Dr. Steele, Ph.D.: Paradox invites us to honor those different points of view to respect them to engage them now. Doesn't mean we always agree with them but that's emotional because that's where the, you know, I'm right, you're wrong comes into it. My name's Katrina, and I'm Steve. And we are curious about how changing conversations can change organizations. Yeah, and together with our community of transformation nerds, we're exploring how to leverage conversations to make our workplaces more fit for humans, but also more fit for the future. We'll use our podcast series to do just that, while being in conversation with business and thought leaders who have interesting perspectives on the topic. So without further ado, let's start the conversation. Our conversation today is with Wendy Smith. Wendy Smith earned her PhD in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, and is currently a professor of management at the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics. She's also the co-director of the Women's Leadership Initiative at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on how leaders and teams can be better at dealing with contradictory agendas. And this year, she co-authored a book on navigating paradox called Both and Thinking. We've invited Wendy to learn about how we can be better at embracing paradox in our conversations. Welcome, Wendy. So nice to have you here. It's really fun to be here. Thanks for having me. We are super excited to talk about paradoxes and how to navigate them in this kind of crazy world that we're in at the moment. I think the perfect place to start would be to ask you, why is it relevant to talk about paradox right now? I love that question. We have been studying this idea of paradox of both and thinking for about 20, 25 years. And to be fair, this is an idea that we're building on of 2,500 years ago. So this is not a new idea. It's an idea, though, that has been gaining important traction in our world of leadership, of organizational development, of how we navigate our organizations. And what we found in the last 20 or 25 years is that when we, and when I say we, it's myself and my co-author and colleague, Marianne Lewis. When we started talking about paradox in the context of leadership and in the context of organizations, we got a lot of pushback. In part, what we're inviting people to do is to rethink their dilemmas, their challenges from an either or to a both and. And it felt very foreign to people. Well, what we found is that over the last 20, 25 years, this idea has become almost part of our lexicon, part of our language, part of the way that we talk about things. We hear organizations talking about needing to live in the and. We hear consulting firms talking about the paradoxes of leadership and how we have to engage with the paradoxes of leadership. And so we wrote this book to help people think, how do we move beyond the both and as a label, both and as a label to really how to do this? And I'll just say one more thing, which is that one of the things we find in our research is that these kinds of challenges or the paradoxes or needing to bring together interwoven opposites become so much more salient to us under three conditions when there is a lot of change in the world. And so tomorrow becomes today even quicker. And the tensions between today and tomorrow is so much more salient when there is more scarcity or an experience of scarcity when resources feel limited. And so it feels like we're in conflict over those resources and under the conditions of what we call plurality or the multiplicity of voices or diversity when there's different voices in the world and lots of people are therefore in conflict for who's right and who's wrong. And so, you know, we could certainly say that we are in a world right now with a lot of change, an experience of scarcity and a lot of plurality. And I think that's one of the reasons why this idea is really bubbling up now. That makes so much sense. It feels so real when you describe those different things, like exactly that's the world that we're in right now. And I wanted to sort of feed it over to you, Steve. Can you paint an example? Like, can you paint some of the paradoxes, tangible paradoxes that you experience out there to sort of complement what Wendy's just been talking about? Yeah, I think it's actually easy when you voice it over. Yeah, I think it's actually easy when you voice it over, Wendy, and thank you for doing that. I think in the context of strategy as an example, I think this whole notion of sustainability and how do you build business models that are not putting a tax on the planet? How do you build business models that are truly generative? I think that's a paradox that I can't think of many organizations or any that is not. either looking that straight in the eye or, you know, not looking at it. And, and you could also talk about, I think, diversity, gender diversity. And I think every, every organization today will be looking at that. And it's a good example of a paradox because it's something we need to fix. At the same time, it's super painful just to sit with it and work with it because it goes slow. And it's frustrating and it's frustrating and it's frustrating and it's frustrating and it's frustrating and it's frustrating and there are different views and it's not easy to make a decision that kind of fixes it. So I think within this field, I can also maybe one last thing. When I talked to a good friend and a CEO from a large organization a couple of weeks ago, he basically said that, he said, it's, it's, they are dealing with nothing but crisis and super complex issues that just continuously emerge. And he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he would expect that to never go away again. Um, so for the next five, 10 years, he just couldn't imagine a life going back to, uh, a simpler situation where you would make a choice. It was done. You move on to the next one. These are almost like problems or issues that are mutating, uh, and, and, and, uh, leading from each other. And I think many of us can recognize that, that we used to talk about VUCA or the VUCA world and so forth. And, and honestly, it is as if it just came, uh, you know, within the last year, it's not some abstract theme. It's, it's where you sit as a leader. You know how that feels. Well, I think before pushing off sort of into this realm, one of the things that I thought would be helpful is to share the definitions that you guys came up with, uh, in term, in your book, both and thinking you distinguish between tensions, dilemmas, and paradoxes. And just for the sake of, you know, our language and, and having a broader language to talk about things. Could you just nuance those three for us before we delve into the complexities of paradoxes? Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to just, before I do that, reinforce what Steve was saying, because our friends and colleagues at Oxford at Saeed Business School, uh, did a research study where they asked 150 CEOs from around the world, what are the challenges that they're facing? And when they boiled it down underlying that were these tug of wars of these opposing elements that are not solvable, that they have to live with. And it's all of those things like in sustainability, short term and long term mission and markets, trying to do well for the planet and well for the organization, trying to think about globalization and at the same time being hyper local and attend to local needs today and tomorrow. It's all of those. So, so I think that that's right, that, that leaders are definitely feeling feeling feeling the tug, feeling the pain of this. And I think the underlying question is, um, not if these paradoxes exist, or if leaders are going to be experiencing it, or people are across the organization, but how they can navigate it in a way that is more productive and effective. I think that's the, that's the real question. And how can we help leaders to do that? Um, so let me just say one word on definitions and what we're thinking. So, uh, we would argue what we've argued is that, um, we all feel tensions. Tensions are those tug of wars, those opposing demands that, that we just feel viscerally, uh, that come up in all kinds of strategic conversations. Things like, uh, do I make my organization more centralized or decentralized? I just had that organization with a large fortune 500, uh, CEO here as they're trying to navigate where decision-making lies, or as you were saying, diversity, how do I think about bringing in, uh, diversity, diverse conversations, diverse people, diverse people, diverse people, and enabling inclusion while at the same time, you know, that creates all kinds of tensions and conflicts. So that, how do we do that productively and create, you know, all of these. So the, so the tensions are those tug of wars. And we find that the way that we tend to frame those tensions are in an either or, uh, either I am a more centralized organization or I'm a more decentralized organization because I have to make a decision about where to allocate decision-making responsibility. And, and, and this is natural. This is the way that we, and for a variety of reasons, we can, we can unpack that. The way that we tend to think collectively, the way it's sort of an evolutionary heritage that deals with our underlying emotions about fear and control. We, we tend to frame these things as an either or, where we have to make a decision between those. And that's what we frame as, that's what we describe as our dilemmas, which are the experiences that we have, the challenges that we face that beg us for a response. And those dilemmas are real. In many cases, we have to make decisions. Yet what we say is that underlying all of those dilemmas are these paradoxes, which are these interwoven or these things that are contradictory yet interdependent, interwoven opposites. The idea of being both short-term and long-term, in which focusing on the long-term is what's going to enable us to be more effective in the short-term, and getting stuff done in the short-term is what's going to get us to the long-term. These opposite pressures that are not just opposite, they're also interwoven. And those are the paradoxes. And the argument that we make is that if we pause in navigating our dilemmas to see, to understand, to view, to value those underlying paradoxes, we can make better decisions in the challenges and dilemmas that come up. I like that. And I think it's helpful in many ways. And I can't help thinking when you just shared that definition that also this thing about how do you not hide paradoxes to the organization, because there could be this tendency to, you know, you don't want to create confusion, or you don't want to create discomfort, comfort in the organization. So you kind of act as if this is all in place. And we had a guest here, Ms. Nieper, I can recall. He was giving a very good example where they basically had a conversation around, you know, within the executive team, you know, basically spent two hours picking on their business model and basically making the argument that, you know, what would make us irrelevant in the future? And allowed themselves to kind of debate, you know, what could do that, which is normally a conversation you won't, that's a conversation we're not having. Because, you know, you're in this kind of, you're in this organization, and you almost make a promise. And so I think this thing about actually embracing and inviting these tensions into the organization is actually, I guess, what you're saying, it's that invitation we should do. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a couple of levels. It's first, can the leader, well, at an individual level, you know, and if we're talking to leaders, do the leaders understand and see the paradoxes? Can they then communicate them to their team so that they can grapple with them as a team? And then how do we communicate and engage the rest of the organization around these tensions and paradoxes to invite them in? One leader that we have interviewed, and that we feature in the book is Paul Pullman. And we think he's quite brilliant, both in each of those steps in seeing paradoxes in Paul Pullman, who was the CEO of Unilever from 2008 to 2018, and who, to your point about sustainability, made a commitment to doubling this, the profit of the organization through in while engaging in, not despite a commitment to reducing their environmental footprint in half and making a huge huge difference in terms of the impact that they have on people who are in the developing world and beyond. And so he was very clear about how he understood tensions and the underlying paradoxes. He worked to create the structures and the culture in their organization, in their senior leadership team. And then he was really clear that he had to then drive that down into the organization. And what does that look like? And not everybody will understand at the same level, but it is something to invite people into thinking about. And I'll just say one more thing. One of the things in terms of, it's not easy to invite people to think about it. One of the things that we find in our research, and we've done some research with an amazing social entrepreneur, Zita Cobb, who, again, we feature in the book, and who runs an organization called ShoreFast in Newfoundland. And she speaks in stories and metaphors in poems because each of those forms of communication in which she conveys the idea of paradox invite people to engage in paradox in the way that they can understand, right? So she uses this great poem from a New Zealand poet, The Art of Walking Upright, where the art of walking upright is having one foot grounded. This is not the exact words of the poem, this is not the exact words of the poem, but having one foot stable on the ground and one foot moving forward. And that idea of the tension between stability and change, between moving forward and sticking with what we know, is sort of embedded in that poem. And the whole organization knows that poem. And they can each engage with it at the level that they understand, that they're able to grasp and understand what it means and how they can implement it in their own work. But it is challenging because, I mean, you could also argue, or some people argue that one of the roles you have as a leader is to create clarity. And what we're doing here is, you could argue the opposite. You're literally inviting paradoxes into the heads of everyone, and through that you're also creating discomfort. And you need to train people's ability to be in that discomforting state and have a conversation that might not feel as if we have resolved it, if we put aside an hour. And I would like you to talk a little bit about how do you marinate an organization into that way of thinking? Because we come with different mindsets, and some people are super concrete. We have different timeframes within our head as to, you know, when should we get to do that? I might think 15 minutes, you might say a year. And if we're not aligned, then one of us will be super frustrated, potentially both of us. So there is something about how do you create unity around now we're doing this, and we're talking about something that doesn't call for a decision, and then we can move on. How do you do that? I'm so glad you said that. And I want to unpack what you said, because I think it's really important. You pointed to both how do we change our mindset so that we can engage with paradox, and this word discomfort, it's emotional. And I think that's important to point out, because what's one of the things that's hard about paradox is not just can we get our minds around it, it's also it tugs at our emotions, especially when we're in an organization, and we have a point of view, and someone else has another point of view, and we have to, you know, paradox invites us to honor those different points of view to respect them to engage them. Now, doesn't mean we always agree with them. But that's emotional, because that's where the, you know, I'm right, you're wrong comes into it. So, so I just want to speak to both sides of that for a second, in terms of the clarity and the leadership clarity. I think that the invitation for leaders is to be clear in the complexity, simple in the complexity. And what what I mean by that is that, and again, I'll go back to Paul Pullman, one of the ways that leaders can do that is to be really clear what the overarching goal is the over, you know, overarching vision, we talk about it as a higher purpose. Paul Pullman talks about it as a higher purpose. And he said that when he came into Unilever, it was the first and most important thing that he did in the organization was to really clarify and specify their higher purpose, which is to make sustainable living commonplace, make everyday sustainable, make sustainable living everyday kind commonplace. And that is what he's what he's consistent about. Now, he knows that within that, that overarching vision, it contains these paradoxes. So we can engage in the competing ideas, knowing that motivated by a collective commitment to a long term vision. So so that's important there. What he's consistent about is that that's the goal. And what he knows is that there's tensions that come up within that goal. So, you know, I like to use the metaphor of standing on a boat where there's choppy rocky waters. And the way that we calm ourselves in the moment is by looking out to the distant horizon, which is, you know, calm. I think that's the same thing about a higher purpose. It has that integrative effect. It's integrative, it's long term, but it's stabilizing, even as we're experiencing those tensions in the moment. So I think that's a piece of the clarity. And I think the other side of this is to that leaders have work to do to, you know, we talk about it as help people find comfort in the discomfort. And I think there's discomfort. And I think there's an important idea here, which is to notice that this is uncomfortable because there's differing opinions and differing opinions creates conflict. And many of us are conflict avoidant because it's icky to use a really sort of sophisticated phrase. Like it's just hard. And, and when we say find comfort in the discomfort, we are resonating with the literature and psychology that says that it's not about denying or rejecting the discomfort. It's not about assuming that that doesn't exist. It's about honoring the difficult things, accepting it, and being able to live and go forward amid those difficult things. And, you know, that's not easy as a leader of a small organization. It's not easy as a leader of a large organization. People want to feel comfortable. And the question is, how can we invite people to honor the discomfort and not see it as a pathology, but see it as an opportunity? On the topic of inviting people to engage in paradox, how can I invite myself to engage in paradox? What are some of the red flags that I can look out for that I'm not embracing paradox right now? Right. I love that because that's where it starts. And if anybody is going to invite others, they have to be able to be comfortable themselves. And, and again, paradox is a, I think of it as a lifelong experience of continually re inviting ourselves into that experience, you know, so the, the easy, the, I don't know if it's easy. The first step I think that we talk about is recognizing when we are asking either or questions and changing the question, just changing the question. And so that requires two steps. It requires us to notice the either or-ing that we are doing, the right, wrong, the assumption that there has to be a right side and a wrong side, or the framing of our problems as an either or, and just reframing the question into a both and. What we find is that, what we find is that, is that A, noticing that, and then B, changing the question is the beginning to open up all kinds of possibility spaces for us in, in those options. And, you know, I often joke that I have twins, they're 16. There's a lot of, a lot of me looking to them where there, you know, there's a lot of either or-ing with siblings in general, twins in particular, and they almost roll their eyes because they know that as soon as they get into me versus, you know, you versus me dilemma, it's, okay, how can we accommodate both? What's the possibility here? Let's reframe that. But I think it's the same thing in our organizations. I was recently working with an organization. They shared the book with the whole organization. They were navigating all kinds of issues around innovation. And the question came up, like, which of the, where do we put our resources? Do we, particularly our sales resource in this case, do we have them continue to do what they've been doing or do we change their metrics so that they do the new thing? And, you know, all of a sudden one of them had a smile on their face and said, okay, what's the both and here, right? So I think, I think that the start of shifting our language to invite ourselves into noticing that there could be a both and starts us to thinking about a different, you know, possibility space. One of the red flags linked to this that I, that kind of popped up that you've already said was, I'm right, you're wrong. And so, you know, that moment where you're thinking, God, why can't they see how freaking wrong they are right now? And when you're sort of going into that zone, that might be a little moment where you go, oh, okay, maybe I should try to reframe this. Yes. And, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, yes. And, and so the first is to reframe it. And then the second piece is that when we are engaging with I'm right, you're wrong with somebody else, then the question is, well, how do you navigate that? And I think a big piece there is how can I pause and listen to them and hear what they have to, I don't have to agree with them, but how do I respect and pause and listen and open up the possibilities before quickly trying to, you know, before typically what we would do is try and push our position and get the other person to agree. Well, the only thing they're going to do is push their position back and get, try to get us to agree. So how can I pause and listen in those moments? I know you're going to say, you want to say something, Steve, but I just want to delve into that one level deeper, which is, so what do you do? Like, because I, I, I'm not particularly good at those situations where I, I disagree with, with you. And I'm, I want to turn down that, okay, I'm going to prove you wrong kind of vibe. So, so what do you concretely do, Steve, when you're, when you're faced across from somebody and you're just really feeling that I don't want to listen to you vibe? Yeah, I think there's, there's two things. I think you mentioned both of them in your book, Wendy. One is, if I can get hold of the thought, what is it that I don't see and understand here? If I, if I, if my starting point is, there's something I don't get, there's something I don't get. If I can, if I can kind of get hold to that idea that immediately makes me more curious as to realizing that there's a ton of things that I don't see right now. So that's, that's the one thing. And, and the other thing I, I, I mean, in the moments where I succeed, where I succeed in this field is when I'm able to, to get on the balcony before I get, you know, eaten up by the conversation. So I, I'm able to maybe sometimes it's only five, 10 seconds where I get on the balcony and say, okay, what is the conversation we should have here? And how can I be a servant of, of that conversation in this moment? And for me, that's a super liberating position to give myself and to see myself as, okay, how can I, how can I be a, a facilitator of the type of conversation that would move us forward rather than, you know, have a, have a point of view? Because I've come to realize that some other people in the room will have a better idea than I have. So more and more, my role is, is to hold space for something to happen. Um, and that in itself is a task. I didn't used to think of it that way. I used to think of it that I am living and I am worth listening to only if I have a, I have strong points of view on something. And, uh, I'm not saying I don't think that sometimes still, but I'm, I'm working on it. Wendy, do you have anything you could add to Steve, some more advice? I mean, there's, there's so much, and I think that that's the right start and there's, there's so much to delve into, into this one. I think that, um, there's a couple of pieces of why do we need to speak so quickly? And I think there's a couple of pieces to that. One is that most leaders just want to get stuff done and there's a certain impatience, right? There's a certain efficiency in moving forward. And I think that, um, the reminder is to go slow, to go fast, to pause, to listen, to get people on board, to be able in the longterm to go fast. Because when you haven't done that part in the beginning of a conversation or the beginning of a decision down the road, you've got a lot of people who aren't on board and aren't going to be working and pulling in the same direction. And I used to have a sign on my, uh, bulletin board in my office, go slow to go fast, to continually remind myself of what it, the patience that it takes in the beginning to be able to implement more efficiently in the end. Um, and I think that the other, you know, one of the reasons that we don't listen is because almost of a fear, there's this underlying fear and this need for control. We feel anxious when there's an open decision and, and leaders sort of want to have that kind of control because what happens when we open up the possibilities, things can spiral out of control and it will feel uncomfortable. The, the other side of that though, is knowing, and Steve, this is what you, I think you were saying is knowing that if we don't know the whole picture, we can't come, or I'll say it differently. We can come to a better decision when we know the whole picture. And, you know, we, we tell the, um, parable of the blind people and the elephant as a reminder of this. And I don't know if you, you know this, but this Hindu parable, a group of people, blind people approach an elephant, each put their hands in different parts of the elephant and feel different experiences and therefore are sure that this is a different thing. So some people put their hands on, or one person puts their hands on the, the feet and is sure this is a tree trunk. And one puts their hands on, on the, you know, tusks and assure these are spears. And one puts their hands on the trunk and assure that this is a, you know, a swing or a rope. And, and they each have experienced one part of the elephant and they come away than sharing the part that they felt and getting into conflict over what this thing really is. When in fact, if they stepped back, listen to one another, they could piece together the different pieces and see the bigger whole. And I think that's a metaphor for that. Sometimes one of the reasons to listen is because there's a better, more integrative possible whole. If we invite different perspectives into the conversation along the way. But I think, I think, I think also it's, it's, it's, it's interesting to, with paradoxes, at least what I've experienced in, in, in implement is this thing about that. You can, if you have a paradox, say that, you know, will we work in this country or not work in this country or for this client or not for this client? It, it, you know, you know that you need to make a choice. Do we do this or don't we? At the same time, you also know that we're going to make a choice here. And this paradox is going to bite us within the next six months, 12 months anyway. And we need to look at it again because now we know more. And it, I think it's sometimes difficult actually to, to hold that because you need to collapse the paradox to move forward. Otherwise people are getting super frustrated. I mean, what's your point of view here? I mean, what are we thinking? So you need to come up with something at the same time. You need to keep the paradox open. You need to communicate. Communicate to the organization that we will be looking at this again and again and again, and chances that we're going to make another decision in a year's time. And for me, I've always looked at organizations very much through the lens of evolved organizations, future fit organizations are actually able to do those two things in parallel, make the choice of doing this or that. And at the same time, holding the paradox open because it's there. It's not going away. Could you say something about how do you create that marinade? Yeah. So I'll give you the metaphors that we use for this and then maybe explore how it fits into a leader's thinking. When, when it comes to paradox, the important part is that you are not stalled. You're actually still going forward. And that's important, right? Paradox is neither that we just keep adding stuff to our plate that it's overflowed or that we're completely stalled in these opposing ideas. It's that we're using the, the nature of the nature of these opposing ideas to get to better decision-making. And there's two paths and it's important to kind of disentangle the two of them in terms of how we move forward. The first is the ideal win-win, the creative integration, the place in which there is this ideal place between moving into another country and not moving in. What's underneath both of them? Can we come up with some better, you know, alternative option that accommodates both sides and maybe it's, you know, and I, whatever the dynamics are, maybe it's, we move into a third country. That's actually a better place for us. Once we've done a deeper dive and that gets us to both grow and expand, but do it in a way that's more effective or efficient, or, you know, certainly in negotiations, we can see this with a salary negotiation. For example, we might be fighting over how much, but if we do a deeper dive of what do people really care about in their salary, we might learn that it's, you know, a bunch of other components like having more autonomy or more flexibility or what have you that we can negotiate on and then come to a win-win where both the company and the individual have a better possibility. So we call that the mule because the mule is this ideal hybrid between being, you know, smarter than a donkey, stronger than a horse, this, this integrative biological hybrid, a creative integration that win-wins along the way. And, and that's what I think people tend to think about when they think about navigating paradox. That you find this win-win possibility that both sides of these opposing ideas work. And what we have found, what I found in my very first research project was that that happens less often than we think. So the first research project that I ever did was with IBM top management team, the top management teams of their strategic business units as they were navigating innovation. And they were navigating the tensions between their existing world, which at that time was the client server hardware and moving into the new world, which at that time was what we now know as cloud computing. And I expected that there would be all these moments where they would find these perfect integrative possibilities between the technology and the sales and the, you know, the customer relations between their current world into their new world. And they would, and that happens so much more rarely than I was anticipating. And what they were doing instead. And what they were doing instead. And this is the second pattern is that they weren't stalled in this tension between today and tomorrow, short-term, long-term stability and change. They were making decisions and they were making decisions that we would call a pattern of being consistently inconsistent, which is exactly where you were going, which is that we make a decision to move into this country today, but then our next decision, we're going to shift and change it tomorrow. And, but these decisions aren't over overwhelming that they're so overwhelming. It's overwhelming that they're so focused on today that they forget about innovating for the future, in which case they get stuck in inertia, or they're so focused on innovation, in which case they fail to, you know, think about today, in which case it's like, you know, unbridled innovation that can become chaotic and not profitable. They're making these micro decisions and shifting between them. And so we call this pattern the tightrope walker, but actually you could think about it as a bicycle, but actually you could think about it as even standing. But the tightrope walker, where you're going forward, you're focused on a point into the future. And in order to go forward, you're never fully balanced. You're constantly balancing with these sort of micro shifts between these opposing forces. And, you know, one way that people will kind of ground this idea, I think, that makes it easier is in our work-life tensions, in our personal work-life tensions, because this tends to be what we do anyway, with work and life, which is that it's rare that we find this ideal moment where, like, bring your kids to work and there's a win-win between our family needs and our work needs. What we're often doing is we're making these micro shifts between are we spending this evening, you know, finishing up a work project or the next evening being home for family dinner. And what we know is that if people focus too much on work and their family is suffering or the rest of their lives or whatever, you know, they'll end up feeling burnout. And if they focus too much on the rest of their lives, their work suffers. So it's this micro shifting, this consistent inconsistency pattern that allows us to move forward with these paradoxes that enables us along the way. And that then becomes a question of how does a leader communicate that to their organization? And I think this goes back to, we continually communicate that in the context of the overarching, higher purpose, higher purpose, bigger vision. We're making these micro shifts to get to the other side of the tightrope. I really want to share one of the things that just really resonates with me. Also, one of the things in your book that kind of speaks to exactly what you're talking about. And that is this, this quote from Mary Parker Follet, but where she's talking about friction, because I think it makes it so practical for me also, as I'm a very conflict-averse person. But if I can start to see, okay, I'm feeling some friction now, because you're disagreeing with me. And what she does so beautifully is that she says, you know, why not lean into the friction? Any mechanical engineer will embrace and maximize on the friction in a locomotive or when you're playing the strings of a violin. That is only possible because you're playing the same. That is only possible because of friction. So you can just kind of lean into it in a different way. So I just, it made me think of that while you were telling about these different kind of mechanisms and way of leaning into paradox. Yeah. And I love the metaphor that she uses of the violin, you know, or the other metaphor she uses is that for a car to move along a road, there's, you've got to have friction between the two to push that forward. But I love the violin because you can just imagine that what emerges from honoring that friction is this beautiful music. And I think the way that looks in our lives, and I love that you said this is when we feel conflict-averse or when we, it's not if there's conflict, it's how we, conflict itself is how we, it's not a bad thing. It's not if there's conflict, it's how we navigate it. So what would it look like for us to just pause and recognize we have different points of view and even say out loud, like I'm noticing a different point of view, I'm noticing the conflict coming up, but I would love to just listen and hear what you have to say so that we can use that conflict to a better, to come to a better place. And do you think that the mindset and the capabilities to embrace these creative tensions and paradoxes, do you think that that's a trainable kind of muscle that, you know, and if so, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I would, I would suspect that you say yes. And, and, and if so, what, what are the capabilities that I should be looking at? Yeah, I do think it's trainable. And I think that there's two sets. One is how can you have people help people to shift their mindsets and their emotions? How can, you know, and I think the other piece of it for leaders is how do you create the context where working through that is a space that we can feel comfortable in? What are the, what are the contextual variables that allow us to continue to feel comfortable in them? We, in some research that we did, Marianne, Lewis, and I, along with our colleague at INSEAD, Ella Marone Spector, and our colleagues, Amy Ingram, and Josh Keller, we, we created this paradox mindset inventory to say what enables people to actually see and engage paradox more effectively. And we tested this with thousands of people and it's available if anybody wanted to use it, it's available. We have it in the back of the book. It's, it's a free and available assessment that people could use. But I think the important idea here is that there's two components to helping people to do that. One is that they actually experience the tensions. They, they, they, so, so either they're in a context where there's a lot of tensions and you can't avoid them, or they're in a context where there's not, there's not seeming a lot of tensions and we actually surface them, we raise them, you know, but even if we're in a, in a context where there's a lot of tension going on, one of the things that we like to do is kind of sweep it under the rug and hide it. So, so are we willing to just recognize that there's tensions and, uh, Katrina, this is goes back to what you had just said, right? That there's tensions and we want to run away from them, but can we sort of hold that space and know that there's possibility there. And then are we able to notice that our question in those tensions is either or, and shifted to both and so, so that's the invitation on the individual side on the, on the leader side. I think it's about creating the context where we see those paradoxes, where we can create that higher purpose, where we could invite those tensions. The other thing Paul Polman would say to us is that if my people aren't raising tensions, and, and, and these tug of wars, we know they're there, so I ask for them, like just the leader surfaces and invites them and that the leader creates the context where they listen to multiple sides and invite those multiple different perspectives and point of view in the room to model that kind of, um, behavior where we engage with competing ideas. It actually plays well to some research we did recently where we, in the context of conversations, we asked leaders, so what are you, what are you yearning for? And, and two things came out clearly above anything else. The first one was more curiosity. So we, we literally wish that we would all be more curious in our conversations. And the second thing was to your point that we had the courage to talk about the real issues. So we're kind of tap dancing around the real conversation and everyone knows that this is actually what we ought to talk about, what we are not doing it and we're not making the invitation. And it was interesting when we talked to poet and philosopher David White, he had this beautiful image where he says, every one of us is making invitation in some fields and not invitation in other fields when it comes to conversation. And he said, the people that knows you the best can within moments tell you what is the conversation STI is not having and what is the conversation STI ought to have. So it actually plays well to this thing about that also in an organizational context, when you come in, the organization knows what's the conversation or what is the issue we actually ought to think about or talk about or deal with. But for some reason, we're not because they're more, you know, concrete things or it's painful because we might challenge some deep promises that we have made organizational wise or even as individuals and we don't want to go there. Yeah, I think there's underlying fear and fear for good reasons. I mean, the anxiety that we feel again, this is an evolutionary thing where we want to minimize that sense of uncertainty. Because then we're not because then we're not because then we're not sure what happens. And I think it's so powerful what you're saying because, you know, it strikes me that two of the people that I love in this field and that have been so profound in my thinking really surface here, right? The first is that is Brene Brown's work on vulnerability. And for leaders, I was just having this conversation, like I said yesterday, with a leader out of a major tech company. And he's holding a full day retreat for his people. And I said to him, one of the most powerful things that he could do in this space, because he wants people to being able to bring him issues and to, you know, raise and be more transparent. I said, the one of the most powerful things that you can do is to be transparent and vulnerable. And that is to stand in front of your people and and model what it's like to share, you know, to be vulnerable in ways that opens you up and demonstrates your courage. as a model. And so I think that there is and, you know, I can imagine some leaders hearing this and thinking about what would it look like to tell a story that of something that they were most embarrassed by or a mistake that they made or something more vulnerable about themselves. That's scary. And that's what we're asking our people to do. So so the first is kind of grappling with our own vulnerability and courage and how much that opens up possibilities. You know, and then the second is Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety, which is how do you then as a leader create the conditions where people in your organization and your team in your organization are willing to constantly raise these difficult topics or what the conversation really is about underlying without being with knowing that they won't be penalized to do it, knowing that they will be celebrated to do it. And so I think that's this that's the second part. So you are vulnerable yourself, as Brene Brown would say, and you're creating the conditions in your team to honor and enable that sanctioning when people are stepping outside and minimizing that possibility and honoring when people are courageous and raising issues that might be hard to deal with. Yeah. Gosh, okay, we could talk for a long time on this. We're recognizing that time must come to a close at some point. Before we close on this, I do want to ask you, Wendy, what is your call to action? Anybody listening to this? In short, what is the one thing you could do differently? It's change the question. Change the question. You know, I kind of use the metaphor of meditating, right? So meditation is a lifelong pursuit to be a Zen master. But anybody who wants to enter into the benefits of meditation, the first thing they have to do is focus on their breath. It's the first entry point in. I think the same is true for navigating paradox. It can seem really complex. It can seem really abstract. It can seem really irrational. And I think the first thing that we can do is, again, notice when we frame these things as either or, right, wrong, black, white, win, lose, and just shift the question and invite ourselves to think about a different possibility space. Very inspiring. So we always end these podcast episodes with a round of what is it that I will take into my next conversation now that we've had this one. Steve? Yeah. I jotted down this thing about being better at when I frame issues or challenges, framing them as both end. But I think that was taken by your last comment. So I think for me, and maybe it's paradoxical in itself, but this thing about identifying the paradoxical clarity in the conversation I'm having. So literally allowing myself to think about when I go into a conversation, what is actually the paradox at play here or the opposing idea that is kind of above the conversation we're having here? Because it helps me keep the conversation open. I'll follow on from you. I've already said it, but I just love this about capitalizing on friction. So when you feel the friction, lean into it, make it work for you. I love that idea. How about you, Wendy? Well, I am always, I'm so grateful to the work that you both do and the work that Implement does. I think that I am always just so aware of that this is not easy. And the this being living into and honoring the friction, living into the chain, you know, shifting the question and holding these competing ideas is not easy. I think that I have empathy for leaders. And I think that I have empathy for that. And I, and so I'm, I'm grateful or I'm aware of just how hard it is empathetic to that and still deeply believe that there is a really important space for us to get to better organizations, better leadership in a better world by moving in this direction. So I am taking once again, the gratitude of the work that you all do and the empathy for the leaders that are navigating this space. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. If you're interested to follow up on any of the references in this episode, follow the link in the episode description. Thanks for listening. Remember, you're never not in conversation. So stay curious out there. See you next time. Bye.