DI – Dansk Industri
Confederation of
Danish Industry
2014
THINK GLOBALLY,
ACT LOCALLY,
PANIC INTERNALLY
Leadership paradoxes
in a global world
Face contradictions and
balance managerial tensions
Workshop objectives and goals
Objectives:
• Introduce paradox thinking as a framework for exploring and understanding
organizational and managerial tensions
• Expand managers’ tool box to deal more constructively with increasing
complexity
Goals:
• Aid understanding of and ability to deal with divergent perspectives and
disruptive experiences created by the complexity of organizational life
• Provide a mindset and tools for identifying, making sense of, and
managing paradoxes
• Discuss leadership paradoxes in own context and gain new perspectives
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Andrea Straub-Bauer
Bente Toftkær
Program
• Introduction
• What is paradox?
• 3 levels of paradox
• Paradox in own
context I
What is paradox?
Understanding
paradox?
• Working through
paradox
• Paradox in own
context II
• Ways of dealing
with paradox
• Paradox in own
context III
Dealing with
paradox?
3
Global leadership requires balancing
contradictory needs and requirements
Think long-term
Innovate
Deliver short-term results
Improve efficiency
Think global
Act local
Collaborate
Compete
Individual performance
Team excellence
Decentralize
Standardize
Directive
Democratic
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Global roll-out of corporate
health and safety standards
John is the VP for Health and Safety of a globally operating
technical equipment provider. He is in charge of rolling out
corporate health and safety standards across the organization’s
production facilities located in 10 different countries, incl. North
and South America, Europe, and Asia.
Aligning processes and procedures across Europe and the USA
has been challenging, but nothing compared to the
implementation of standardized procedures in Asia and South
America. Time and time again, John experiences tensions
created between HQs corporate CSR strategy and its global
commitment to high safety standards and its low-cost production
focus in emerging market locations.
What is at stake here? What types of tensions can be identified?
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Paradox – what is it?
Dilemma
Paradox
• Competing choices, each with
advantages and disadvantages
• Contradictory yet interrelated
elements (dualities) that exist
simultaneously and persist over
time
• an “either-or” situation
where one alternative must be
selected over other attractive
alternatives
• a “both-and” situation
between two or more
contradictions where a synthesis
or choice is not possible or
necessarily desirable
B
A
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Paradox in own context I
Group activity:
Discuss briefly what type of
tensions or divergent pressures
you experience in your
organization right now.
How does that affect you?
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Three levels of paradox
Organizational
ORGANIZATIONAL
ROLE
.
.
.
Nature of organizational life with
competing organizational
designs and processes
Leadership role
.
INDIVIDUAL
Source: Inspired by L. Lüscher (2012) “Ledelse gennem Paradokset”
Competing demands/behaviors
expected from managers in
their leadership roles
Individual
Personal pressure experienced
between individual and collective
identity and/or values
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1. Organizational paradox
flexible
internal
external
focused
Source: Model based on
Competing Values Framework, L.
Lüscher (2012) “Ledelse gennem
9
Paradokset”
2. Role paradox
Source: Model based on
Competing Values Framework, L.
Lüscher (2012) “Ledelse gennem
Paradokset”
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3. Individual paradox
Individual paradox has a personal
dimension
INDIVIDUAL
Source: L. Lüscher (2012) “Ledelse gennem
Paradokset”
• Relates to relationship of individual managers
with the organization, management, and peers
as well as the task
• Often experienced as contradictory dynamics,
e.g. disconnect between words and deeds
• Involves emotions, personal experiences, and
values between the individual and the group
• Personal paradoxes include e.g.
•
•
•
•
•
•
trust vs. control
being popular vs. being unpopular
job security vs. new challenges
personal interests vs. company interests
optimism vs. problem focus
competing vs. collaborating
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Andrea Straub-Bauer
Bente Toftkær
Program
• Introduction
• What is paradox?
• 3 levels of paradox
• Paradox in own
context I
What is paradox?
Understanding
paradox?
• Working through
paradox
• Paradox in own
context II
• Ways of dealing
with paradox
• Paradox in own
context III
Dealing with
paradox?
12
Working through paradox
Workable
Certainty
Paradox: both-and
either
Dilemma
or
A process of helping to make
sense of tenuous demands
to reduce anxiety, escape
paralysis, and enable action
Problem
MESS
Source: Lüscher, L. & M.W. Lewis (2008). Organizational Change
and Managerial Sensemaking: Working Through Paradox.
Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 51, No. 2, 221-240.
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Identifying the mess and extracting
the problem: A questioning strategy for analyzing the problem
Workable
Certainty
Facts
Action
Behavior
Vision
Paradox: both-and
either
Dilemma
Problem
or
MESS
Source: Attractor Model inspired by Karl Tomm’s Framework for
distinguishing 4 groups of questioning (1988)
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Discovering the FACTS
Facts
Action
Behavior
Vision
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What was the situation about?
Who was involved?
For how long?
What did it mean to you?
What did you do to deal with it?
What worked out well?
What was the hardest lesson learned?
What was the prize?
What did you win?
Source: Attractor Model inspired by Karl Tomm’s Framework for
distinguishing 4 groups of questioning (1988)
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Discovering the BEHAVIOR
Facts
Action
Behavior
Vision
• How did your stakeholders play their
part in the dilemma/paradox?
• Who had risked the most?
• Where in the process did you feel the
strongest need to choose between the
competing values?
• What did you learn about the
”either/ors”?
• What did you learn about the possibility
of ”both/and”?
Source: Attractor Model inspired by Karl Tomm’s Framework for
distinguishing 4 groups of questioning (1988)
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Discovering the VISION
• Let us imagine that you are most
capable of managing this kind of
situation in the future, what would be
most characteristic for the situation?
• If you should see this situation from a
totally different point of view, what will
you see that you could not see before?
• What does the vision look like which
could encourage you to do more of
”both-and” and less of ”either-or”?
Facts
Action
Behavior
Vision
Source: Attractor Model inspired by Karl
Tomm’s Framework for distinguishing 4
groups of questioning (1988)
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Discovering the ACTION
• What needs to be challenged in the
way of dealing with competing values
in the future?
• What needs to be directed in a more
decisive manner by you? By your
manager?
• If your stakeholders and you were to
achieve even better results the next
time, what would be the most
important thing to do a little different?
• What kind of positive difference would
that make to you? To others?
• If you should take one small step
towards an improved pay-off-balance
(”both-and”) what would that be?
• When will you do it?
Facts
Action
Behavior
Vision
Source: Attractor Model inspired by Karl
Tomm’s Framework for distinguishing 4
groups of questioning (1988)
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Paradox in own context II
Workable
Certainty
Group activity:
Paradox: both-and
Discuss the new insights that
you have gained in relation to
handling the tensions that you
experience in your organization
right now.
either
Dilemma
or
Problem
MESS
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Andrea Straub-Bauer
Bente Toftkær
Program
• Introduction
• What is paradox?
• 3-levels of paradox
• Paradox in own
context I
What is paradox?
Understanding
paradox?
• Working through
paradox
• Paradox in own
context II
• Ways of dealing
with paradox
• Paradox in own
context III
Dealing with
paradox?
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Ways of dealing with paradox
… requires exploring rather than suppressing tensions
1. Acceptance
2. Integrative thinking
3. Positioning
In order to avoid paradox paralyses: Paradox must be solved
through alternative ways of thinking
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1. Acceptance
• Embrace and live with paradox
• Regard paradox as a persistent and
unsolvable puzzle
• Engage anxiety and thereby face
challenges surfaced by tensions
• Discuss tensions to foster more
creative considerations
Paradox is a pre-condition of
organizational life, especially in a
global business world
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2. Integrative thinking
•
Consider divergent ideas and/or
alternative poles simultaneously
•
How can apparently opposing
views be brought together and
combined in new ways?
Workable
Certainty
Paradox: both-and
either
Dilemma
or
Problem
3rd solution through innovation
and creative thinking
MESS
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3. Positioning
Conscious positioning at
one pole and actively
distancing from another
based on strategic, human
or organizational
considerations.
flexible
X
internal
external
Turning your back on one
alternative and accepting
the consequences
focused
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Critical skills
sense making and giving
• Reflection – consider multiple
dynamics and perspectives for
spotting and dealing with paradox
• On the personal level
• On the organizational level (maturity)
• Courage and resilience
• Communication (what, how, who)
• Behavior – ”walk the talk”
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Paradox in own context III
Share in your group the reflections
that you’ve had in terms of “how to
deal with your own paradox”?
Can you see an opening for
1) integrative thinking and/or
2) positioning?
What are the consequences?
How will you communicate it:
1) to whom?
2) what is the key message?
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Closing reflections
What does it take from …?
Individual leader
Organization
• Ability to recognize and accept
interrelated relationships of
underlying tensions
• Collective tools that allow
members of the organization to
seek and integrate new
information through distinct
• Emotional stability, courage,
structures, cultures, learning
maturity, and integrity
processes, and managerial
• Communication skills in order to capabilities
reduce anxiety in others
• Maturity => Ability to make
room for, balance, live with, and
• Ability to self-reflect and
capitalize on conflicting and
embrace conflicting demands
competing elements
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Global leader
paradox navigator
”
… is an influential actor
capable of thinking
paradoxically, guiding
social reflection, helping
others examine tensions,
and accommodate
complexity rather than
suppressing it.
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Further readings
• Lüscher, Lotte (2012) “Ledelse gennem Paradokset – om ledelsesmæssig handlekraft
i organisatorisk kompleksitet”, Dansk Psykologisk Forlag.
• Smith, W.K. and M.W. Lewis (2011) ”Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic
equilibrium model of organizing”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 36, No. 2,
381-403.
• Lüscher, L. & M.W. Lewis (2008) ”Organizational Change and Managerial
Sensemaking: Working Through Paradox”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 51,
No. 2, 221-240.
• Cameron, K.S., Quinn, R.E., DeGraff, J., and A.V. Thakor (2006) “Competing Values
leadership: Creating value in organizations”, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK.
• Lewis, Marianne W. (2000) ”Exploring Paradox: Toward a more comprehensive guide”,
Academy of Management Review, Vol. 25, No. 4, 760-776.
• Lewis, M.W. and G.E. Dehler (2000) ”Learning through paradox: A pedagological
strategy for exploring contradictions and complexity”, Journal of Management
Education, Vol. 24: 708-725.
• Tomm, Karl (1988) “Interventive Interviewing: Part III. Intending to Ask Lineal, Circular,
Strategic, or Reflexive Questions?” Family Process, Vol. 27, No. 1, 1-15.
• Quinn, Robert E. (1988) “Beyond rational management: Mastering the paradoxes and
competing demands of high performance”, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, USA.
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More information about GLA
www.globalleadershipacademy.dk
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