CONCLUSION

Managing Personal and Public Paradoxes

I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau¹

By now you might be thinking we have left a burning question unanswered: What makes someone a natural at managing paradox? Early in the book, we mentioned that one-third of leaders have no ability to see or manage paradoxes. Another third try to manage them but in a muddled way. And a final third are naturals. So where do you place yourself? And could you be a natural?

We must confess, we haven't done a study to establish what makes a natural. But we are certain a study would show that naturals come to grips with paradoxes in all parts of their lives. In the home. In the community. Within themselves. They don't pay attention to the paradoxes at work and ignore them everywhere else. And because they see and act on paradox in every walk of life—without thinking differently in different roles—they are better leaders.

Recall the executives from GlaxoSmithKline who took the trip to Kenya. Every night, they gathered and talked about their experiences. To be sure, they discussed the big picture of doing well by doing good—using the company to improve the lives of those in different parts of the world—but they also reflected on their own values and personal choices. One, almost unable to speak after seeing the ravages of malaria among patients on a hospital ward, resolved to have his family and children benefit at some point from similar eye-opening travel. Wrestling with the obvious paradoxes such experiences pose allows you to better deal with many gray areas in life.

And that makes all the difference in skillful leadership.

In part that's because the paradoxes in the gray areas of everyday life mirror those in the office: how to work in the interest of yourself and the group, taking control and giving control, accepting individual accountability (ownership) and team accountability (ownership), practicing confidentiality and transparency, acting spontaneously and acting with plans. Using introspection to resolve these contradictions in your own life develops your skill and perspective for resolving them in the workplace.

We believe three particular personal paradoxes require resolution if you hope to function effectively within your organization. Confronting them and working your way through them gives you an increased capacity for managing in the short term and long term, developing people and increasing profits, and dealing with other paradoxes you and your employees will face.

The first is money versus meaning. The search for financial reward and life purpose mirrors the search in the organization to fulfill profit goals and corporate purpose. How you resolve one affects how you resolve the other. You might assume that many people see no paradox between money and meaning—the search for growth or profits is all there is. But we find that everyone struggles with this contradiction. At BlackRock, for example, people often make outsized salaries and eye-popping bonuses. But leaders at the financial management firm still work in their own minds for meaning. While they earn money for the business, they also earn plenty for investors—firemen, teachers, and others on pensions. And they are proud they didn't fail these people during the 2008 financial crisis.

Because of that financial crisis, massive layoffs, and plunging assets, many people deferred their search for meaning while struggling to maintain their income and meet their obligations. Nonetheless, the search for meaning does not go away. Enjoying a meaningful life while also having material comfort is not a destination but a journey. And during certain periods of one's life, or during certain cycles of the economy, one or the other becomes predominant. This illustrates well why every paradox demands constant revisiting.

The second personal paradox is the search for personal recognition versus enterprise success. You will always find your desire for personal accolades and achievements pitted against your willingness to sacrifice recognition to help the organization meet its goals. The question is this: How aggressively do you pursue your personal ambitions? How do you balance your desire to get ahead with your desire to serve the larger cause of the organization (or your function or team)? Are you willing to make sure customers are satisfied and their needs fulfilled, no matter who gets the credit? When should you cease being a collaborator? When are you too selfish?

Despite the opposing forces, you can find a way to act so that you strengthen the organization while also strengthening your personal portfolio of achievements. When you get a raise or a promotion, you will feel a bit hollow if you have not earned them after resolving the contradictions of self versus enterprise to your satisfaction. You may also find that over time, if you are not emphasizing the enterprise over your own ambition, your desire to be a leader will be thwarted by a lack of followers who truly trust and believe you are acting in their best interests.

The third personal paradox is perhaps the most difficult one to confront on a day-to-day basis, and that is work versus family. We face this one all the time, so much so that we have created a list of questions to help you think through the contradictions:

• What boundaries have you established regarding your personal and family time? Are there boundaries?
• What personal and family commitments are sacrosanct? Have you communicated the importance of these commitments to your colleagues?
• What rituals might you establish to assure your family of their importance? Might you adopt certain behaviors intended to shore up outward signs of commitment (say, dinner at home three nights a work week, family movie night, kids join on one business trip per year)?
• How can time spent with family or hobbies enhance your performance at work (for example, healthy nutrition, exercise, reading, creative endeavors)?
• Do discussions with your family involve conversations about the why behind your work? Do your spouse and children understand that your work produces your ability to care for them? Do they understand the degree to which your work provides enjoyment and not simply frustration?
• To what extent do you allow others to integrate their work and life? While you might expect others to work on weekends, is it acceptable for them to leave during the day to attend a child's school function?
• Do your behaviors at work lead others to question their own ability to manage this common paradox? (Do you send late night e-mail messages that you expect immediate answers to? What about on weekends?)

We're all guilty of leaning too heavily toward work or toward family at points in our careers—workaholic parents who rarely see their kids are the classic example. The point here is to catalyze honest reflection about the way you're dealing with work and family. By taking the time to think long and hard about these questions, you will become a more agile manager of this paradox—and your practice, perspective, and skill will transfer to the workplace.

Living with the tension of paradoxes is unavoidable in any part of life today. The gray areas fill much more space than the black and white. As you deal with your personal and work paradoxes, you can't help but see how much the skill of managing paradox would help in our civic and political life. What would happen if 535 people in the U.S. Congress jumped over the line? What if they defined their role as serving the good of the nation while also meeting the needs of their constituents—and were more flexible and adaptable in how they undertook that challenge? What if they didn't argue over which was the one right solution, when in fact there are several? Or if they didn't see solutions to every problem as a way to win or a risk of losing? Or if they ceased forcing solutions into polarized either/or corners? How would this manifest in their leadership?

Citizens around the world are victims of leaders who will not look at the problems of the world with a grasp of the unique handling required by paradoxes. Instead, they are partisans of various political parties who try to checkmate each other. If only we could change this blinkered view, we would all be better off. Leaders could then acknowledge the need for paradox management. They could level with their constituencies that nobody has the single right answer—and no perfect one, either. They could admit they cannot fix most things once and for all like puzzles. They would instead declare they have to collaborate more intensively to find actions that ameliorate things now and demand a fresh look later.

If this were to happen, we would have leaders we all could consider role models: Leaders who demanded problem-solving control, yes, but also yielded to paradox-solving delegation. Who demanded consistency of values and purpose, but embraced flexibility in thought and action. Who demanded closure for tame problems, but who called for ongoing management of society's most wicked ills. These kinds of leaders would indeed include disciples of analysis, decision making, and execution. But they would also include masters of inquiry, collaboration, and action in the face of ambiguity.

Indeed, they would bring together paradoxical qualities to match the paradoxical challenges of our time. We would then have role models who would visibly and constantly strive to become complete leaders, integrating head, heart, and guts. In fulfilling the book's initial paradox, however, they would always consider themselves unfinished. They would wield the skills of a finished leader but retain a humility, a thirst for learning, and a sense of always becoming but never arriving. Finished and yet unfinished. These would be leaders who would deserve a place in the history books. They would exemplify what we view as naturals.