Paradox Going Mainstream: Brené Brown’s Strong Ground

Maybe stories are data with soul - Brené Brown

The concept of paradox has been around for centuries but there has been an uptick in both books and academic research around paradoxical leadership since COVID.

Strong Ground

Brené Brown’s newest book is Strong Ground: the lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit. In Strong Ground, she weaves the concept of paradox throughout the book and if Brené is talking this much about paradox, perhaps it’s time for paradox to go mainstream!

Brené has six New York Times #1 bestseller books with the ability and following to make obscure concepts become relevant. She is a researcher and author that popularized the concept of vulnerability and the importance of showing vulnerability as a leader through her earlier books.

My theory on why paradoxical leadership is having a resurgence is because existing leadership frameworks have not been able to handle the complexity of our post-COVID world. Leadership is complex, but it does not have to be complicated, and paradoxical leadership is what enables leaders to navigate the complexity of leadership - the inherent tensions and competing demands.

This is not intended to be a book summary but rather to highlight a few important concepts around paradox that Brené brings up in Strong Ground.

·        Leadership as Plumbing and Poetry

·        Symphonic Thinking and Pattern Recognition

·        Grounded Confidence

Leadership as Plumbing and Poetry

Leadership is plumbing and poetry – James March

Leaders need to be able to inspire people towards a greater vision AND be able to effectively maintain, build, or fix how the organization executes everyday tasks.

This is one of the paradoxes that Jim Collins talks about in his book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Jim refers to paradox as the “genius of AND” and contrasts this to the “Tyranny of the OR.” Thought leaders and professors Marianne Lewis and Wendy Smith call paradoxical thinking “both/and thinking.” In essence, what paradoxical leaders are able to do is move away from either/or thinking and operate out of a bigger box that includes both polarities.

Paradoxical Leadership - Build a Bigger Box

In Strong Ground, Brené brings up the example she saw in her organization of “the dreamers (poets) and the reality checkers (plumbers).” This exists in every organization – people that are more optimistic and those that are more risk adverse. Dr. Dan Harrison, founder of Harrison Assessments, calls this the paradox of vigilant resilience. Leaders that have vigilant resilience display realistic optimism. You can read more about vigilant resilience here.

What happens when a paradox goes unrecognized is that it creates tension and potentially conflict because people tend to devalue the opposing paradoxical trait.

When leaders are aware of the paradoxes at play, they can convert this tension into forward momentum instead. I call this the paradox principle.

The paradox principle:

An unresolved paradox is a source of tension and conflict.

A well-managed paradox generates alignment and forward momentum.

Gloriana Teh

Symphonic Thinking and Pattern Recognition

Brené takes a different approach to Strong Ground than her earlier books to include substantial excerpts and interviews with other thought leaders. One of them is author Daniel Pink and his book: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

Daniel Pink argues that we have gone from the Industrial age to the Information age to the Conceptual age – from factory workers to knowledge workers, to pattern recognizers and meaning makers. In this Conceptual age, the ability to synthesize rather than analyze the pieces is what will become more important – those with this ability are symphonic thinkers. Symphonic thinkers are boundary crossers, inventors and metaphor makers.  

Instinctive Logic

Daniel Goleman, who helped us understand how emotional intelligence is the most important factor in leaders,   did a study of executives at fifteen companies and found that there was only one cognitive ability that distinguished star performers from average performers and that was pattern recognition, “the ‘big picture’ thinking that allows leaders to pick out the meaningful trends from a welter of information around them and to think strategically far into the future.”

The strongest pattern recognition comes from those who are able to leverage both sides of their brains – the left, logical side and the right, more intuitive side. This is a paradox that Harrison Assessments calls instinctive logic.

“When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision making, neither is good or bad. What is bad is if you use either of them in an inappropriate circumstance.”

“There are, I think, two important lessons here. The first is that truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.”

― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Grounded Confidence

Brené’s research is based on grounded theory and one question she asked global CEOs was what needed to change about the way people are leading today “for leaders to be successful in a complex, rapidly changing environment where we’re faced with seemingly intractable challenges and an insatiable demand for innovation.” The overwhelming answer across the participants was for braver leaders and more courageous cultures.

Bravery and courage are paradoxes in action. Bravery is not an absence of fear but rather the willingness to act appropriately in spite of our fear.

Brené’s longest chapter explains what makes up grounded confidence. Part of grounded confidence comes from our thinking including paradoxical thinking. She talks about her favorite bias being the Duning-Kruger effect, which is how people often overestimate or underestimate their abilities. She thought the cure to the Dunning-Kruger effect was humility but came to realize it is actually meta-cognition, which means thinking about how we think. This is why paradoxical thinking is a challenge – it requires us to examine and change how we think.

But it is a worthwhile exercise because as we are able to think more paradoxically, we become better and braver leaders who are able to navigate the complexities of our world and convert tension into forward momentum for our teams and families.

To develop your paradoxical leadership skills, schedule a call with Claritas. We offer paradox workshops for leaders and their teams to equip them to navigate conflict, manage competing demands, and increase collaboration.

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