How to Reduce Conflict with Paradoxical Leadership
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Have you been dealing with conflict and looking for a more effective way to manage it? A 2024 Harvard Business Review article estimates that on average 20% of a manager’s time is spent dealing with conflict. Between COVID and polarization exacerbated by social media, the intensity of conflict seems to have increased as well.
The Paradox Principle can help you navigate through conflict by leveraging awareness of paradoxical traits or values. We will explore:
- How unresolved paradoxes cause conflict
- Why we need paradoxical leadership skills
- How paradoxical leadership equips leaders to navigate conflict
Although paradoxical leadership has ancient Eastern and Western roots, it is important for modern day leaders to deal with an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. I have developed the Paradox Principle to empower leaders to lead paradoxically as many traditional management styles struggle to cope with VUCA environments.
The Paradox Principle:
An unresolved paradox is a source of tension and conflict.
A well-managed paradox generates forward momentum and harmony.
How Do Unresolved Paradoxes Cause Conflict?
A paradox is one (such as a person, situation, or action) having seemingly contradictory qualities or phases as defined by Merriam-Webster. The word paradox come from the Greek word paradoxos which has two root words, para which means beyond or outside or and dokein which means to think. This definition reminds me of the phrase “think outside the box.” Instead of thinking outside the box, I like to explain paradoxical thinking as building a bigger box where either/or thinking is replaced with both/and thinking. Either/or thinking is often a source of conflict.
Like a dandelion, conflict is just a symptom. If you pluck a dandelion, another will grow back because you have not removed the roots. If a dandelion is not removed, it will spread its seeds and more dandelions will grow. When conflict is not effectively addressed early on, it will cause larger issues. To get rid of the dandelions, the roots need to be killed or removed.
To effectively mitigate conflict, you need to address the root cause of conflict which is often a difference in values. Dr. Jill Long is the head of the Democratic Resilience Center in Germany. She leads a team of researchers who work on bolstering democracies throughout the world. She is who inspired me to come up with this analogy and picture of the dandelion and conflict because based on her research she believes that conflict is rooted in differences in what people value.
Harrison Assessments Paradox Report Example
I was explaining to her that when people are not aware of paradoxes, they often devalue the opposite paradoxical trait. For example, I once had a client that preferred being candid in his communication. I asked him how he viewed people that were diplomatic in their communication, and he said, “I think they are hiding something or being insincere.” He did not trust them. Can you see how this can create conflict? Radical candor does not work. Kim Scott, the author of the book Radical Candor, went on to write a second book titled Radical Respect. In practice, what we need is respectful candor, a combination of being direct yet diplomatic in our communication.
Without the ability to identify different types of paradoxes, you may end up creating conflict because you see someone else’s difference in value as being less than your way of thinking. There are some situations where there is clearly right and wrong but more often, what is missing is both/and thinking or the ability to think paradoxically.
Project management offers a good lesson in overcoming the trap of either/or thinking. For quite some time, agile methodologies were thought to be “superior” than traditional waterfall methodologies of project management. Project managers that did not subscribe to agile were often considered behind the times. The Project Management Institute even went to the extent of changing the name “waterfall” to “predictive” project management to avoid the negative association with waterfall. Thankfully the tide has finally turned, and Agile Alliance is now part of PMI.
Project managers realized there are many types of projects that require a combination of both agile and waterfall approaches to be successful, especially for large, complex projects such as digital transformation. Agile or adaptive methods alone were not the answer many companies hoped for to ensure project success. For guidance on where and when to use agile and/or waterfall during a project, check out the Project Excellence framework.
Good project managers are open to using both waterfall and agile methods throughout different stages of the project, which is an example of paradoxical leadership in practice. Project management is basically a leadership training program in disguise as project managers must keep the team motivated, influence stakeholders, manage the budget and deliver results within a certain time.
Paradoxical leadership does not mean you have to be able to embrace both paradoxes all the time at the same time. Instead, paradoxical leaders are open to recognizing that sometimes there is a time and place for using one paradox over another. Situational leadership is another example of this and is a type of paradoxical leadership
Why Do We Need Paradoxical Leadership?
If you have noticed an increase in conflict since COVID, it is not something you have imagined. A friend of mine that works in the retail industry has said, “People are crankier than they used to be.” In part due to COVID, for many of us, our brains have not returned to “normal” and are more likely to be easily stressed, anxious, or go into fight/flight mode. It is because, as Dan Siegel says, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Another reason for the increase in conflict is due to the influence of social media and the increased polarization it has fueled. The need to develop paradoxical leadership skills is greater than ever to counteract increasing conflict. Both/and thinking is a fundamental framework around developing paradoxical leadership skills. Dr. Wendy Smith calls both/and thinking the next emotional intelligence.
Paradoxical Leadership is a relatively new management style that seems to have gained traction since COVID. The roots of paradoxical leadership go back to the concept of yin and yang introduced by Lao Tzu around the sixth century B.C.; modern day thought leaders of paradoxical leadership include Prof. Yan Zhang, Prof. Wendy Smith, and Prof. Marianne Lewis. Most of the research around paradoxical leadership as a management practice is from 2010 or later.
My contribution to paradoxical leadership is around the areas of emotional intelligence and conflict management. Emotional intelligence is a well-recognized concept that research has proven (Daniel Goleman, Travis Bradberry) to have to most significant correlation to personal and professional success; 2x as important as IQ. Emotional intelligence can be challenging to develop despite the widespread training available because emotional intelligence is inherently a double paradox. The Progressive EQ™ model provides a framework to overcome this double paradox. To learn more, you can read the article I’ve written explaining the Progressive EQ™ model.
How Paradoxical Leadership Equips Leaders to Navigate Conflict
When managers are able to leverage paradoxical leadership skills to navigate conflict, they can convert tension on their teams into forward momentum instead.
A common tension within an organization is innovation and stability or the need to take risk vs. mitigate risks. This is a paradox that I’m very familiar with. For many years, I used to lead process development to commercialize new chemicals and optimization to de-bottleneck existing manufacturing lines. The role reported to central R&D but sat in between R&D and manufacturing. There is an inherent tension between R&D and manufacturing. R&D’s role is to innovate, which requires taking risks. Manufacturing’s role is to ensure product supply, which requires consistent production and reducing risks. When my team was able to reduce the risk of running a trial for manufacturing, they were more likely to be supportive of the trial. The opposite holds true, if they felt like
Other tensions that are common within an organization are regional flexibility and corporate standards or balancing between short-term results vs. longer-term initiatives. Appreciating paradoxical differences between not only individuals but also teams or departments within the organization is critical for success.
The steps to convert tension to forward momentum are as follows:
When or before a conflict arises, identify if there are any paradoxes at play.
Name the paradoxical pair and call it out. Explain the Paradox Principle and the paradoxes you are observing to the other parties involved.
Offer a path forward based on both/and thinking instead of either/or thinking.
The first step requires becoming familiar with different types of paradoxes. Here are a few resources available to help you with this:
Harrison Assessments’ Paradox Report of 12 sets of paradoxical behaviors
Enables you and your team to identify each other’s true strengths as well as learn to appreciate their paradoxical differences which may currently be causing conflict.
Paradoxical Leadership: How to Make Complexity an Advantage by Ivo Broughmans, 2023
My first meaningful exposure to paradoxical thinking was through Dr. Dan Harrison’s Paradox theory and the Paradox report from Harrison Assessments. Dr. Dan Harrison is an early pioneer around paradoxical thinking. Over 30 years ago, he developed Paradox Theory and the Paradox Report which is a comprehensive behavioral assessment that can be used to develop paradoxical thinking skills.
Contact Claritas if you are interested in going through Harrison Assessments’ Paradox report for yourself and/or your team. Claritas is a certified solutions provider for Harrison Assessments. This makes a great team building activity to uncover your teams true strengths and convert tension into forward momentum.
For further reading:
A Review of Paradoxical Leadership Research by Xiaotun Chen & Bingjie Yang, Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies, 2023
Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems by Wendy Smith & Marianne Lewis, 2022
Earlier Claritas blogs on paradoxical leadership and various paradoxical traits
Contact Claritas Consulting & Coaching to discuss your project needs or follow us on LinkedIn for more useful leadership resources and frameworks. If you found this useful, please share this article with others.