget planning that’s done every year at this time.”
“How long has it been since Kathleen gave her follow-up letter to her boss?”
“Let’s see, we’ve spent the last two months really focused on the strategy and budget work. Her review was before that, so it’s been maybe three months.”
“Is that a normal time gap for your organization to respond to employee issues?”
“Well, maybe not normal but it certainly hasn’t been the longest. We’ll get to her issue when the budget planning work is over.”
Advice for a troubled management team
Oh, my goodness!
What a host of riches exist for making changes to improve process, better engage employees and even minimize the risk of legal action:
- Consider an open door program so employees with issues have a place to go
- Revisit how priorities are set
- Provide training on balancing task completion and relationship building
- Have someone serve as the advocate for employees
- Conduct risk management training
What other going-forward advice would you offer this HR manager?
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
I used to tease Frank, an accountant where I worked some years ago, about his hope that life would track more like a balance sheet — all the ins and outs offsetting perfectly, all neat and tidy.
