Managing Paradox as a Leader

You’ve probably never heard of paradox management. Management texts rarely mention it. But within every corporate culture, certain paradoxes are at work. And this is equally true in all corporate cultures, whether in the profit or non-profit sector.

In these cultural paradoxes, leaders are confronted with two choices which seem to be mutually exclusive. Doing one precludes doing the other. But the leader must do both. Paradox presents itself as an either-or issue. But it must be managed with a both-and approach.

A simple example is the IT director who is expected to maximize security on company networks, but is also expected to give all workers easy access to all of the data they need. The interests of one expectation undercut the interests of the other expectation. Yet both interests have to be honored.

When confronted with this kind of paradox, the leader must find an appropriate balance point which adequately addresses the interests on both sides. Odds are, however, that advocates for one interest or both will disagree with the balance point. They will push and politick continually to relocate the balance point to give their interest greater leverage.

The result is an inherent tension within the paradox which always threatens to give rise to conflict. Leaders must be astute at finding a defensible balance point, then marshaling the courage to cope with sometimes pronounced criticism from those who think the balance point inappropriate.

In this episode I delve into the nature of paradox and offer some practical advice on how leaders should manage it. A PDF transcript of the program is available at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Simply follow the link labeled Download Scripts.

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I’ve used the last two podcasts to explore little-known factors which account for the effectiveness with which the Ukrainians are standing up to the Russian invasion.

Today I look at the ingenuity of the Ukrainians in finding and exploiting weak spots in the way the Russian forces are conducting their offensive.

What is now becoming apparent is that the Ukrainians are demonstrating an amazing ability to learn and adapt much faster than the Russians. Their performance is a real-time example of Peter Senge’s argument in The Fifth Discipline that the greatest competitive advantage which companies have at their disposal is to learn faster than their competition.

Senge urged every company to become a “learning organization,” a term which he coined. This episode looks at specific examples of how the Ukrainians are putting the “learning organization” concept into practice. They are showing us as leaders and managers the powerful benefit of ,adopting this strategy ourselves.

Download a transcript of this podcast at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Simply click on the Download Scripts link.

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Charred buildings and massive piles of rubble are becoming commonplace in Ukraine as Russia unleashes its a campaign of annihilation might against the entire Ukrainian population. Yet, Ukrainian resistance seems undeterred. What does the future hold?

This episode delves into that question by examining the prospects for Ukraine if Russia wins and Ukraine’s defenders are reduced to an insurgency movement. Mike explains why the spirit of improvisation and resistance which are deeply rooted in Ukraine’s history and embedded in its collective psyche.

He then contrasts Ukraine’s people and their propensity for on-the-spot, innovative decision-making with the rigid command-and-control structure of the Russian army, which withholds the right of independent decisions from anyone except those in the highest echelons of power.

He then looks at the implications of this contrast should insurgency become a way of life for Ukraine.

A transcript of this podcast is available by following the link to download scripts at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast.

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Because of Russia’s recent invasion, Ukraine has been dominating the news cycle. But most Americans know little, if anything, about this little-known country, even though it is the largest nation whose borders fall entirely in Europe.

In this episode, I draw on years of firsthand, on-the-ground experience in Ukraine to give you an important backstory to the current events in Ukraine. It’s the backstory of a nation which after centuries of domination by various empires has struggled for the past 30 years to forge its independence and establish its own national identity.

I outline the challenges which Ukraine faces in this effort to develop a sense of true national unity and pride. Linguistic, religious, and cultural differences have compounded the identity-building challenge, as this program explains..

Within the last decade, however, in response to Russia’s previous annexation of Crimea, an unprecedented sense of national unity has taken root. And evidence of this pride is likely to manifest itself in whatever combat is about to ensue.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Simply follow the Download Scripts link.

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Ours is a performance driven world, especially for managers and executives.. They feel the constant pressure to hit critical numbers in terms of production and profits. To meet those expectations, they are continually tweaking their own performance and the performance of their team.

In this episode we examine the basic principle of performance enhancement advanced 40 years ago by Timothy Gallwey in his book The Inner World of Tennis. Gallwey had an unswerving belief that people genuinely want to perform well. What holds them back is some type of interference which thwarts their potential.

His formula for performance was therefore to eliminate the interference so that higher performance can blossom. The type if nterference which Gallwey addressed is internal. It’s the self-deprecating self-talk which we easily slip into whenever we make a serious mistake, fail at an important task, or face a daunting challenge..

But performance-stifling interference can also be external. And these external performance inhibitors are the subject of this episode. Dr. Mike calls on managers reframe the way that they think about weak performance on the part of their people. He urges managers to develop an initial instinct to look for the interference, whether internal or external, which is choking off greater performance.

A PDF copy of this episode can be retrieved by following the script download link at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast/episodes/2204-increasing-performance.htm

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It’s All About Planning, Not the Plan

General Dwight David Eisenhower is famously known for having said that in preparation for battle, plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. These words from the man who planned the largest operation ever undertaken in human history, the D-Day landing at Normandy.

What we learn during a thorough learning process, Eisenhower knew, is far more valuable for future decision-making than the plan itself, no matter how well it has been put together. the plan is articulated. Like all military leaders, he knew the sobering truth of the adage that a battle plan becomes obsolete within five minutes of contact with the enemy. In battle, few things go exactly as planned.

When that happens, leaders must innovate by drawing on lessons learned during the planning process. Long after the plan itself may have become irrelevant, these lessons learned will serve as powerful guides for making judicious decisions..

The same principles hold in all organization. Wise managers enlarge the number of people who learn from the planning process by enlisting broad participation in the planning process — especially plans which are long-term in nature. The result is an organization that is more resilient when the unexpected occurs, because they can fall back on lessons learned in the planning process even when the plan proves incomplete or outmoded.

A transcript of this podcast is available for download at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast.

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Credibility: Leadership’s Ultimate Power

Because leaders do not always hold management titles, they lack the coercive power which comes with managerial authority. Their power, instead, lies in their influence.

To maximize their influence, leaders must build credibility in three critical domains. First is the social domain, where their character must give them credibility. Second is the professional domain, where their competence is the key to credibility. And third is the leadership domain, where they gain credibility by achieving the concrete results which are expected of them.

The depth and scope of their credibility determines the degree to which leaders are trusted. For a person to be trusted as a leader, however, there is no substitute for producing desired outcomes. When leaders fail in this regard, they lose the necessary credibility to be trusted as leaders. They may still be trusted as a person of character or as a professional with great confidence. But they will no longer benefit from the influence which comes from having trust in their leadership leader.

This episode takes a penetrating look at credibility and its pivotal role in leadership. For a transcript of the episode, go to https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Simply click on the link to download scripts.

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With every passing year, astute team-building becomes more crucial as a leadership skill. For leaders today, success is a team sport.

Our world has simply become so complex that no one person can master all the nuances of developing new products, bringing them to market, and promoting them effectively. Strong teams housing a wide variety of talents are essential to leadership achievement in almost every arena.

Recently I was interviewed about leadership on Close-Up Television. Early in the conversation, the host raised the issue of team-building. In this episode I share a portion of the discussion which followed.

I explain why highly authoritarian styles of leadership have had to give way to more participative approaches. Next I explain why, as part of that change, team-building has emerged as a non-negotiable leadership priority. I then look at five essentials which leaders must instill in their teams if those teams are to be strong and vibrant.

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Following the publication of Jim Collins’ ground-breaking work Good to Great, interest in humility as a vital leadership trait gained broad interest. The topic of humility took center stage in leadership workshops and keynote speeches for months to come.

Yet, for all of the attention which the book garnered for humility, enduring interest in the topic is yet to take shape. Rarely do we find articles or books showing how a company has operationalized humility or made it a celebrated leadership trait within the organization.

It would appear that leadership discussions of humility are more of an exercise in virtue signaling than in genuine commitment to humility as a virtue. In this episode I examine the cultural factors which shape this neglect.

Some of those factors are as ancient as classical Greek philosophy and literature. Other factors are rooted in the distorted view of humility which is widespread in modern society. I hold, indeed, that humility is the most misunderstood of all leadership traits.

A transcript of this episode is available in a PDF format at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast.

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The Unprecedented Challenge Before Management

At many times in human history, managers have had to contend with losing their workforce for a few days or weeks due to disasters, epidemics, or war. But never have managers been asked to reassemble a workforce which has been working remotely and in isolation from one another for over a year.

Yet, that’s the very situation before us as the pandemic begins to recede. In their rush to get the train back on the tracks, however, managers can be blindsided by a reality which they have not allowed for in their planning.

To be specific, workers are coming back together bearing unhealed wounds both emotionally and psychologically. They have been through a year of economic, political, social, and financial turmoil. It has been a year of intense emotions, few of them positive, uplifting, or energizing.

During that time, millions of workers have learned that they can work remotely. And great numbers of them now actually prefer to do so. They will not only return with unhealed wounds from the shutdown, but a resentment of no longer being able to work from home.

What will all of this mean for the atmosphere which prevails as these workers come back together after a year apart? This episode examines possibilities which every manager should take into account.

A transcript of this episode is available as a PDF file at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast/episodes/2106-unprecedented-challenge.htm.

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