Paradoxes of Power and Leadership: A Key Business Idea 2020053465, 2020053466, 9781138482838, 9781138482845, 9781351056663

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PARADOXES OF POWER AND LEADERSHIP

Why do great companies and other organizations fail, sometimes abruptly? Why do admired leaders fall from their organizational pedestals? Why do young and promising managers derail? Why do organizations create and reinforce rules that manifestly damage both them and those that they employ, serve and sustain? Leadership is a much-​discussed but ill-​ defined idea in business and management circles. Analysing and understanding the skills and behaviours exhibited in leadership practice reveal that leaders exhibit paradoxical activities that challenge our understanding of organizations. In this text, the authors identify leadership behaviours that compete towards business equilibrium: selfish versus selfless, distance versus proximity, consistency versus individuality, enforcing professional standards versus flexibility and control versus autonomy. These paradoxical dilemmas require a reflexive and analytical approach to a subject that is tricky to define. The book explores the paradoxes of power and leadership not as a panacea for solving organizational problems but as a lens through which leadership and power are seen as an exercise in dynamic balance. Read this book as an invitation to the paradoxes of power and leadership that frame organizational life today. Be prepared to find surprises –​and some counterintuitive arguments. Providing a thought-​provoking guide to the traits and skills that will help readers to understand and navigate paradoxical leadership behaviour, this reflexive book will be a useful reading for students and scholars of business, management and psychology globally. Miguel Pina e Cunha is the Amélia de Mello Foundation Professor of Leadership at the Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. Stewart R.  Clegg is Professor in Management at the University of Stavanger Business School, Norway, and NOVA School of Business and Economics, Portugal. Arménio Rego is Professor at Católica Porto Business School, Portugal. Marco Berti is Senior Lecturer at UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

“In this important work the concept of leadership is refracted through the lens of the paradoxes of power. By doing so the authors provide an honest, nuanced account of the dilemmas of leadership, while providing a sophisticated set of conceptual tools to deal with these challenges.This work is a ‘must read’ for leaders and academics that wish to understand the elusive phenomenon of effective leadership”. Professor Mark Haugaard, National University of Ireland, Galway. Editor of the Journal of Political Power, Routledge “The authors of this book have managed to imbue their work with admirable contrarian qualities. They are complexifying leadership as a relational-​paradoxical practice and draw broadly across several fields of social science, while at the same time writing in light-​hearted and accessible prose.The book is at once enlightening and entertaining, providing inroads to the nuances and depths of the research front while also attending to consequences for action. As a result, the book feels like a journey through leadership paradoxes that walks the talks. Recommended!” Arne Carlsen, Professor at BI Norwegian Business School, Norway “While most leadership books distil prescriptive lists of leaders’ dos and don’ts, in their thought-​provoking collaboration, Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego and Marco Berti turn down this one recipe fits all approach. Rather, they take us on the path to explore leadership’s complex and paradoxical nature. Relying on vivid examples and sound research, their comprehensive work unpacks the many paradoxes that any leader faces. Each chapter opens yet another set of paradoxes that will strike a chord with the readers’ own experience: balancing strengths and vulnerabilities, trusting yet empowering others, advancing both individuals’ and team’s needs or following organization’s competing strategies, to name a few. A must-​read book to those interested in leading through our uncertain and rapidly changing times”. Camille Pradies, EDHEC Business School, France “Every so often, a book comes out that scholars in the field desperately wish they had written. This is a supreme example. It places the study of paradox in the mainstream of leadership studies, a position it so rightly deserves. After this encyclopedic book, there will be no going back. Scholars, practitioners and students will find it invaluable”. Richard Badham, Macquarie Business School, Australia “This book provides a fresh new approach to leadership.The authors explain leadership as a process that is inherently paradoxical.This important view takes us beyond naive and heroic views of leadership as an a-​contextual set of ‘effective’ practices, to show how leadership unfolds in response to paradoxes occurring at multiple levels. Grounded in both the literature on leadership and on paradox, this book extends

knowledge of both areas and provides a welcome contextual understanding of leadership as complex and dynamic. In addition, it is a very enjoyable read that explains these concepts well”. Paula Jarzabkowski, Professor, City, University of London “This ground-​breaking book offers a brilliant analysis of leadership in modern societies. Eschewing simple recipe-​driven explanations, it describes how leadership is an inherently paradoxical practice  –​one requiring the effective management of contradictions. A  wide-​ranging and ambitious inquiry, the book is a required reading for scholars and students of management and organization”. John Hassard, Professor of Organisational Analysis at Alliance MBS, University of Manchester “This is a timely and important book that embraces the complexity of organizational life and the increasing demands upon organizations that make leadership more important than ever, all the more so because it resists distillation to recipes and invocations. By tackling inherent contradictions in leadership head on, the authors show that wise and thoughtful leadership matters more than ever, but that in today’s increasingly complex world –​perhaps in any world worth living in –​its essence should not and cannot be distilled to simple formulae and easy to apply principles”. David Patient, Professor of Leadership,Vlerick Business School

PARADOXES OF POWER AND LEADERSHIP

Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego and Marco Berti

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego and Marco Berti The right of Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego and Marco Berti to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Cunha, Miguel Pina e, author. Title: Paradoxes of power and leadership / Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego, and Marco Berti. Description: Abingdon, Oxon : New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020053465 (print) | LCCN 2020053466 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138482838 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138482845 (paperback) | ISBN 9781351056663 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. | Organizational behavior. | Executive ability. | Management. Classification: LCC HD57.7 .C867 2021 (print) | LCC HD57.7 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/092–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053465 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053466 ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​48283-​8  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​48284-​5  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​351-​05666-​3  (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements  About the authors  Glossary 

viii ix x

Introduction 

1

1 Leadership and paradox 

14

2 Paradoxes of self-​leadership 

47

3 Paradoxes of dyadic relationships 

81

4 Paradoxes of team dynamics 

108

5 Paradoxes at organizational level 

135

6 Recurring paradoxes and ten lines of action 

166

References  Index 

195 225

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to all the people that throughout the years have allowed us to make sense of the paradoxes of organizational life. First, participants in executive courses that we have taught, with whom most of the ideas in this book have been extensively discussed. Also, there are the numerous colleagues that have discussed the themes with us, sometimes in collaboration on projects, other times through their contributions in seminars and academic papers. We are also grateful to those colleagues who contributed generously with review and feedback on this volume, including Cary Cooper, Horia Moasa, Paulo Rosado and Wendy Smith. Hermínia Martins offered generous help, as always, with access to difficult bibliographic sources. Part of Chapter 6 draws on Rodrigues, Cunha, Rego and Clegg (2017). Institutionally, this work was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (UID/​ECO/​00124/​2019, UIDB/​00124/​2020 and Social Sciences DataLab, PINFRA/​22209/​2016), POR Lisboa and POR Norte (Social Sciences DataLab, PINFRA/​ 22209/​ 2016). We also acknowledge the support from the project “Developing a European Forum on Paradox and Pluralism  –​EUFORPP”, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 856688.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Miguel Pina e Cunha is the Fundação Amélia de Mello Professor at Nova SBE, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). He studies organization as process and paradox and has co-​authored the Elgar Introduction toTheories of Organizational Resilience (Elgar, 2018) and Positive Organizational Behaviour:  A Reflective Approach (Routledge, 2020) and co-​edited Contemporary Social Theory for Management (Routledge, 2019). His recent articles on paradox appeared in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Human Relations, Management and Organization Review, Organization Studies, Research in the Sociology of Organizations and Strategic Organization. Stewart R.  Clegg is Professor of Management at the University of Stavanger Business School, Norway, and NOVA School of Business and Economics, Portugal. He is the author of many books including Strategy: Theory and Practice (Sage, 2020) and Project Management: A Value Creation Approach (Sage, 2020). He is a prolific contributor to leading journals in the fields of Organization Studies, Political Power and Management. Arménio Rego is Professor at Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Portugal). He has published in journals such as Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Management and The Leadership Quarterly, among others. He is the lead author of The Virtues of Leadership: Contemporary Challenge for Global Managers (Oxford University Press, 2012) and co-​author of Elgar Introduction to Theories of Organizational Resilience (Elgar, 2018)  and Positive Organizational Behaviour:  A Reflective Approach (Routledge, 2020). His main research focus is on virtuous leadership, organizational virtuousness, team processes and individual performance and well-​being. Marco Berti is Senior Lecturer in the UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney (Australia). Marco’s research has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Learning and Education, Academy of Management Review, Management Learning, Journal of Management Inquiry, Organization, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations. He is the author of the Elgar Introduction to Organizational Discourse Analysis (Elgar, 2017).

GLOSSARY

There is a debate as to whether leadership and management refer to different processes. Some authors defend the idea that they do, while others demur; for the latter, the two are different processes and categories. Leading, they say, is more than merely managing. Some authorities exalt the importance of leadership while others tend to stress the relative modesty but critical importance of managing (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand & Lampel, 2013). Some see leadership as linked to position and hierarchy while others represent it as being more informal and emergent. The management literature often posits a distinction between these two terms: •

•

Leaders, those people who inspire, guide and motivate others. In the compact description of Bennis and O’Toole (2000, p. 172), leaders “demonstrate integrity, provide meaning, generate trust, and communicate values. In doing so, they energize their followers, humanely push people to meet challenging business goals, and all the while develop leadership skills in others”. Managers, those who supervise, budget and hire; in classical terms, they plan, organize, direct and control. All these functions have control-​coordination attributes, linking management with supervisory roles. Management is a domain of expertise that creates operational procedures that bring reliability and efficiency (Grint, 2020).

This dualistic distinction seems to have an empirical basis, as suggested by Kniffin, Detert and Leroy (2020), who have observed that, in practice, “leaders” tend to be more appreciated than “managers”. In this book, we depart from the conventional view: we explore leadership/​management as a duality with paradoxical attributes. We defend the idea that leading/​ managing is inseparable; the job of managing is difficult because it implies the capacity to articulate processes that are opposing and that include the dimensions

Glossary  xi

of energizing people and controlling their energy.Yet leaders need to find ways to deal with duality as a normal part of their job (Bednarek, Chalkias & Jarzabkowski, 2019), i.e., leaders need to lead paradoxically. As Petriglieri (2020a, p. 6) pointed out, the two parts of the duality cannot be split because [W]‌ e want evidence and excitement, data and dreams. We want to be equipped to predict the future, and we want to be allowed to imagine it. We want to be reassured and to be freed up. Managers might be the label we use for those who help us do the former. Leader is what we call those who help us do the latter.We invest in each for different reasons –​or wishes. And either loses value without the other. Before you start exploring paradox, consider that paradox and its embrace contains risk:  read the words of James March (2006, p.  70) with care:  “contemplating doubt, paradox, and contradiction  –​features of life, well known to experienced managers, but normally banished, perhaps with reason, from the public language of management”. Throughout this book, which focuses mostly on the paradoxes of leadership and power in the context of formal organizations, we will use the two terms of leadership and management, leading and managing, more or less interchangeably. In the spirit of paradox, we consider that leading an organization implies both ideas and ethics (the leadership side), execution and pragmatism (the management side), ambition and humility (the personal side), therefore an amalgam of management and leadership. As Sadun, Bloom and Van Reenen (2017, p. 127) have pointed out, “one frequent suggestion in this era of flattened organizations is that everyone has to be a strategist. But we’d suggest that everyone also needs to be manager”. When a person is stronger in one dimension, he/​she can collaborate with someone (another person, a team) that has strength in the other (Miles & Watkins, 2007). This idea is sometimes behind the co-​CEO format and the approach adopted by companies such as Netflix (see, e.g., Gerzema & Johnson, 2020) or Staard Industries (Edgecliffe-​Johnson, Neville & Moules, 2020). We do not consider great leadership to be the territory of the Great Leader. Great leadership is represented here as the process of creating and passing on great institutions rather more than leaving a particular personal legacy. In business firms as well as in the public sector, we consider that great leaders create institutions that enable collaborative and compassionate managers to do their best, while also attending to the other Cs of management: managing communication, controlling and coordinating. It is the extent of that compassion and collaboration as well the communication, coordination and control that enriches institutions, that paradoxically exist, among other functions, to limit their own power; hence our emphasis on power in the title. We trust the wisdom of institutions more than that of the great leader. Great leadership is that which projects an institutional shadow that survives and thrives in the absence of the leader and empowers rather than negates others. As Watzlawick, Bavelas and Jackson (1967, p. 262) have pointed out, “reality is very

xii Glossary

largely what we make of it”, great leadership makes great institutions real, great institutions being those that respect both personhood and actorhood, i.e., those institutions that provide place for individuals to contest them in order to make them more humane and progressive. In this context, organizations need both the pragmatism to make things happen as well as the idealism to improve them, relentlessly, into the future. This is a collective, institutionally bounded effort, rather than the task of any Great Leader. It is a job for normal people rather than the work of heroes. “No more heroes”, in the words of The Stranglers (1977). After all, as Mintzberg (1999, p. 24) puts it, “maybe really good management is boring”. Glossary Term Actor

Definition

Treatment in the literature

A human undertaking social actions relating Bitektine, Haack, to other entities, human or not. Actors are Bothello & Mair located in networks with other actors, in (2020);Voronov & an ever-​changing institutional order, with Weber (2020) their consciousness and sense of self being shaped by participation in these networks. Any actor’s identity is in a state of becoming, resulting from an ongoing tension between efforts to differentiate self from others (but also from earlier versions of the self) and attempts to achieve a sense of coherence and social identity. Circles Enduring recursive patterns resulting from Tsoukas & Cunha (2017) feedback loops that over time reinforce their internal logic. Circles may be positive (virtuous) or negative (vicious). In any event, they express a dynamic of their own that escapes organizational steering. Contradictions The dynamic tension between opposed, Hargrave (2020) interdependent elements which presuppose each other and form a unity. Dialectic The continuously unfolding triadic process Farjoun (2019); Hargrave of change through the transformation of (2020) a thesis-​antithesis into a synthesis that will compose the thesis for a further tension. The process is historical and conflictual in nature. Dilemma The need to choose between two equally Putnam, Fairhurst & (un)desirable goals/​requirements that Banghart (2016) cannot be achieved simultaneously. Duality The “twofold character of an object of study Farjoun (2010, p. 203) without separation”, like the two sides of the same coin.

newgenprepdf

Glossary  xiii

Term

Definition

Treatment in the literature

Dualism

Two attributes are incompatible and mutually exclusive, like oil and water. The process of accepting the guidance of a leader and participating in, reinforcing or countering the leader’s orientations. “An adaptive process where one or more individuals emerge as a focal point to influence and coordinate behaviour for solving social challenges posed by dynamic physical and cultural environments”. “Contradictory yet interrelated elements –​ elements that seem logical in isolation but absurd and irrational when appearing simultaneously”. Human being endowed with a sense of self and a capacity to conduct self-​reflection. Denotes multiplicity of perspectives in contexts where power is diffuse. “An umbrella term (…) to describe the fundamentally tension-​r idden character of organizational structures that are constantly merging and becoming”. The simultaneous presence of two forces pushing in different directions, determining “compromise situations when a sacrifice is made in one area to obtain benefits in another”.

Farjoun (2010)

Followership

Leadership

Paradox

Person Plurality Tension

Trade-​off

Carsten, Uhl-​Bien, West, Patera & McGregor (2010) Spisak, O’Brien, Nicholson & van Vugt (2015, p. 292)

Lewis (2000, p. 760)

Voronov & Weber (2020) Denis, Langley & Rouleau (2007) Mease (2019, p. 6)

Byggeth & Hochshorner (2006, p. 1420)

INTRODUCTION

There can be no doubt that the world we live in is far from logical. (Watzlawick et al. 1967, p. 213) To humanize institutions, and research on them, would also mean to highlight the emotional underpinnings of their tensions, contradictions, and paradoxes. (Petriglieri 2020b, p. 12)

Both equal and different It is relatively common to start books on leadership by noting that there are thousands of volumes about the topic. For those with a sense of foreboding, yes, this is (yet) another book on leadership. Can there still be something different to say about leadership? We think so; otherwise we would not have written the book. We do have something different to say. Not totally different, of course, but different enough to deserve going into print. Most existing books strive to make leadership clearer. That is not our aim (see Figure I.1). We want to complexify it, not because we are perverse but because the lessons of many leadership books are perverse in that they present allegedly effective recipes that, in practice, don’t work or even produce any or unintended consequences.There is no algorithm to enact effective leadership; if there was, every leader would apply it and every leader would be effective –​something that, by definition, is impossible. The message that we want to communicate with this book is that leadership is an inherently paradoxical practice, not a simple matter of mastering lessons or gleaning the habits of highly effective people doing things in a minute. Leadership is the process of managing contradictions. For example, it requires empowering people while controlling them; caring for staff members, while treating them as

2 Introduction

“resources” to be exploited and cultivating creativity and innovation whilst generating a cohesive culture. Communication, coordination and control, the hallmarks of classic management of hierarchy and division of labour, all involve trade-​offs. Increasingly, these classic attributes of management need to be supplemented with compassion and collaboration. Each of these involves trade-​offs for effective leadership. To manage inclusive communication and control, coordination and collaboration, control and compassion requires managing paradoxes. To embrace paradox, leaders need to be able to marrying “empirical rigor and creative thinking” (Lafley, Martin, Rivkin & Siggelkow, 2012, p. 57), nourishing collaboration and competition, treating followers both equally and differently (Zhang, Waldman, Han & Li, 2015), fostering control and freedom. The management of some trade-​offs will define the world in which we will live. For example, in future, will managers be expected to privilege profit over concerns with climate change? Will top executives present themselves as corporate saviours or will they empower people to help them manage problems? Will hierarchies be flattened or will elites isolate in the apices of power? All these are issues that the transformational changes of recent times, generated by digitalization and an increasing concern for sustainability, have made critical and they should be given consideration by leaders because their followers, especially those drawn from younger generations, prioritize these concerns. The answers to these questions that tomorrow’s leaders proffer will be highly consequential (e.g., Milanovic, 2020; Tourish,  2019). The notion that leadership refers to paradox handling has been implicitly or explicitly discussed by many others before us. James March, for example, qualified leaders as both poets and plumbers (March & Weil, 2009). Such persons must

FIGURE I.1  Penrose

triangle illusion with Sierpinski triangle fractal.

Author: Tomruen. Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Penrose_​meets_​sierpinski-​level2. svg. Author: Tomruen. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-​ Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Introduction  3

be capable of simultaneously aspiring to transcendental and lyrical visions, seeing the detail in the smallest grain of sand yet be able to fix the plumbing and sewers of everyday life, accomplishing mundane things while performing as visionaries (Clegg, 2005). Leadership is a process that, similarly to clean water and polluted sewers, is a matter of flow. Leadership as plumbing sometimes has to deal with the bad and sometimes the downright dirty. As poetry, leadership demands a lyrical quality, capable of expanding vision and extending horizons.

Paradoxical leadership as a meta-​competence The implications of this point of departure have yet to be fully embraced. The mission of this book is to present (paradoxical) leadership as a meta-​competence. We invite understanding of leadership work as mastering multi-​layered and multiple paradoxes in an integrative way. Doing so is a difficult mission at the best of times (Andriopulos & Lewis, 2009) because contradictions may emerge without being intentional. For example, a flexitime policy that failed to produce flexibility was unexpectedly executed obliquely when a spatial rearrangement, implemented for efficiency reasons, finally unblocked flexitime practice adoption, as explained by Gonsalves (2020). A number of assumptions underlie leadership as a relational-​paradoxical process that we clarify here: •

•

•

•

The essence of leadership is a process (therefore, dynamic, evolving) of dealing with a mess of tensions and contradictions.That leadership is paradoxical is not a revelation of its flaws but is its very essence. Paradoxes occur because to lead is to steer a route through the articulation of opposing demands. The most effective leaders are not necessarily those who “solve” paradoxes  –​rather they are those who feel comfortable confronting uncomfortable paradoxes of organizational life. Leadership is, at heart, a human process. It is people that leaders must relate to, not just to machines, not just to autocues, not just to scripts. These relations constrain leaders and leaders create constraints for others. Leaders cannot but be enmeshed in power relations and their orchestration, manipulation and theatre. Leadership has its Scylla and Charybdis; it necessarily entails navigation of paradoxes, plotting a route between power and accountability, between individual and collective needs, between change and stability. Each poses risk; leaders, especially those prone to fantasies about the romance and heroics of leadership, are especially prone to the currents of countervailing power and general resistance disturbing their course of action.The vortex of paradoxes are a threat that might sink any leadership. Leaders’ hubris must accommodate organizations’ and their institutional constraints. Both leaders and organizations must manage situations as they are institutionally framed and as contingencies and their stakeholders change.

4 Introduction

Leaders act out roles but do so in mise-​en-​scène that requires considerable organization in institutional contexts that promote numerous tensions between being a good actor and an authentic person (Patriotta, 2020). The duality of person and actor is thus a complex source of tensions and contradictions, individually, organizationally and institutionally. Dr Li Wenliang, the ophthalmologist that first identified the coronavirus that became known as Covid-​19, stated shortly before his death from that virus:  “A healthy society should not have just one voice” (in Green, 2020, p. 682).We couldn’t agree more. Leadership must be attuned to multivocalities, multitudes and multifarious possibilities; doing leadership entails deliberation, whether in and through an autocracy of elite privileges or a democracy of hard choices and good reasons. As Anne Mulcahy (2010a, p. 10), former CEO of Xerox, argued: You need internal critics: people who know what impact you’re having and who have the courage to give you that feedback. I learned how to groom those critics early on, and that was really, really useful. This requires a certain comfort with confrontation, though, so it’s a skill that has to be developed. Given this contextualization of the book we can elaborate its learning goals as the following: • • •

• • •

Articulating accounts of leadership that recognize its essence as power relations and that these can be seen through a paradox lens. Illustrating the paradoxical side of leadership and power with examples from organizational life. Moving discussion of leadership beyond the romance of leadership, i.e., beyond representations of leaders as superhuman beings by contextualizing them as all too flawed, all too framed, all too paradoxical. Explaining leadership’s twists and turns, how success becomes failure and (both apparent and real) failures become successes. Discussing how organizations become cannibalistic, feeding on their conceits, becoming stuck in dynamics that they do not and cannot control. Realizing how dualistic leadership aggravates problems that require integrative ways of thinking that paradoxical approaches can stimulate.

A guide to this volume Crossing types and levels of paradox This volume is organized on the assumption that leadership should aim to create more productive and more humane organizations (e.g., Petriglieri, 2020b).We prize compassion and collaboration as well as communication coordination and control. Being productive and humane is often a paradoxical challenge that is a difficult task to accomplish. We address the challenge throughout the book as follows.

Introduction  5

The book starts with an Introduction to our themes before discussing the relationship between leadership and paradoxes (Chapter  1). These paradoxes can be experienced at different levels. In Chapter 2 we focus on the individual level. Of course, no leader is ever a Lone Ranger; there are invariably faithful sidekicks with whom they engage in dyadic, interpersonal level relations that we focus on in Chapter 3. Modern organizations run on teams –​the topic of Chapter 4. All forms of organization are designed; as such they are not organic, not natural; hence in Chapter  5 we address issues of leadership at the organizational level. Finally, Chapter 6 discusses four recurring paradoxes and presents ten ideas for cultivating a form of paradoxical wisdom. Regarding the structure of Chapters 2–​5, i.e., for each level, we explore the four types of paradoxes considered by Smith and Lewis (2011). Per type, we offer three illustrative cases. These illustrations are not meant to be taken as exhaustive. Each chapter ends with a concluding note and a short bibliographic indication with cues on how to continue exploring the theme. The text is interspersed with boxes and exercises to aid thoughtful engagement with the relation of leadership and paradox, which we hope will extend the usefulness of the book for you as a student, a practitioner, a leader. Table I.1 is a representation of the overall cartography of the book. The book does not aim to replace previous theories; there are many of them and much intellectual capital invested in them with varying rates of return. Rather, we invite our readers to look at leadership, including existing leadership approaches, through a paradox lens. Seeing reality as paradoxical might seem whimsical; actually it is not. Seeing reality as paradoxical is the first step to emancipation from all the tired old solutions that urge choosing this rather than that, secure in their convictions about the efficacy of their choices. Embracing paradox, constantly juggling it, is the fate of leading. Those that do not succeed in this, at least for a time, will rapidly join the ranks of failure, where all political careers end up being. Being a leader is undoubtedly a political career, irrespective of the field of practice. We use Smith and Lewis’ (2011) well-​known classification of paradoxes in four types, because this classification provides a parsimonious framing. We cross these four types with four levels of analysis, each discussed in their respective chapter: self, dyad, team and organization. The 16 cells thus obtained are convenient scaffolds for organizing the discussion (see Table I.1). Three illustrations were selected per cell. They are illustrations; thus, they do not exhaust the topic. Our division is necessarily artificial: paradoxes are nested and embedded, which means that any paradox has ramifications for and from other paradoxes. For example, Miller’s Icarus paradox is present in all four types: performing (the paradoxes of how to get things done); belonging (the paradoxes of identity); organizing (the paradoxes of design); learning (the paradoxes of renewal). These four types are connected. In the final chapter we illustrate four meta-​paradoxes (authenticity, excellence, power and zooming-​in and out) and present ten ideas about cultivating a form of paradoxical wisdom.

6 Introduction TABLE I.1  Paradoxes in leadership: an overview

Type of paradox 

Performing Performing paradoxes refers to tensions Level of paradox resulting from accomplishing things 

Learning Refers to tensions resulting from doing the same or different things

Belonging Refers to being similar or being different

Organizing Refers to controlling or freeing agency to a greater or lesser extent

Self

Contradictions in accomplishing things at the individual level: • Goals versus purpose • Intuition versus rationality • Independence versus interdependence

Tensions between individual desire for continuity and change: • Paradox of excellence • “Humbition” • Grit

Tensions between the desire for being unique and the desire to be accepted: • Individuality and identification • Compliance versus flexibility in rule application • Talking to others versus listening to one’s self

Tensions related to loci of control over dimension of selfhood: • Personal style as a behavioural portfolio • Know thyself • Define priorities

Dyad

Contradictions in accomplishing things at the level of a pair: • Equality and difference • Star performers • Tough love

Dyadic tensions between stability and change: • Multiplying versus diminishing • Learning dyads (I): coaching • Learning dyads (II): reverse coaching

Tensions between maintaining identity while being a couple: • Intimacy without intrusion • Empathy • Distant proximity

Tensions between controlling and opening up in a dyad: • Reciprocity • Dis-​ empowering • Contradictory obligations

Team

Contradictions in accomplishing things at the level of the group: • Performance • Cohesiveness • Team versus individual goals

Team tensions between stability and change: • Psychological safety and accountability • Team porosity • Exposition to alternative logics

Team tensions between individuality and belonging: • Hedgehog effect • Consensus and dissent • Winning and losing

Tensions between autonomy and control in a team: • Team fault lines • Less hierarchical designs • X-​teaming

(continued)

Introduction  7 TABLE I.1  Cont.

Type of paradox 

Performing Performing paradoxes refers to tensions Level of paradox resulting from accomplishing things 

Learning Refers to tensions resulting from doing the same or different things

Belonging Refers to being similar or being different

Organizing Refers to controlling or freeing agency to a greater or lesser extent

Organization Contradictions of accomplishing things at the collective level in terms of: • Meritocracy • Planning and improvising • Governance

Organizational tensions between stability and change: • Ambidexterity • Forgetting to learn, learning to forget • Enabling environments

Organizational tensions between coherence and specialization • Constructive dissent • Citizen leaders • Dispersed communities

Organizational tensions between integration and differentiation: • Freedom within framework • Competing logics • Elastic hybridity

A sketch of each chapter Chapter 1 outlines and explores the implications of using a paradox lens to view leadership.We present leadership as “an adaptive process where one or more individuals emerge as a focal point to influence and coordinate behaviour for solving social challenges posed by dynamic physical and cultural environments” (Spisak et al., 2015, p. 292) in a complex and ever-​shifting practice. Leadership entails ongoing change; change is, above all, a process rather than a state of being. A  process perspective puts more emphasis on becoming and less emphasis on being  –​the traits, styles or characteristics of leaders. Leaders might well matter but being a leader is not doing leadership.We discuss why explaining is more important than prescribing: by finding explanations, leaders may find the wise prescriptions that make sense for them and others in their concrete circumstances (Ardelt, Achenbaum & Oh, 2013; Grossmann & Kross, 2014). A process view also means that organizations are seen as living, open-​ ended social systems, which require a responsible and wise paradoxical approach towards the idiosyncrasies of each concrete circumstance from leaders (Rego, Cunha & Clegg, 2021). Organizations are not machines and should not be imagined or managed as if they were. In fact, all organizations are plural systems interacting with other open systems, designs and contrivances subject to infinite pressures and possibilities, stresses and tensions. Organizations might well be composed of individuals and teams, technologies and routines; nonetheless, they are far more than the sum of these parts. These individuals, teams, technologies and routines have histories, stories attached to them; their tellers of tales are themselves embedded in specific interests, have diverse motives imagined and attributed and complex histories. All these will necessarily differ and frequently collide. It is for these reasons that it is mandatory to study leadership as part of larger social processes of becoming.

8 Introduction

In a world of plurality and open-​endedness, surprise is inevitable. In fact, surprising competitors with new products and new business models is a skill much appreciated. Organizations are sometimes surprising because their managers intend them to be so, even though this collides with the importance of routines, of being predictable, being organized. Leaders establish and perturb routines. Leaders confront many experiences in life that are new and singular yet their work of organizing consists in framing all this novelty to create predictability and order that is still sufficiently alert to difference that it does not decay because of its predictability. As artful constructions of a complex and tangled social reality, we have recourse to the fiction that there are several levels of analysis while knowing that, in reality, these levels interact in complex politics, emotions and decisions. In summary, Chapter  1 presents leadership as a challenging process of creating shared understandings between diverse people whose agency is interrelated with many others and many devices that make organization possible: technologies, software, offices, uniforms, materialities of diverse provenance. Managers may strive to use their agency to impose meaning; others, such as whistle-​blowers, use their agency to expose such meaning as unethical, criminal or corrupt (Kenny, 2019). Leadership flows through circuits of power rather than being situated in a laboratorial pristine space. Short circuiting sometimes occurs; connections fail; meaning becomes confounded by “noise” in the system that pollutes the environment; circuits get hacked by outside interests, meanings and agencies. All these processes are framed by place and time, context and history. The upshot is that, from a leadership perspective, nothing and nobody is a tabula rasa as we all engage with situations using implicit theories for making sense of them. Leaders may strive to make their implicit meanings explicit to all concerned but meaning making is notoriously reflexive and can never be controlled because the sense that is made can never be the sense that is sent (Gordon, 2001). We approach leadership from a paradoxical perspective, meaning that we pay attention to both conflicts and coordination within and between organizational actors and their performances.A plurality of motives (economic and non-​economic), goals (convergent and divergent) and experiences of the people concerned make performing as a leader a staging fraught with risk of misadventure from which paradox can frequently ensue. We do not suggest that paradox should substitute for other leadership perspectives; instead, we use it as a meta-​theoretical stance (see Box I.1) that can complement, and help to provoke, refine and expand other efforts in theorizing leadership.

BOX I.1  PARADOX AS META-​THEORY A meta-​theory is a broad framework based on a set of shared underlying assumptions integrating a diversity of phenomena and interpretations, without being confined to specific contexts, variables or methods (Ritzer, 1990; Abrams

Introduction  9

& Hogg, 2004). A paradox perspective can arguably be one such meta-​theory (Lewis & Smith, 2014), one that uses tensions to understand and make sense of reality, without being confined by the prescription of any “one-​best-​way” to deal with them. A  paradox meta-​ theory can include different theories aimed at understanding and predicting different typologies of tensions: trade-​ off compromises, generative paradoxes (tensions that can be harnessed for innovation), pragmatic paradoxes (paralysing pathologies), dialectical transformations etcetera. This implies treating paradox not as a phenomenon that requires explanation but rather as a source of explanations. Instead of asking “why does trying to lead cause contradictions?”, we should consider that leadership concerns contradictions: if we did not have paradoxes, then we would not need leaders to cope with them.

Chapter  2 discusses paradoxes at the intra-​ individual level. Our identities are not monolithic. People play different roles, sometimes as leaders but also as wives, husbands or lovers, as sons or daughters, friends, members of non-​profit organizations, citizens and so forth. These roles sometimes complement each other well, while sometimes they clash. Actorhood and personhood do not always adjust easily or, as Voronov and Weber (2020, p. 7) explain, “there is never a perfect fusion between a person and an actor role”. Being a dedicated parent may leave the impression to one’s colleagues of not being a dedicated team worker or leader. Work and family exist in a state of tension that is not always easy to navigate. At the level of self, leaders confront numerous paradoxes: they need to express self-​ confidence and to cultivate humility; they need to serve yet set direction; they need to be authentic yet be aware that leadership is a role in which are vested performative expectations; they need to excel while knowing that excellence is a process of renewing one’s skills and thus confronting ignorance. Leadership is a process of cultivating wisdom, articulating action and reflection, theory and practice. Leadership requires a capacity for self-​leadership that is inherently paradoxical (Stewart, Courtright & Manz, 2019). Chapter 3 discusses leadership as a relational process, one that takes place at the interface between self and others. Leadership involves relating to practices that are always rich in tension and contradiction. While leading, managers have to perform both toughness and kindness. They need to integrate voices while preserving diversity; they require cohesion while stimulating difference. Leaders need to cultivate organizational polyphony despite polyphony being difficult to harmonize. Decisions taken are often articulated in an acoustically mono mode as “His Masters’ Voice”. Over time, being organized may force some to silence their voice; others may fail to harmonize, in which case the excess of voices becomes organizational Babel. We discuss leader-​member exchanges as critical to the creation of organization cultures that are “thick” (Geertz, 1973), that have many strands and much weave in their warp and weft. Yet these relationships are interpersonal balancing

10 Introduction

acts.We discuss how productive language can be used as an antidote against the creation and crystallization of pragmatic paradoxes (Berti & Simpson, 2019; Tsoukas, 2016). Language can be used to do anything many ways: to impose hierarchy or to stimulate democracy. Chapter  4 discusses paradoxes at the team level. Teams occupy a fundamental place in the life of organizations, with organizations being more and more teams of teams. Many of the most important organizational tasks are conducted in teams. Teams are critical in providing people with a sense of learning and to fuel organizational renewal. They are engines of individual and collective learning and performance. Yet teams can also impede learning and struggle to accept individual difference. When that happens, the team becomes less potent than the sum of its parts. In this chapter we explore the two sides of teams: as sources of renewal or as impediments to change. We also consider tensions between individualism and collectivism, success and failure, similarity and difference, consensus and dissensus, cooperation and competition, harmony and conflict. Chapter 5 discusses paradoxes of organizing. To manage organizations, leaders need to handle paradoxes incessantly (Figure I.2). Organizing implies a measure of disorganizing, for instance. Rules without freedom are as complicated as freedom without constraints. As organizations tend towards convergence, they need to cultivate elements of divergence. In organizations, paradoxes are nested and embedded, meaning that tackling one paradox may trigger other paradoxes (Berti, Cunha, Clegg & Rego, 2021). Hence, leaders must learn to embrace a paradoxical mindset

FIGURE I.2  “A

perpetual vase”, or Boyle’s perpetual motion scheme, in honour of Robert Boyle (1627–​1691). Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Boyle%27sSelfFlowingFlask.png (“Scanned without alteration from Figure 54 in Arthur W. J. G. Ord-​Hume’s Perpetual Motion, the History of an Obsession. Allen & Unwin, 1977, St. Martins Press, 1977”). This work is in the public domain.

Introduction  11

that frames paradox as normal rather than exceptional. Leadership is an exercise in the navigation of tensions and contradictions, a paradoxical practice. Chapter  6 closes with two core themes:  the paradoxes that recur throughout managerial careers and how managers can be more prepared to handle them though self-​education. In the first case, we discuss paradoxes that are likely to appear and reappear as managers respond to the challenges they constitute; in the second, we advance a soupçon of ideas useful to approaching paradox as a form of wisdom in the face of contradiction.

Challenges rather than absurdities The book, in general, offers a journey through leadership paradoxes not as signs of absurdity but as challenges that accommodate and distil the precise complexities of being in organizations and becoming a leader. In 1909 Max Weber (1909), reflecting on the triumph of “rational calculation” in organizations, sounded a note of “despair” at the many little cogs in the machinery of organizations striving to be bigger ones.The biggest of all, of course, are “the leaders”, who will have struggled through organization ranks to arrive at the summit, aware of their individual insecurities of leadership tested on the way up, unless they were born to rule on some hereditary principle. Kaplan and Kaiser (2003, p. 24) describe “the tendency to polarize”, to see choices between either-​or types of scenarios in which leadership can so often be mistaken for the act of choosing. Insecurities can always be resolved by decisive choices but sometimes, perhaps not all the time, choice rather than being versatile in balancing and integrating the paradoxes of everyday organizational life, ends up being the grit in the machine that jams the cogs, the bug that buggers the system. Paradoxical choices do not involve strictly objective elements. There is no calculus for their resolution. Even though we distinguish different competences, we assume that these interact; that they are dynamic and change over time, and their importance for the overall effectiveness of those would be leaders also changes over time. Individual experiences make institutional contradictions (Seo & Creed, 2002) salient and emotional, such as when one is both a priest and gay (Creed, DeJordy & Lok, 2010) or a physician and a military officer (Leavitt et al., 2012). An early draft of the book was written while the authorial team was quarantined half in Portugal, half in Australia, in 2020 during the Covid-​ 19 pandemic. Throughout the book you will find regular references to the case. Given the incredibly transformative capacity of this viral actant on so much of socially constructed reality, not only medically but also economically, socially, digitally, globally, none that lived through it could be untouched. Just as there can be no leadership in a vacuum, it is apposite to note that no leadership book should ever be written as if it were a book for all seasons, good or ill. Context matters. The coronavirus and the variable examples of leadership in the face of it were uppermost in our minds as we wrote. The corona virus thrust the world’s leaders onto a stage not of their choice; their performances and those of the systems that they led were very variable,

12 Introduction

demonstrating that when it comes to the most existential question of all, life itself, leadership really does matter. Think of the paradoxical relations of health and wealth, economy and society, freedom and constraint that the Covid-​19 virus raised, and then consider the responses of world leaders such as President Modi in India or Prime Minister Ardern in New Zealand. Whereas in New Zealand Ardern expressed care (Tomkins, 2020), in India Modi escalated a populist Hindu agenda (Prasad, 2020). Leadership matters most when life itself is threatened –​and there are reasons to believe that female leaders are not just effective navigators of tensions emerging from organizational life (Zheng, Kark & Meister, 2018) but they are also more effective when citizens’ lives are at stake amidst a pandemic (Garikipati & Kambhampati, 2020). Given the context of the virus crisis, the book to some extent reflects paradoxical times in which we ceased to “go” to work, in which we were socially isolated with our families at home, in which we learnt how to do our job of being professors anew, improvising with digital technologies to conjure up work-​arounds that could deal with the isolation. It was a time of social lockouts, cancellations of events and prohibition of face-​to-​face relations, except in mutual isolation. In between Zooming,Teaming, BBBing and other digital substitutes for the classroom, with opportunities for meeting cancelled, we explored new ways of working and teaching, commuting and polluting less, leaving a smaller carbon footprint and reflecting constantly on the processes that had brought about this massive breach of normalcy. In the process, as many, we went from Zoom to Zoom fatigue (Fosslien & Duffy, 2020) but managed to finish the first draft of the book. Writing in isolation mandated by a state of emergency, these times of mutual suspicion and reduced freedoms consequent upon an actant that could not be seen, hardly surprisingly, conjured up fear. The global fear was akin to that of “the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells” (Marx & Engels, 1848/​1969, p. 19). As well as Marx and Engels, Dickens too captures well the sense of foreboding and exhilaration that apocalyptic times can produce of which, in an echo of other revolutionary times, it may be said that: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. (Dickens, 2003, p. 1) For writers, it was, in some respects the best of times; locked down with no necessity to be anywhere, we worked fast but acutely aware of the unfolding contagion, with terrible effects and appalling leadership shown in many quarters.The paradoxical unanticipated consequences of the global world that we have made, one which freely traded among disparate places, was devastated by a virus, an apt punctuation

Introduction  13

of an era of neo-​liberal globalization stalled by the unanticipated consequences of a Chiropteran hosted virus, multiplying in humankind. Who knows what futures await us and what types of leadership will characterize it once this viral actant is cast off, in retreat or defeat? If we dare hope, maybe our modest tome might be a manifesto to help guide future paradoxes of power and leadership organizing and managing fragile human coexistence in the world we will make in the wake of the world we will have lost after the contagion ebbs.

Conclusion The book discusses and explores paradoxes that confront leaders in organizations as well as some motives for their emergence. Paradoxes are a consequence of the pluralistic nature of organizations and this pluralism is tackled by finding dynamic forms of balance. Balancing is impermanent and unstable, meaning that equilibrium is necessarily precarious. In addition, because diverse tensions are perceived differently at multiple levels, paradoxes felt intensely at one level may go unnoticed at another (Gaim, Clegg & Cunha, 2019). Leaders may deny paradoxes or act as if paradoxes are inherently bad for team and organizational functioning and flourishing. We argue that such a stance is not the wisest. Against most other approaches to leadership we suggest that a concern with paradox and thinking about theory of organization as a paradoxical effort (Clegg, Berti & Cunha, 2020) cultivates virtues fostering organizational purpose.

1 LEADERSHIP AND PARADOX

Neither a morality tale nor a Manichean view How are we going to get things done if we start asking people to do stuff rather than telling people to do stuff? (A manager, in Hill, 2020d, p. 12) Leadership has of late been presented as a morality tale (Pfeffer, 2016a). Morality tales often imagine that the best is possible, with their stories aiding its accomplishment. In these morality tales, leaders are described not only as effective in getting things done but also as people who care about their followers’ development and well-​being, who are authentic, build trust, protect the natural environment and promote diversity in the workplace. Given all these requirements, one might be tempted to term it a fairy tale, in comparison to the harsh reality of practice. Few would contest the importance of these claims and the need for positive leadership while many would find that the exigencies of situations make expendable the piety of these tales. Positive leadership, where striven for, is paradoxical in the sense that being positive is not necessarily being personable, agreeable or doing things that will benefit others (Cunha, Rego, Simpson & Clegg, 2020). Positive leadership is difficult because it entails a paradoxical relational competence. The discrepancy between what leaders are supposed to do in positive prescription and what they actually do (or have to do wisely, considering the specific circumstances in which they operate; Ardelt et al. 2013; Grossman, 2017) in harried practice can be a yawning chasm. Pfeffer (2021) explains that the framing of leadership as a moral endeavour constitutes an oversimplification of the dilemmas faced by leaders. An essay on the 500th anniversary of the writing of Machiavelli’s The Prince (Scott & Zaretsky, 2013) reminded us once more that, so long after Machiavelli coined his advice, it remains sometimes

Leadership and paradox  15

necessary to do bad things to achieve good results, that winning and keeping power implies political savoir faire (Pfeffer, 2016a), and that naïve leadership can never be great leadership. Machiavelli did not urge evil for the sake of being evil. As a citizen of Medici Florence, he was well aware of the infinite capacity for intrigue, treachery and deceit that rulers could provide. In modern organizational theory parlance, his view of leadership would be that it was contingency based: leaders do Whatever it takes (Richardson, 1994), depending on the situation. Modern leadership theory reflects this view inasmuch as it imagines that effective leaders display complex combinations of styles, instead of consistently displaying a singular style (Goleman, 2000). The mix of styles includes support as well as command, care as well as a measure of fear. As Kramer (2006) observed, some respected leaders are great intimidators; moreover, some feared leaders are greatly respected for the terror that they can produce. There is a Manichean view of leadership, often transmitted by Hollywood movies, perhaps none better than Patton: Lust for Glory (Schaffner, 1970). But even Patton-​the-​Hero conflicted with Patton-​the-​Administrator (see Spillane & Joullié, 2015). It seems that, as Burns (1978, pp. 38–​39) remarks, “leadership is … grounded in a seedbed of conflict. Conflict is intrinsically compelling; it galvanizes, prods, motivates people … Leaders do not shun conflict; they confront it, exploit it, and ultimately embody it”. In this book we aim to discuss leadership not as a Manichean act in which leaders embody an individualistic good, but as a complex, nuanced and paradoxical relational process. We argue that leaders should strive to be virtuous but neither be moralizers nor tyrants. If the reader wants morality tales, they should go to church or read the gospels of management’s best practice. There are such tales aplenty and tellers hungry for an audience. As for tyranny, it has no place in a decent civil society, albeit there are many leaders for whom that lesson would be timely.Virtue is a balancing act deployed by those leading to persuade others to do what needs to be done; virtuous leading is an exercise in balancing opposing demands (Rego, Cunha & Clegg, 2012). From this perspective, even leading as if one was a servant leader serves to preserve and reinforce one’s power position by posing as a steward of collective interests. The strong can sometimes pose as servant of the weak, while indeed being in control of their lives, as illustrated in the Harold Pinter–​scripted and Joseph Losey–​directed movie classic, The Servant (Losey, 1963). There is thus a paradox to power relations, which derives from a duality that it is intrinsic in the concept of power (Clegg & Haugaard, 2009). Power can be understood as the capacity to enforce one’s will over others, a form of oppression and control exercised through manipulation, coercion, domination, and constraint. At the same time, it can be seen as the ability to achieve something in concert with others (Arendt, 1970), highlighting the positive, generative aspects of enabling, supporting, and facilitating collective action. The former aspect has been labelled as power-​over, the latter power-​to (Gőhler, 2009). In organizational leadership, the relationship between power-​to and power-​over becomes paradoxical. Achieving complex, collective objectives requires individual drive and initiative but also alignment of behaviours. Thus, it both calls for individual empowerment and for

16  Leadership and paradox

control and direction. It is not possible to harness the generative, enabling and transformative potential of power-​over, without invoking the oppressive.

Implications of power-​to If a leader had to exercise power in imperative command backed by the threat of sanction for non-​compliance, this demonstrates not a leader’s strength but their essential weakness –​even though decisive command may be expected in moments of crisis or danger (Grint, 2020; see Chapter 5 on how the US Navy SEALs oscillate between leadership, management and command; see also Box 1.1). Far stronger is the leader that is able to have others do what is desired without any effort in exercising power at all. Hence, the paradox is that the leader that does leadership least explicitly and least overtly through the exercise of power is not demonstrating weakness so much as strength.

BOX 1.1  EXCERPTS FROM “EXTREME OWNERSHIP: HOW U.S. NAVY SEALS LEAD AND WIN”, AUTHORED BY A RETIRED NAVY SEAL OFFICER (WILLINK) AND A FORMER NAVY SEAL OFFICER (BABIN)1 Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another. The simple recognition of this is one of the most powerful tools a leader has. With this in mind, a leader can more easily balance the opposing forces and lead with maximum effectiveness. A leader must lead but also be ready to follow. (…) A  leader must be aggressive but not overbearing. (…) A leader must be calm but not robotic. (…) Of course, a leader must be confident but never cocky. (…) A leader must be brave but not foolhardy. (…) Leaders must have a competitive spirit but also be gracious losers. (…) A  leader must be attentive to details but not obsessed by them. (…) A  leader must be strong but likewise have endurance, not only physically but mentally. (…) Leaders must be humble but not passive; quiet but not silent. (…) A  leader must be close with subordinates but not too close. (…) A leader must exercise Extreme Ownership. Simultaneously, that leader must employ Decentralized Command by giving control to subordinate leaders. Finally, a leader has nothing to prove but everything to prove.

The paradox approach to leadership and to management, in general, is becoming mainstream.Yet, it was not always so. When, with their bestselling book In Search of Excellence, consultants Peters and Waterman popularized the idea that organizations

Leadership and paradox  17

needed to have “loose-​tight” structures, academics received the idea with scepticism. As Oswick, Keenoy and Grant (2002, p. 300) observed: “How could HRM policy and practice be both hard and soft, and how could an organizational structure be both loose and tight at the same time?” Traditional management expressed a tendency to overemphasize the tight, rational, serious, linear and the sequential rather than the loose, emotional, playful, non-​linear and circular. As Weick and Quinn (1999) put it, change never starts because it never stops, meaning that organizing is a circular process, marked by interdependence and circular causality, rather than by linear progression. Social scientists that suffer from “physics envy” (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 1) have, for a long time, searched for unidirectional causality, the case in which an independent variable X causes change in a dependent variable Y. The holy grail of positivism is searched for without success or cessation. The Holy Grail belongs to mythology and so does the methodology of positivism as it strives to arrest time and motion, becoming and its histories, in an elaborate metaphysic of cross-​sectional causality. It is increasingly recognized, however, that the social world, much as the natural world, is based on interaction and inter-​dependence (Capra, 1991), circular causality being abundant (Bateson, 1972). Circular nature is itself paradoxical: if organizing exhibits circular qualities, can an organization, over time, ever be the same thing? Perhaps an organization is similar to Parmenides’ river, never stepped into as the same river in the same way on repeated occasions? Going back to Peters and Waterman (Box 1.2), Oswick et al. (2002) observed that it was not without irony that, being practice-​based, their observations contributed to the diffusion of the idea of organizations as paradoxical. The proximity of these McKinsey consultants to organizational phenomena (Ployhart & Bartunek, 2019) was probably critical in the intuition that when one approaches organizational phenomena for theory-​building purposes, chances are one will struggle with tensions and contradictions. As a corollary, it seems possible to hypothesize that the only place where managing and organizing do not involve a measure of tension and contradiction is in organization theories rather than in organizational phenomena.

BOX 1.2  KEY (AND CONTROVERSIAL) THINKERS: PETERS AND WATERMAN The enfant terrible Tom Peters and Robert Waterman are former consultants and authors of the best-​selling book In Search of Excellence. Published in 1982, the book had a tremendous impact by defending a shared culture as the secret ingredient of excellent companies. Tom Peters subsequently became the enfant terrible of management, which perhaps devalued the contribution of this book. The fact is that on top of urging leaders to pay attention to their organizations’ culture, albeit in a shallow conception of culture as a singular and top-​down driven

18  Leadership and paradox

phenomenon, the book noted the importance of what the authors dubbed tight-​loose cultures, drawing attention to paradox before the theme became mainstream in academia. Ployhart and Bartunek (2019) subsequently affirmed the importance of studying management based on real world phenomena rather than only framing that reality through theories determining the structure of that reality. The importance of the tight and loose dimensions of culture is still relevant today, attested in recent work such as Gelfand’s (2019) on the tension between rule making and rule breaking, and the description of Solinger, Jansen and Cornelissen (2020) of great leaders as able to conserve and change their organization’s moral rules.

Suggestion for reading: the enfant terrible’s confessions To get a better understanding of why Tom Peters has been considered the enfant terrible, read his “True confessions” published in Fast Company magazine, when celebrating the 20th anniversary of “In Search of Excellence”.2 Here are some of his “confessions”:  “Of course, there’s an official way that I  tell the story now  –​and it’s total bullshit”. (…) “My second confession is this: I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search”. (…) “Confession number three: This is pretty small beer, but for what it’s worth, okay, I confess: We faked the data. A lot of people suggested it at the time”. Reading all “confessions” also allow understanding some motivations behind writing the book and some “frivolities”.

What is leadership? Leadership as competency than can be learned Often viewed as a disposition that some people are born with, a position in a hierarchy or a resource that some people possess, leadership is better viewed as a matter of a competent practice, one that can be learned, “a skill that can be improved like any other, from playing a musical instrument or speaking a foreign language to mastering a sport” (Pfeffer, 2016a, p. 6). What can be learned can also be unlearned, with some people losing credit as leaders. A result of seeing leadership as practical competence is the fact some people may have the competence but not the identity of leadership and vice versa, as illustrated in Figure 1.1. Leadership can be presented as a process of social influence, one that has two building blocks: the capacity (1) to achieve objectives through and (2) with people as well as with other actants, such as machines, laboratories and devices. The relation contains paradoxical potential. The capacity to achieve objectives through imperative command and direction often goes against the preferences of the people being commanded.To achieve objectives, leaders need to establish demanding goals,

Leadership and paradox  19

Identity

The person (and hopefully his or her followers) think about him or herself as a leader and has the necessary competences

The person thinks about him or herself as a leader but has not the necessary competences Implication: needs to develop selfawareness

Implication: the most fruitful combination

No competence

Competence

The person does not think about him or herself as a leader and lacks the necessary competences Implication: should not be asked to lead

The person does not think about him or herself as a leader but has the competences, according to others Implication: the social context may challenge the individual to assume leadership position

No identity

FIGURE 1.1  Leadership

emerging from crossing competence and identity.

disrupt established routines and make tough calls. These activities are not necessarily rewarded with favour by those commanded, often making those commanded do what they would prefer not to do. Leadership in this sense does not care to be popular: leaders need to be aware that leadership is not a popularity contest. As Caesar’s former CEO, quoted by Pfeffer (2021, p. 18), put it, “If you want to be liked, get a dog”. Yet the same was said by Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap, a man who believed in insurance: “You’re not in business to be liked… We’re here to succeed” so “If you want a friend, get a dog. I’m not taking any chances; I’ve got two dogs” (Dunlap & Andelman, 1996, p. xii).

Results and ethics There is another layer of paradoxicality: sometimes leaders who do evil are followed with enthusiasm by a multitude of avid groups. That, of course, was the case with Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-​tung, Pol Pot, Bin Laden and many other historical figures. Most historical leaders evoke ambivalence; in certain contexts, they will be admired for the very things for which, in other contexts, they will be condemned. Leadership, its ethics and other social manifestations, does not happen in empty milieu (Lacerda, Meira & Brulon, 2020). History passes moral judgement, with the immediate judgements being invariably those of the victors. Such views may be expected to have a positive bias, with ideological and other commitments. The context and the contradictions tend to fade away over time until received wisdom is contested.

20  Leadership and paradox

Leadership as the exercise of achieving objectives is a pragmatic activity, a practice that involves the capacity to mobilize systems, rather than some charismatic trait. Throughout the book we make no assumptions about the goodness of leadership: leadership can be good or bad (Kellerman, 2004) and the same leader may be seen to be both simultaneously in different contexts. Some (considered as) good leaders become evil ones, often as the consequence of hubris (Sadler-​ Smith, Akstinaite, Robinson & Wray, 2017). The rhetorician Churchill who rallied a beleaguered island nation against adversity was the same man whose disastrous Gallipoli campaign squandered the lives of the British Empire’s youth; the same man who had earlier orchestrated the siege and deaths of innocent men in Sydney Street; the same man that unleashed raw racism in his campaigns in the Swat valley and the Sudan; the same man that introduced concentration camps to the modern lexicon during the Boer War (Toye, 2010). Effective leadership involves both results and ethics, not always in balance. Great results by unethical means is destructive but good morals with no effectiveness is ineffective. On the occasion of the Second World War, Churchill the rhetorician achieved a balance between ethics and effects. On many other occasions, the effects may have been decisive but the ethics, in retrospect, were desultory, however concordant they might have been with the dominant sentiments of the day. Effective leadership will always be subject to the revisions of changing contexts. Leadership entails precarious balance rather more than special attributes. Of course, part of the balance consists in not trying to lead what resists leading. As Spisak, Nicholson and van Vugt (2011, p. 186) recommended, “managers should recognize and avoid the tendency towards excessive leadership”, a disposition to interfere also called micromanagement. Instead of centring leadership in the leader it should be centred in the processes that articulate actors and actants in shifting environments and the processes of their evaluation. Above all, leadership is a “process that is co-​created in social and relational interactions between people” and “leadership can only occur if there is followership –​without followers and following behaviors there is no leadership” (Uhl-​Bien, Riggio, Lowe & Carsten, 2014, p. 83). It is the interplay between leaders and followers in specific contexts (i.e., not just leaders) that give rise to autocratic (Harms, Wood, Landay, Lester & Lester, 2018) and destructive leadership (Thoroughgood, Hunter & Sawyer, 2011; Thoroughgood, Padilla, Hunter & Tate, 2012).

From a leader-​centric to a follower-​centric approach Historically, leadership can be summarized as having evolved through three moments: leader focused, situation focused and follower focused. Leader focused: leadership in this perspective is equated with the leader. In this view, leaders play the crucial role in changing systems. Carlyle’s great man thesis of leadership epitomizes this approach. The perspective of leaders as shapers of history has value. As defended by Byman and Pollack (2019, p. 160),

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one man or woman in the wrong place at the wrong time can set a country in a dangerous course. In bad times, however, faith in the power of individuals can serve as a source of hope. For although leaders can make the world more dangerous, they can also make the world safer and more prosperous. The leader-​centred perspective, even when focused on traits and dispositions, needs to embrace a paradoxical stance:  the same trait can be bright or dark, depending on how it is used (Judge, Piccolo & Kosalka, 2009).According to Zeitoun, Nordberg and Homberg (2019), even hubris may have a bright side. Symmetrically, optimism is good –​but it might be bad; witness Trump’s shifting expressions with respect to the corona virus and the effects of these. A virtuous approach to leadership insists that excess of a good thing is bad, or, in Aristotelian terms, virtue inheres in the middle (Rego et al., 2012). Situation focused. The situational or contingency view of organizations implies that there is no such thing as a best style.The best style would necessarily depend on the nature of the situation as different situations imply different styles, as Machiavelli well recognized. Leaders need to develop a form of situational or contextual intelligence that involves a sophisticated understanding of timing. Leadership cannot be understood out of time and space; the image of great leaders (historically, usually great men) as those endowed with special traits is challenged by the contingency  view. The contingency view also incorporates a paradoxical orientation, in the sense that leaders are expected to do different, sometimes contradictory, things while maintaining their behavioural integrity. Paradoxically, good leaders are aware of the fact that what worked as leadership in one context may not work in other contexts. Therefore, they are competent because they can do this or do that, depending on the circumstances. Note that even, or mainly, the virtue of practical wisdom involves a situational approach in which there is “the right way to do the right thing in a particular circumstance, with a particular person, at a particular time” (Schwartz & Sharpe, 2010, pp. 3–​4). Follower focused. Dialectically, leaders cannot lead if no one follows. Probably apocryphally, the quote “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader” was attributed to a leader whose authority was failing in the short-​lived revolutionary spirit of 1848, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-​Rollin. Nonetheless, more recent leadership approaches have moved from command-​and-​control to a coaching orientation with a focus on followers. Leaders are expected to provide support and guidance rather than issue orders and instructions. Think about servant leadership (Sousa & van Dierendonck, 2017) and coaching (Ibarra & Scoular, 2019):  these approaches present leaders as having a responsibility for the development of their followers. Their leadership is based on personal authority (see Box 1.3) more than on positional power, substituting informal influence and self-​development assisted by the leader-​as-​coach rather than issuing commands and controls. As Andrew Hill (2020d, p. 12) wrote: “You can be a coach rather than a commander in any business”.

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BOX 1.3  LEADERS AS AUTHORS OF THEIR AUTHORITY Authority and power are sometimes viewed as overlapping concepts, with authority sometimes being seen as a source of power rather than a consequence of the (power) relations that position that authority. Yet it is important to distinguish authoritativeness and authoritarianism. As Spillane and Joullié (2015, p. 36) have observed, “authority has not to be equated with power, even if power often accompanies authority”. Power as the capacity to accomplish things, to obtain and grant access to valuable resources (Guinote, 2007a) via the transmission of orders on the basis of positional standing, that grants power over others, in an organization invariably makes those others feel that they are “simple receptors of orders” (Melé, 2013, p.  53), a dehumanizing feeling. Authority, from the Latin auctor and auctoritas refers to something that others author through the bestowal of legitimacy; without legitimacy authority is domination (Weber, 1978). If someone is seen to embody legitimacy (Tost, 2011), whether bestowed through the grace of tradition, charisma, formal rationality or a combination of these, then followership is made easier. Where that is the case, leaderly action becomes “authoritative” (Spillane & Joullié, 2015, p. 36). In other words, each leader’s claim to author their own authority depends on the way that those over whom it is claimed acknowledge it or not. People can gain positional power but still not achieve authority in the roles and relations entailed if those whom they lead do not consent to their authority. When invested with great amounts of authority, some professionals embody their professions’ ideals, their ethos –​understood as fundamental institutional ideals (Voronov & Weber, 2016). Credibility is assessed by others not through some form of cognitive deliberation but via emotional resonance. These leaders become role models, as explained by Pratt, Rockmann and Kaufmann (2006) or, as described by Fotaki (2013), “authentic” materializations of a professional or organizational ethos.

Capacity to articulate tensions Leadership is an evolving idea, ideal and practice over time, yet, regardless of its focus, leadership involves distinctly paradoxical elements. The tensions between the three moments identified (leader, situation, the led) are the focus of paradox. The ways in which the capacity to articulate these tensions plays out defines the meaning of leadership and changing historical judgement of its success.These levels are connected. As the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested, in certain, clearly patriarchal, situations, “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man” (in Byman & Pollack, 2019, p. 159).

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Adopting a systems psychodynamics perspective, leadership may be understood as “the power to define the experience of others and the structure of institutions in a way that affirms desired identities” (Petriglieri, 2020b, p. 11). Desire and destination differ. Leadership occurs in “a world of imperfect people and ambiguous choices” (Pfeffer, 2016a, p. 5) and invariably refers to the introduction of change in a system. Such changes may well be desired yet desire is insufficient to determine destiny. As Burns (1978, p. 249) observed, “the ultimate success of leaders is tested not by people’s delight in a performance or personality but by actual social change measured by ideologists’ purposes, programs and values” (italics in the original). Leaders are thus primary agents of change, a characteristic that distinguishes the leader from the managers that strive to deliver what change entails, often against resistance. Leaders strive to change an overall status quo, change that managers are charged to manage and lead locally.

Leadership as process A relational process Leadership is often approached from the perspective of persons and events: great speeches, explosions of charisma, inspiring gestures, critical moments. The rhetoric of leadership is often reified, as Watzlawick and his colleagues (1967, p. 27) have explained: Concepts such as leadership, dependency, extroversion and introversion, nurturance, and many others became the object of detailed study. The danger, of course, is that all these terms, if only thought and repeated long enough, assume a pseudoreality of their own, and eventually “leadership”, the construct, becomes Leadership, a measurable quantity in the human mind which is itself conceived as a phenomenon in isolation. Once this reification has taken place, it is no longer recognized that the term is but a shorthand expression for a particular form of ongoing relationship. Living and being is a process, unfolding incessantly, always becoming. Leadership is a relational process, rather than an attribute of a person or an activity conducted in splendid isolation (Bolden & Gosling, 2006; Uhl-​Bien et al., 2014). Thinking about leadership as a personal characteristic leads to attribution errors such as the romance of leadership (Meindl, Ehrlich & Dukerich, 1985; Spisak, 2020) or the investment of leaders with heroic or superhuman qualities, even of fictional characteristics, to leaders. Real persons can become fictionalized as discussed in Box 1.4 in the case of Dracula, prepared by our Romanian colleague, Horia Moasa (see also Box 1.5). It should be noted here that even romanticized leaders depend on followers to operationalize their visions. It is noteworthy that followers that romanticize their leaders have a stronger propensity to obey unethical requests (Carsten & Uhl-​Bien, 2013) and to operationalize their visions at any cost, rendering their vision and the visionary seemingly even more charismatic as the process unfolds for good or ill.

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Indeed, for many leaders the ultimate triumph would be their fictionalization in the terms that they work to promote; history, however, is rarely as kind as the ghost writers and PR consultants of the immediate present. Of course, leaders change with time, and the heroic warrior leaders of the past may give way to “new heroes” (Yammarino, 2013) that are authentic, green, ethical, socially responsible, emotionally intelligent. New heroes, however, can be as exaggerated as their older version and no more realistic; great moral challenges of our times can be expediently dropped as situations demand (Gurney, 2017). Attribution of significance in terms of the issues of the day often exploits and positions the situation as one in which the person steps up as one imbued with the “sexy, heroic nature of leadership” (see Box 1.5), often affording “exaggerated” images of leaders and their power to influence organizations (Blom & Alvesson, 2015, pp. 482 and 483, respectively). These events are dynamized and dramatized by leaders enchanted with the power of their self-​belief and overcome with the exuberance of its expression in rhetoric: if leadership makes things happen anything can be justified in the urge for action and movement.

BOX 1.4  DRACULA –​BETWEEN FICTION AND FACTS By Horia Moasa, Transylvania University of Brasov Who doesn’t know about Dracula, the blood thirsty vampire from Transylvania? Ever since the 1897 gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker, Dracula has been a famous fictional character, made more significant for modern audiences by numerous theatrical, film and television interpretations. Some interpretations of Dracula may see the character as representing the quest for eternal life or the never-​ending struggle for love; other interpretations see the character as a response to the public’s thirst for adventurous horror and the super-​ natural, while others interpret Dracula as an “invasion” of the heart of the British Empire, its Church, its Science, by the irrational, the exotic, the morally corrupt, the dangerous and deadly from the furthest extremes of Eastern Europe, Dracula as a foreshadowing of the fears that gave rise to Brexit. Aside from these literary interpretations, for Romanians, Dracula is modelled after the historic figure of Vlad Basarab III, also called Dracul and The Impaler. He is perceived as a liberator, the providential fighter who was capable of challenging and defeating the oppressive and infidel Ottomans. His cruel sentences (death by impalement) were directed towards Turks, a common enemy at that time. Such sentences, in Dracula’s time, were not considered gratuitous, sick and nonsensical acts of cruelty but strategic acts of power directed at restoring the balance of justice. His hero quality is supported by his defence of traditional values: honesty, justice, vim and vigour. Justified through this filter, his punishments were deemed appropriate.

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PICTURE 1.1 Vlad

Dracula.

Source:  Nicolae Iorga, Domni români după portrete şi fresce contemporane. Sibiu, 1930 (https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​Category:Vlad_​III_​the_​Impaler_​ in_​paintings#/​media/​File:024_​-​_​Vlad_​Tepes.jpg). This work is in the public domain. The reputation of being unrelenting but just was maintained in Romanian tradition up to the present day. History books, including novels and poems, are a testament to this. His love of justice embedded itself in Romanian consciousness in a way that supersedes the fights against the Ottoman Empire as well as that which today ranks as his cruelties. In the Romanian context there is a pattern for dealing with worthy leaders: the most important thing in a leader is their defence of the people’s interests and the prestige of the nation. Other mistakes, sins or flaws can be forgiven or not considered to be important. The more powerful the opponents (e.g., the Ottoman Empire), the greater the leader’s heroism. It is a pattern that is not uncommon for people whose history unfolded in the shadows of great empires’ imperial tendencies, threatening their very existence.

A different view assumes that leading and organizing entail changing and becoming. In this perspective, leaders are as much producers of events as they are a

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product of events and the processes that encapsulate those events. Here events that “define” leadership are emanations of larger processes that never cease to unfold and to bring about change. Some of these processes are anchored in deep structural roots that are difficult to eradicate. When seen from the outside, they produce organizations that look inane, contradictory, ridiculous, even stupid (McCabe, 2016). When leaders try to make their mark in an organization with deep roots, the organization can respond to some extent by going “underground” (see, e.g., Heracleous & Bartunek, 2020), diving into the institutional palimpsest, whose layers of meaning sediment over the course of time, impeding the present from getting rid of the past (Cunha, Rego, Silva & Clegg, 2015). Leaders may not even be able to see this organization; it is often a challenge to do so for CEOs hired from other organizations on the strength of their ability to tell a good story about change. Deep, slow, embedded resistance is often the other side of leadership: media darlings such as former HP CEO Carly Fiorina become paragons of stubbornness and incompetence in the face of such phenomena. Even “hidden gems” such as Xerox’s Anne Mulcahy (Box 2.3) have to work extremely hard to maintain their reputation. Reputation concerns process, not the self-​delusions of personality (Ketchen, Adams & Shook, 2008) as often exhibited in the “I did it my way” brand of literature (Anka, 1969; see, e.g., Iacocca & Novak, 1986).

BOX 1.5  SUGGESTION FOR READING: WHY “FALL GUYS” ARE STILL SEEN AS “HEROES”? “CEOs should have been the fall guys; why are they still heroes?”  –​this is the title of an article authored by Carl Rhodes and Peter Bloom about why we continue to consider as heroes those who could/​ should be named as villains considering their role in the Global Financial Crisis. Rhodes and Bloom (2018) wrote: The retention of the CEO myth was an assertion of the power of individuals to shape events and control their destiny. To achieve this meant holding on to the heroic character of the CEO such that people might regain a sense of control over their own lives too. Maintaining faith in the CEO was less a matter of empirical fact and more a symptom of a human need to find something to believe in at the end of a hard-​earned day; with the reality too hard to bear, the fantasy had to return. Held out was the promise that everyone could receive grace if only he accepted the modern CEO gospel. (…) Let’s hope that with the next crisis we learn that we need to let go of the fantasy of the CEO. Read this article and try to answer the following question: which needs do the individuals try to satisfy when fantasying about leaders as heroes?

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Leadership attaches to the processes that participate in and shape the unfolding of events in their accounting and recounting. In a process perspective, leadership is a flow of activities that happens, contextually, in time and in space (Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas & Van de Ven, 2013). Context is more than a mere background against which things take place. It is an active part of the process, affecting and being affected by the interplay between leaders and followers. The “context” is composed by actions, agents, actants, institutions and materialities that produce change relentlessly. As such, leadership can be considered, in a process perspective, as articulating organizing within an ever-​changing context.The leader’s job consists of countering the possibility that the organization that they lead does not succumb to inertia in organizing, reproducing the same routines, rules and rhetoric despite the processes of their contextual dislocation. Seeing leadership from the perspective of process thus means that we need to avoid the trap of events. The difference between processes and events has been captured by Daniel Pinker (2019, p. 1) in the following way: Journalism by its very nature conceals progress, because it presents sudden events rather than gradual trends. Most things that happen suddenly are bad: a war, a shooting, an epidemic, a scandal, a financial collapse. Most things that are good consist either of nothing happening –​like a nation that is free of war or famine –​or things that happen gradually but compound over the years, such as declines in poverty, illiteracy and disease. Staged leadership events are often prioritized:  Steve Jobs’ presentations of new Apple products; the “I have a dream” speech by Dr Martin Luther King; Donald Trump’s order to kill General Soleimani. Yet these moments are mere episodes in the process of leadership, small dramas of much moment. Leadership unfolds incessantly; most of the times it is uneventful, a succession of variations in routines, rules and rhetoric. As Tsoukas (2016) explained, most of the time leaders lead within the context of these routines but routines are rarely mere repetitions as events inexorably change contexts: think of Covid-​19, the mutation of the virus from bats to humans and its worldwide organizational effects and challenges to leadership. The life of leaders involves striving to improve familiar processes in the face of events that are unanticipated and often intractable.

Implications of the processual nature of leadership The processual nature of leadership has important implications. First and perhaps most importantly, leaders are embedded in organizations. They do not manage organizations as external realities but rather as insiders. They have motives and agendas that collide with other people’s motives and agendas, both within and outside the organization. Because of such plurality, agendas necessarily clash and collide as one person’s interests diverge from others. In the music business, for example, some organizational members may be interested in art for art’s sake whereas others

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need to consider the economics of the firm and have their eye on the money (Cunha, Giustiniano, Rego & Clegg, 2017b). These preferences are managed not from the outside but within the organization’s functioning. A leader’s influence is shaped by influences from others and the functioning of routines over time. Not only is leadership embedded in organization: it is also relational (Brower, Schoorman & Tan, 2000; Uhl-​Bien et al., 2014). Making a correspondence between leader and leadership implies taking leadership “out of the realm of everyday experience” (Cunliffe & Eriksen, 2011), devitalizing it but also creating space for the fictionalization of leaders. Leaders are only part of the leadership process. Leadership is relational, meaning that it happens in and through social interaction, organizing being an endeavour that entails at least 5Cs: communication, coordination, control, collaboration and compassion. In the past there were only 3Cs: collaboration and compassion are recent additions from the increasing saliency of servant leadership approaches. Social interactions are dynamic and emotional. They inevitably imply tensions and some of these tensions tend to persist; these tensions are dynamic and do change rather than constituting an eternity. Thus, the leader’s embeddedness in organizational settings is continuously shifting because organizational settings shift continuously. From this assumption a number of implications can be derived. Leadership is embedded. Leadership does not occur in a vacuum, an in vitro environment where leaders and followers engage in interactions irrespective of the rest. Leadership is an embedded activity. It is embedded in time and place. Leaders lead people who have experiences of leaders and leadership. These experiences shape action. Embeddedness helps to explain, for example, the fact that founder-​CEOs who succeed in creating fast-​g rowing companies are more vulnerable to power struggles that may end up with their demise (remember that Steve Jobs was “ousted” by the company he created, Apple). Paradoxically, in other words, more successful founders are also the more vulnerable, for obvious reasons (Wasserman, 2008). The action of founders is thus embedded in the organization’s play for resources as part of a market for capital, attracting attention from people with a plethora of interests, such as gaining control of the firm or even acquiring the firm in order to kill a competitor. None of these moves can be explained without paying attention to the leader’s embeddedness in a number of other systems. These systems in turn are so intricately connected and dynamic that no leader can make sense of the full implications of this embeddedness. Leadership is a temporal process. Leadership, as any human process, happens over time. From a process perspective (see Box 1.6) it is not possible to understand leadership without considering the role of time and of history (Markham, 2012). The passage of time has an impact on leadership in important ways. For example, over time, people gain experience with leadership. As they accumulate experiences with leaders and leadership, they develop implicit theories of leadership (Detert & Burris, 2007). Implicit theories, as the name indicates, are not articulate theories but rather ideas resulting from experience and retrospection; they are what we may refer to as “lay theories”. The passage of time also impacts the environment and other circumstances, and the successful formulas of the past may become a path to

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disaster. Ed Catmull, co-​founder of Pixar and president of Walt Disney Animation Studios, stated in an interview: Spectacular success doesn’t lead to deep introspection, which in turn leads to wrong conclusions. You see this all the time, right? Successful companies draw conclusions about how smart and good they are, and then a significant number of them fall off the cliff because they drew the wrong conclusions. (Rao, Sutton and Webb, 2016, p. 87)

BOX 1.6  STRONG AND WEAK PROCESS VIEWS OF ORGANIZATION (BASED ON CLOUTIER & LANGLEY, 2020) The process view of organizations puts its emphasis on the process rather than the outcome. Organization is never the stable noun denoted but always in the state of organizing, as rendered explicit in Weick’s (1979) famous use of the gerund. In a process view, organizations are seen as being in a constant process of becoming as change is the natural order. Two main views of process have been identified: weak and strong. In the weak version, processes, such as change, happen to organizations. This perspective is alert to the role of time and change yet it assumes that the things retain their unique identities over time. For example, the Catholic Church may change over time so that its officers no longer torture and kill heretics with the legitimation of authority; contemporaneously, however, several segments of the institution have covered up priestly abuse of children. Nonetheless, it can still be recognized as the same organization, enveloped in its complex codes of communication and legitimation that slowly evolve over time. In a strong process view, the emphasis is different: ontologically, things are represented as temporary instantiations of processes. Change is not something that happens to things but the very building block of reality. The process view is important to a paradox theory of organizations because over time change inevitably raises tensions between what there is and what may be, between existing logics and new logics, between exploring and exploiting. The process view thus renders the need for a paradox view especially salient.

Leadership theories may often be implicit in lay views; as such, they are not inconsequential because they inform responses to leaders as well as leaders’ self-​ definitions. Theories create realities (Ghoshal, 2005). In other words, these theories have performative potentiality, meaning that they have self-​ fulfilling potential (Marti & Gond, 2018). The performative potential of leadership theories results from reflections distilled over time, embedding and embraining lay theorizing as ways of making sense of what leaders do and what being a leader may entail. The

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implications of time are clear: for an organizational member, a new leader is not only a specific identity but also the memory, the shadow, of leaders’ past as well as the focus for projection of accumulated experience, anxieties and tensions. In some cases, such as family firms, the shadow of the leader, such as the founder, casts more shade than do other “shadows” (Davis & Harveston, 1999). Leaders gain and lose credit.Time is critical to understand why and how leaders gain and lose credit. As a dynamic process, leadership is not inscribed in a leader’s genes or personality dispositions. According to Hollander (1958), when leaders garner follower support, they gain idiosyncrasy credits. These credits are gained when the leader succeeds in helping the group to achieve its goals. When leaders consistently succeed (or the organization succeeds and such a success is attributed to them; Rosenzweig, 2007), their credit expands. Defeats may make them lose some credits. Note also that, although overall some defeats are inevitable which does not make them problematic for the leader’s credit, it is not rare that organizational failures that have nothing to do with leadership are attributed to the leader and makes him/​her to lose credits (Rosenzweig, 2007). Therefore, leadership is dynamic and results related rather than static and inscribed in personality or some charismatic disposition.

Leadership as pluralistic Leadership takes place in “complex, interdependent systems in which people pursue multiple, often conflicting agendas” (Pfeffer, 2016a, p.  3). Leadership happens in pluralistic settings, in which the pursuit of a goal that is unitary and shared with others is usually a pious intention with no relation to a far more contested and pluralist reality of interests. Others will see things differently; they will have different interests and pursue different strategies. Pluralistic settings are “characterized by diffuse power and divergent objectives” (Denis, Lamothe & Langley, 2001, p. 809) and in which it has been recommended that a paradoxical leadership stance be adopted (Rego, Cunha & Clegg, 2021).

Diffuse power Seen as an organizational circuit (Clegg, 1989), power is a vital organizational force. Power helps to shape organization because its relations influence access to resources and the functioning of organizations. Power relations also define organizational communication because communication involves content and relations of meaning (Watzlawick et al., 1967). Power influences communication processes; that which is communicated and that which is not is always a matter of power, as is the way that the communication is received; communication is always ultimately receiver based. Communicating may thus originate pragmatic paradoxes in the spaces between meanings (Berti & Simpson, 2019), in which case, people may get stuck in paradoxical dynamics that crystalize the system (see also Box 1.7).

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BOX 1.7  DAMNED IF YOU DO… (MARTINS, 2020) The Covid-​ 19 virus was initially discovered in the city of Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The evolution of its global impact created political conflict between Chinese authorities and foreign governments regarding the number of victims. As the virus spread in the West, suspicion that the Chinese numbers were fake were raised by Presidents Trump and Macron. The accusation gained veracity when, in April 2020, weeks after having declared the spread of the virus controlled, the Chinese authorities added 1290 dead to the toll. The Chinese government declared that the procedure was due to an update of information, resulting from the fact that some local systems failed to provide the information in a timely manner. A  different, less benign, interpretation involves a pragmatic paradox. On February 11, 2020 the news agency Reuters announced that political cadres in the province of Hubei had been dismissed because they have hidden the actual number of deaths. The battle over numbers was thus explained by Liu Xiaoming, ambassador to London: “It was not the Chinese authorities, it was the local authorities”. But an expert in Chinese politics, Willy Lam, from the University of Hong Kong, told Reuters that the local authorities end up being accused either way, whatever their reaction is:  if they had been fully transparent, they would have been fired, and the Party communication machine would direct popular rage against them. In case they hid the gravity of the situation they would have been accused of not telling the truth and held accountable anyway. Power is what matters.

Divergent objectives Organizations have been presented as symphony orchestras (Drucker, 1993). The image portrays a single objective and its harmonious pursuit under the direction of a conductor as musical director. Everybody understands that this image, no matter how inspiring, constitutes a highly idealized metaphor with no correspondence with the actual functioning of organizations. Moreover, not all orchestras are designed in this way (Banai, Nirenberg & Menachem, 2000; Leonhardt, 1999). Sometimes the orchestra manages itself or hires the conductor:  the equivalent of employees hiring the boss. Other times, the orchestra manages the conductor (Gabarro & Kotter, 1993). Organizations generate paradoxes as people with different motives make their moves. Because different people have different motives, there are inevitable conflicts such as when, for example, gay priests try to gain legitimacy in their respective religious organizations (Creed, DeJordy & Lok, 2010) or when people with religious beliefs try to accommodate their faith and organizational practices (Gümüsay, Smets & Morris, 2020).These cases show that paradoxes are the product of people’s

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practices when they interact in and with organizations. Given the open-​ended, processual nature of the world, these actions inevitably create conflicts between people and contradictions between the institutions we have and those we want. People with diverging objectives thus carve out contradictions as they act. A paradox view of leadership, instead of hiding the conflictual nature of leadership, affords a critique of conventional leadership studies. Critical leadership theorists (Knights, 2020) assume and expose conflict as integral to organization.

Competing logics Organizations deal with competing logics –​logics being coherent sets of material practices and symbolic systems, constituted by assumptions, values and beliefs with which meaning is given to daily activity, organizing time and space, reproducing everyday lives and experiences (Besharov & Smith 2014). Every organization is hybrid; pure logics cannot survive the play of differences that constitutes the normalcy of organizing. Different actors in organizations develop different worldviews, because of their positions, biographies, projects and ambitions and these exist in a state of conflict. As Knight, Daymond and Paroutis (2020, p.  33) point out, “senior executives in charge of strategy may live a very different life to their customers, thereby making their connection to customers in the ‘outside’ world, and the frontline of practice, difficult”. As an illustration the authors note that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, is not himself, allegedly, a customer of Facebook. Carlos Ghosn, the all-​powerful former CEO of Nissan, was criticised by Japanese commentators for driving a Porsche. While senior managers may be focused on shareholder value maximization, frontline employees may be more interested in delivering great service. At Boeing, Denis Muilenburg was so focused on the macro-​strategy that he discounted the importance of the work conditions created by cost-​cutting on the safety of the company’s products and was rewarded for these cost-​cutting efforts. Unfortunately, one consequence was two deadly Boeing 737 Max crashes (Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure, 2020). As a consequence of coexisting diverse logics, leadership constitutes a difficult exercise in trade-​off articulation. To complicate things, this articulation is dynamic and unstable. As such, balance is not a form of stationary equilibrium, a steady state, but rather a permanent attempt to avoid extreme investments in poles that will unbalance the system (Box 1.8). The notion that leadership implies a virtuous approach to reality is thus less about a strictly moral understanding and more about a permanent attempt to regulate and equilibrate the system while changing it as it changes inexorably.

BOX 1.8  A NOTE ON THE GOODNESS OF BALANCE The idea of balance is central in paradox theory –​for good reason. But balance or equilibrium is not good in and of itself. Balance is dynamic and unstable. For this reason, in some cases, equilibrium can be bad. The political stalemate

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in Venezuela, between Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó, was described by a Venezuelan analyst as representing “a state of perverse equilibrium (…) a catastrophic deadlock where neither side can defeat the other but their conflict can destroy the country” (in Stott, 2019, p. 15).

Pluralistic settings are inevitably characterized by paradox, defined as “contradictory yet interrelated elements (dualities) that exist simultaneously and persist over time; such elements seem logical when considered in isolation, but irrational, inconsistent, and absurd when juxtaposed” (Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 387). Paradox, in this perspective, is not some problematic contradiction that needs to be weeded out; it is a condition to be lived with.

Leadership and paradox As will be discussed in this book, leadership is a paradoxical endeavour. Leaders are expected to excel in oppositional fields (Figure  1.2). In summary, they need to balance opposition, as described by Pascale and Athos in their book The Art of Japanese Management: Observing a Matsushita controller deal with certain delicate situations provides an opportunity to study an art form. Carefully choosing his words, constructing a well-​balanced tension between the general and the specific, the opaque and the clear, he picks his way across difficult terrain. Whether dealing with division managers before the planning group or with the superintendents on the shop floor, he is always balancing. (Pascale & Athos, 1981, p. 151) The idea is neither new nor exclusive to management and organization studies (e.g., Bednarek, Cunha, Schad & Smith, 2021):  when Aristotle presented virtue as a golden mean, this can be interpreted as meaning the synthesis, or in paradox

Rationality

Emotionality

Control

Freedom

Planning

Improvisation

Efficiency

Effectiveness

Short-term goals

Long-term goals

FIGURE 1.2  Leaders

excelling is oppositional fields.

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parlance the “both-​anding” of two vicious extremes. It is the combination of the extremes that produces a balanced moderation. The paradoxical element of leadership has several origins. First, it has to do with the work itself: leaders need to do things with virtuosity, even when these things are oppositional. For example, they need to express self-​confidence and humility, to explore and exploit knowledge. As a paradoxical meta-​competence, leadership implies a conceptual and pragmatic understanding of contradiction. Thus, in the next section we explain the meaning of paradox as a critical leadership competence. Second, even for those who do not recognize paradoxes in leadership, expectations do not necessarily match reality. People often approach the world with the belief that, for example, the world should be just. Yet, the just world hypothesis is often countered by observed reality:  the world is not always fair. Or the literature praises the virtues of humility, yet people endorse narcissistic characters because, performatively, they “transmit” leadership. Given that leadership is a highly performative practice, those who practise their performance narcissistically in the mirror of their admirers develop a looking-​glass self (Cooley, 1922) that admires its own admiration. Name your own politician here. Third, leadership is condemned to failure in fulfilling its promises. Leader failure is a matter of time (Rosenzweig, 2007). In the long run, every leader fails because the promise of leadership cannot be fulfilled; their influence is much less relevant than often acknowledged (Newark, 2018). It is often said of politicians, after the words of Enoch Powell (1977, p. 151) about Joseph Chamberlain, that “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs”. Powell should have known what he was writing about from his experience, let  alone that of the once successful Birmingham municipal politician.

An introduction to paradox Opposite but mutually defining forces –​that interact and persist In everyday language, paradox often refers to that which is inconsistent or absurd, to illogical associations and counterintuitive meanings (Lindgreen & Maon, 2019). In a paradox theory of organization, paradox is about opposite but mutually defining forces that interact over time (see Table 1.1). It is about dualities rather than dualisms. A duality refers to the “twofold character of an object of study without separation” (Farjoun, 2010, p. 203), whereas dualism means that two attributes are incompatible and mutually exclusive. Let’s say that dualism is similar to the relationship between oil and water; they do not combine. Duality, by contrast, connotes two sides of the same thing, such as a coin. In this understanding, the forces implied in a paradoxical challenge exist in a state of perennial mutual tension such as in the relationship between stability and change (Farjoun, 2010) or exploration and exploitation (March, 1991). For a number of authors, the tensions between interdependent forces may be generative and transformative even without losing their conflictual

Leadership and paradox  35

nature. Their balance is precarious because paradoxes may be transformed dialectically into something new (Hargrave, 2021). Paradoxes are dynamic and should not be reified (Box 1.9).

BOX 1.9  KEY THINKER: LINDA PUTNAM While other scholars have had a more prominent role in shaping the current conceptual core of paradox theory, Linda Putnam’s contribution to the study of organizational tensions has been pivotal to expand understanding of paradox as a dynamic process, challenging any attempt to “reify” it. Drawn to the study of tensions by her research in organizational communication and discourse (which has established her reputation as a world-​class scholar), Linda was one of the first to explicitly discuss paradox in the 1980s. One of her major contributions concerns the study of the transformational potential of tensions, framed through a dialectic lens, which focuses on the conflictual relation between interdependent forces. This dimension is critical for understanding paradox in organizations beyond idealized synergistic views.

Some authors view paradox as inherent to reality, i.e., as a material thing that exists irrespective of the observer. Others see it as a result of interpretation, a way of thinking or a lens over the world. It is possible that both perspectives are correct, meaning that paradoxes are both existentially real and existentially conjured by a consciousness attuned to paradox. Such an interactionist view was visible, for example, in one of the author’s experiences when the epidemic of Covid-​19 virus was being tackled in Europe. The measures taken to combat the epidemic forced his school to start a number of pedagogical innovations with online learning. The CEO of the school’s executive education branch framed the threat as an opportunity for learning and to initiate changes that went against business as usual. The paradox was neither in the virus nor in the CEO’s mind.The concretely material situation was articulated as paradoxical by the CEO, who used paradoxical words to reframe the situation. Paradox theory emphasizes these sorts of oppositions which often occur in what can be qualified as “naïve paradoxicality”. Naïve paradoxicality corresponds to a state in which one recognizes tensions and oppositions, which is positive and better than remaining deluded that reality is one-​sided, while managing to reduce tensions to simple bi-​polar associations. In fact, paradoxes and contradictions are more complicated than simple polarities and are more than stable oppositions between two poles that can be reduced to managerial tools. In a dialectical perspective, paradoxes may be temporary tensions manifest as part of larger historical processes that will transform the poles and their manifestations (Farjoun, 2021; Hargrave, 2021). A more processual approach, embraced by some German sociologists, such as Ortmann or Luhmann, goes like this: “a paradox is an operation that produces the conditions for its possibility and impossibility”.

36  Leadership and paradox

The recognition of leadership as paradoxical is not new. A century ago, Mary Parker Follett perceptively presented leadership as inherently plural, processual and paradoxical (Graham, 1996). As Pfeffer (2016a, p.  6) put it more recently, good leaders are those that learn “how to weigh what trade-​offs they were willing to make and, more important, to size up the circumstances required to achieve their bold objectives”. In other words, good leaders know that leadership is, to some extent, the process of articulating contradictions, meaning the capacity to do one thing well and also its opposite. For example, creating routines and countering routines, exploring and exploiting, giving structure and providing freedom, being tough and compassionate, conveying humility and self-​confidence. It is about both-​ anding rather than choosing one thing or another. This is important for any person but women, especially, may be confronted with particularly paradoxical choices (see Box 1.10).

BOX 1.10  WHY WOMEN MAY BENEFIT FROM PARADOXICAL THINKING3 1 Work-​family balance is difficult. But some choices are more integrative than others. Consider Mary Barra’s advice: The biggest message I have for young women is, don’t start cutting off branches of your career tree unnecessarily early. Sometimes women say, I know I want to have a family or play in the local symphony, and they start pulling themselves out of their career path. You don’t have to take yourself out of the running before you even start.

2 Two suggestions for reading:  (1) Faniko, Ellemers, Derks and Lorenzi-​Cioldi (2017), about “Why women who break through the glass ceiling end up reinforcing it”; (2) Zheng et al. (2018) about “how women leaders navigate the tensions between agency and communion”.

Paradox may help to conceptualize leadership, given its meta-​theoretical status (Lewis & Smith, 2014). As a meta-​theory, paradox can be viewed as a theory that can complement other theories, offering an angle that will complement them via the consideration of plurality, tension and contradiction (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). Such a meta-​theoretical status may assist leadership theory in gaining awareness of the contradictions pervading the practice of leadership.

Leadership and paradox  37

Contradiction Every organization is contradictory in the sense that it necessarily follows conflicting primary and secondary missions (Smith & Cunha, 2021). Organizational missions typically have conflicting elements. In some cases, such as that of hospitals, the conflicting dimension (care vs. efficiency) is evident (Ramanujam & Rousseau, 2006). Leadership needs to reflect these contradictions, meaning that leaders are arbitrators of dualities (Graetz & Smith, 2008). People expect their leaders to project energy, confidence, focus and to help them excel perform, and innovate. Yet they also like the comfort of the well-​known, the predictability of routine, as well as the spark of creativity. Leaders must thus create conditions for people to get things done, regardless of how they would prefer to act in the moment (Pfeffer, 2021). People may prefer to work with likable leaders while implicitly knowing that too much likability may produce future discomfort. Organizations incorporate different actors and actants, logics, interests, agendas and worldviews. To deal with contradictory realities, organizations need contradictory leadership. The work of leadership involves a blend of analytical thinking and intuitive comprehension (Knight et al., 2020), of present and future orientation (Cunha, Clegg & Kamoche, 2012), of ambidextrous exploration and exploitation (March, 1991). How to deal with leadership as a practical domain in which contradiction is not something to be removed but as an element to be lived with is the message of this book.

Persistence Paradoxes persist (Smith & Lewis, 2011) in the sense that they cannot be solved once and for all. For example, when confronted with the stability-​change pair, there might be moments in which dynamic stability prevails and moments of change but a measure of both is necessary for organizations to survive.Their persistence is due to the fact that contradiction is inherent to organizations due to plurality and change. Organizations are, in fact, pervaded by different objectives and interests. Plurality makes paradox irremovable. The presence of paradox is indicative of the limits of TABLE 1.1 What paradox is –​and what it is not

What paradox is

What paradox is not

Push-​pulls between opposite forces A source of tension and psychological discomfort that may be used positively An inherent dimension of organizing A continuous process An un-​solvable challenge that can be navigated

A bland halfway A source of synergy with no trade-​offs A managerial tool, an organizational recipe An episode manifestation A definitive solution for organizational problems

38  Leadership and paradox

the definition of organizations as collectives oriented towards the achievement of some shared goal.

A classification of paradoxes Smith and Lewis (2011) advanced a well-​known classification of four types of paradoxes.These are generic expressions that can manifest in different ways that offer a powerful guide to grasping how leaders may tackle tensions and contradictions in practice. Throughout the book we will use this classification as a guide (see Table I.1). It is important to note that rather than independent, these paradoxes coevolve (Jarzabkowski, Lê & Van de Ven,  2013). Performing paradoxes are ways of getting things done, achieving objectives. Getting things done in a particular way is an exercise in power (Pfeffer, 2021), as getting things done that way means not getting things done in another way. Pursuing one party’s objectives means ignoring the goals of another party. It is because different people make sense of reality in different ways that conflicting interpretations are inevitable; it is because sensemaking is tinged with contextual information that the resolution of a present problem may produce unexpected implications in the future. This is clear in Eddleston, Banalieva and Verbeke’s (2020) study of what the authors called the bribery paradox. The authors found that some entrepreneurs in transition economies gain by paying bribes to reduce obstacles and get things done, which may be effective in the short run; yet as they do so, they are enacting an institutional context strewn with impediments to theirs and others’ future actions that their present action contributes to creating. In addition, the authors found that family and non-​family businesses saw bribes differently; the family-​owned businesses are more aware of the problems created by the apparently expedient practice of bribing. It is possible that the long-​term orientation more characteristic of family businesses provides them with a different lens framing practices. In managerial action, goals clash with other goals and worldviews clash with other worldviews: what is unacceptable for one is a practical problem to be solved for another. Leading implies activating power circuits, a process that necessarily creates tensions. Goal setting has mainly been theorized as a technical process: how to define goals right. Yet, goal setting is fundamentally a political process:  who establishes which goals are correct and legitimate? Belonging paradoxes are the paradoxes of identity.They help to explain, for example, political polarization. As Kuper observed, “American politics jumps from one polarised moment to the next” (2020, p. 2). Such polarization results in part from the fact that American politics in contemporary times concerns cultural identity more than intellectualized ideology (Klein, 2020), as Daniel Bell (2000) proclaimed. As a result, people organize in tribes and they vote for the tribe. Finding agreement and consensus is more complicated between tribes than between ideologies. The paradoxes of belonging, revolving around identity become manifest at multiple levels. People define their individual identity in relation to others: with them but also against a relation that operates at several levels. Literature about faultlines (Lau

Leadership and paradox  39

& Murnighan, 1998; Thatcher & Patel, 2012) helps to explain why “tribes” (and polarizations) also emerge in organizations. Learning paradoxes refer to the tensions involved in organizational renewal. It is a type of paradox possibly best epitomized by the exploration-​exploitation tension (March, 1991). It refers to the tension between the refinement of existing processes and the creation of new processes. A preference to avoid risk and perfect the status quo may perpetuate existing solutions and crystalize organization, while moving to new terrains may represent a waste of resources with unpredictable results and even destroy existing valid solutions. The psychology of loss aversion may unbalance the system in the direction of exploitation (Lovallo, Koller, Uhlaner & Kahneman, 2020) with deleterious effects. Organizing paradoxes refer to the tensions of design. As organizations structure, they have to make choices regarding, for example, how much to integrate and to differentiate; how much to empower and how much to control; how much to mechanize or let grow organically. These are consequential decisions, as no one side is exempt from negative implications. For example, an excess of empowerment can lead to coordination losses while an excess of control may ossify the organization.

Difficulties with navigating paradoxes Paradoxes do not exist as material facts even while they are embedded in the materiality of situations; they have to be recognized as such; in paradox theory terms, they are constituted. Paradox implies interpretation and managers can tackle organizational challenges in a paradoxical way without framing them as such. Paradoxes thus need to be performed, framed as mutually dependent contradictions. Defending the idea that organizations and leadership are paradoxical does not mean that paradoxes will emerge as faits accompli. They exist when managers “make them”, i.e., when they perceive a set of organizational phenomena as paradoxical (Knight & Hahn, 2021) and act accordingly. As Knight and Hahn (2021) have explained, salient paradoxes are subjective, pluralistic and dynamic, existing as persistent potential that may or may not become salient.

Paradoxes are nested The types of paradoxes identified above are not entities existing in isolation, i.e., they are not sealed or self-​contained. Paradoxes exist in relation with other paradoxes; the tackling of one problem may create problems in another part of the organizational system. That is a characteristic of systems: processes exist in a state of connection with other processes. Thus, actions and problems taken in one part of a system may produce unwanted effects in other parts of the system, as the Covid-​19 virus so clearly illustrated. Instead of seeing these events as anomalies it is possibly better to frame them as the New Normal (Ahlstromn, Arregle, Hitt, Qian, Ma & Faems, 2020).

40  Leadership and paradox

Difficult to detect Paradoxes are difficult to “detect”. It is because they are difficult to detect that they are difficult to navigate. They are not “out there”, waiting to be found or detected by an external observer. Paradox is a lens, a way of seeing, that offers a prism rich in sensitivity to contradiction. It is for this reason that paradox is a way of seeing, a lens to interpret the world. The application of this lens offers a reality that is more surprising, contradictory, sometimes even absurd, than is considered by non-​ paradoxical views of organization. The paradoxical side of organizations is reflected in McCabe’s metaphor of organization as Wonderland (McCabe, 2006; see also Box 1.11). Naturally, a way of seeing is a path to acting. We act towards the world according to how we see it and our theories about it.

BOX 1.11  EXERCISE: ORGANIZATIONAL AS WONDERLAND The classical works of Lewis Carroll (Picture 1.2), namely Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, have been used playfully to dismiss the idea of organizations as spaces of rationality and mechanical predictability. The world of Alice and Wonderland have been used to illustrate several facets of leadership and organizations. Following a white rabbit to a hole in the ground, Alice finds an “out-​of-​the world” strange world, full of anarchy and surprise, where rules do not apply, a world in which pebbles turn unto little cakes, where animals do talk and where smiles such as that of the Cheshire Cat can be sustained in the air, even without the Cat. In this world as the Cat explains: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad, you’re mad”. Isn’t it possible that the same happens in “in-​the-​world” organizations? As Rackin (1966, p. 317) explains that “it is sometimes the most impolite, imperious people who command the most respect and obedience”. How different is that from our world? It is even possible that Lewis Carroll’s book can be read as an invitation to explore the contradictions and the arbitrariness of life, including life in organizations (Kets de Vries, 2019).

Reflect on the following • What is the meaning of the Red Queen effect for leaders? Remember her advice: one needs to run as fast as she can to stay in the same place. • What is the meaning of Wonderland as metaphor for organization? • Considering that a first version of the book was Alice’s Adventures under Ground (Rackin, 1966), what is the organizational underground? • How and why do organizations become spaces of absurdity? • Have you experienced absurdities as an organizational member? Which ones?

Leadership and paradox  41

PICTURE 1.2  Alice

in Wonderland.

Illustration from the cover and interior of the book Boys and Girls of Bookland from 1923, written by Nora Archibald Smith and illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. Author: Jessie Willcox  Smith. https://​upload.wikimedia.org/​wikipedia/​commons/​3/​39/​Boys_​and_​Girls_​of_​ Bookland_​Alice_​in_​Wonderland.jpg. This work is in the public domain. Expand your knowledge of the place by reading Darren McCabe’s (2016) about seeing “Organizations as Wonderland  –​a metaphorical alternative to the rational model”.

A paradoxical mindset or orientation To frame reality as paradoxical implies what some authors describe as a paradoxical mindset (see Box 1.12) an orientation that frames ways of seeing. Such an orientation can be defined as a way of thinking that allows people to interpret reality and to give order to the complex reality around them (Dweck, 2008). A paradoxical mindset is a lens that accepts that the complexity of the world implies a measure of tension and contradiction and that one thus needs to embrace this contradiction. Thinking paradoxically means going beyond the obvious or the causally linear. Here are some examples:

42  Leadership and paradox

•

•

•

Making sense of paradoxical relationships such as understanding that organizations can be more competitive by paying more to their employees than paying less, if employees are trained and empowered to conduct process improvement. These can result in cost savings and customer service that produce advantage (Rahmandad & Ton, 2020). Considering that organizations need to simultaneously pursue two strategies (exploration and exploitation) rather than one, as we normally assume (Knight & Cuganesan, 2020). Representing innovation and quality as attributes that should not be traded off (Cole & Matsumiya, 2007).

These are only examples of the paradoxical requirements facing organizations. Many more exist!

BOX 1.12  ASSESS YOUR PARADOX MINDSET If case you, dear reader, want to know if you have a paradox mindset, answer “yes” or “no” to the following questions (Miron-​Spektor, Ingram, Keller, Smith & Lewis, 2018). The full test can be found at http://​paradox.lerner.udel.edu/​ • • • • • •

“Tensions between ideas energize me”. “I am comfortable dealing with conflicting demands at the same time”. “I am comfortable working on tasks that contradict each other”. “I feel uplifted when I realize that two opposites can be true”. “I feel energized when I manage to address contradictory issues”. “I often experience myself as simultaneously embracing conflicting demands”. • “When I consider conflicting perspectives, I gain a better understanding of an issue”. • “Accepting contradictions is essential for my success”. If you answered yes to all questions, you have a strong paradoxical mindset! You thrive in complexity and feel energised by having to deal with paradoxes.

Paradoxical leadership in a nutshell Paradox tends to become more salient in the face of conditions of plurality, scarcity and change (Smith & Lewis, 2011). It manifests as organizational members try to make sense of the competing demands facing them. Different tensions appear different at different levels, which means that as people try to interpret paradox, interpretations must be negotiated. For leaders it means that leadership is a competition for meaning and interpretation. Prevailing interpretations sometimes assume

Leadership and paradox  43

the existence of contradictions whereas on other occasions they are “packaged as resolved” (Lindberg, Rantatalo & Hällgren, 2017, p. 183) only to assume a different form at a later stage. From a paradox perspective, leadership implies the capacity to embrace and work through contradiction rather than to assume the inexistence of contradiction or the need to solve it. A paradox lens means that paradox is a condition, a normal facet of organization rather than a temporary dysfunction to remove. In this perspective, paradox is inherent and unsolvable, a fact of organizational life, something to be navigated rather than a problem to be eliminated.Tensions do not stay as they are. For example, while the stability-​change dualism may change expression, the overall stability-​ change tension will remain. What are the implications of the view being developed here? We explore three. First, instead of seeing paradoxes as expressions of absurdity to be neutralized, they are expected to represent paradox as normal (Gaim, 2017). To take them as normal means that leadership is not about bulldozing inconsistencies but about understanding them, limiting their negative effects as much as possible, trying to find synergies and to use them as opportunities to interrogate the system and its assumptions. Second, managers need to be aware of the different ways of handling paradoxes. Some approaches are more desirable than others. For example, ignoring tensions and pushing one force to the limit can unbalance this system producing vicious dynamics, as illustrated by cases such as Volkswagen’s “dieselgate” (Gaim, Clegg & Cunha, 2019). If possible, then, organizations should use the power of tension to build synergy, for example, via both-​and types of approaches (Smith, Lewis & Tushman, 2016). Both-​anding is not always possible though, because some tensions are dilemmas, choices of the either-​or type, such as make versus buy, impervious to synergistic approaches. Third, and no less important, it is important to keep in mind that paradox is about change. Equilibrium is always temporary. Therefore, it is important to consider that a state of equilibrium is stable and can be maintained. It is better to consider that paradox involves dynamic instability. The idea that paradoxes can be controlled is a dangerous idea as a tamed paradox will come back to haunt those who thought it controlled (Cunha & Putnam, 2019; Hargrave, 2021).

Paradox dont’s Paradoxes are complex processes. They are not reducible prescriptions or management tools. Therefore, they need to be handled with care. We discuss four precautions when managing paradoxes.

Taking consistency as sacred cow One reason why paradox is often perceived as signalling problems is due to the fact that consistency is often praised as a virtue. Individuals who behave consistently

44  Leadership and paradox

tend to be considered more reliable. Such a consistency provides us “information” about what to expect from those individuals in future interactions with them. Such a certainty allows us to save cognitive efforts and to use shortcuts in interpreting and making sense of the outside world, something especially valued by people lacking a paradoxical disposition. To put it in another way: people with a strong paradox mindset are more likely to feel comfortable in dealing with “inconsistent” interlocutors. But consistency needs to be taken not as uniformity of behaviour but as adaptability. As Smith (2014) has pointed out, leaders need to be consistently inconsistent. The idea of consistent inconsistency refers to the need to express adaptability in the face of a changing world. Consistent inconsistency is not the defence of lack of direction but rather the assumption that even well-​defined strategies imply a measure of improvisation. Leaders are expected to represent this capacity to accept redirections as a way to stay on course. Such consistent inconsistency is particularly important in critical times, such as those experienced during the Covid-​19 crisis, when uncertainty proved to be the most certain fact.

Representing paradox as strange The notion of “paradox” has popular resonance with things weird, strange, puzzling. Paradoxes can in fact be illogical and puzzling and this facet has deep scholarly roots (Berti, 2021). Yet, in the sense of paradox theory, paradoxes are expressions of the complexity of the world. They are not things that should be removed or excluded. As noted above, if they are normal, they should be treated as such, as constitutive of organizations (Putnam et al., 2016) or even inherent, residing in the materiality of the world. By seeing paradoxes as coherent and constitutive, managers have been urged to live with them. Living with paradox may be a competence and treated as such, a skill that can be cultivated and nurtured. By seeing their role as paradoxical, leaders may gain awareness of the reason why, in part, what they strive to do professionally is so difficult and demanding. Handling paradox is complicated because it implies doing one thing and its opposite.

Representing paradox as positive It is important to keep in mind that not all paradoxes are equal: when individuals are constrained by oppressive power conditions that limit their agency in responding to organizational contradictions, they will experience debilitating pragmatic paradoxes (Berti & Simpson, 2019).These affect leaders and the led, for example, when people are faced with impossible paradoxes of the “Be spontaneous!” type. Or when a leader conveys the verbal message that it is important that followers speak their mind and, at the same time, the leader implicitly signals that if you can’t bring good news then don’t bring any. More in general, since inconsistencies, ambiguities and contradictions abound in bureaucratic settings (think of Catch-​22 [Heller,1999]

Leadership and paradox  45

situations such as not being offered an entry-​level job because lacking experience), it is vital that individual are left with some agency, some power to navigate contradictions or to negotiate requests. Therefore, paradoxes are not necessarily positive; in some cases, they pose dilemmas for which one choice needs to be made. Therefore, it is important to be mindful of the potential harm of paradox. Paradox can be destructive; for instance, when organizations strive to motivate people by establishing impossible, stretch goals (Cunha, Giustiniano, Rego & Clegg, 2017a).

Representing paradox as recipe As a lens, paradox offers a way of thinking and a path to acting. Paradoxes are hard to manage. They require good knowledge of patterns and long-​term effects, as some of the effects of decisions become visible only in the long run (Bansal, Kim & Wood, 2018) and in other cases there are “worse-​before-​better trade-​offs” paradoxes (Rahmandad & Ton, 2020), meaning that things get worse before they get better, which imply a deep understanding of system dynamics rather than linear cause-​effect approaches.

Conclusion As a lens for organizational life, paradox may be one of those things that once seen, as de Rond and Lok (2016) have explained, cannot be unseen. The lens may be relevant for the world we live in. As explained in an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development) document, The Future of Education Skills: Education 2030, “Reconciling tensions and dilemmas” may be a critical competence to shape the future and transform society: To be prepared for the future, individuals have to learn to think and act in a more integrated way, taking into account the interconnections and inter-​ relations between contradictory or incompatible ideas, logics and positions, from both short-​and long-​term perspectives. In other words, they have to learn to be systems thinkers. (OECD, 2018, p. 5) Or, one might add, such people have to learn to be paradoxical thinkers. The paradox lens, though, is no panacea. On the contrary, the approach helps to explain why leadership is so complex and demanding, why heroes become villains, why success originates failure and so on. In other words, paradox is not supposed to project the image of leaders as heroic figures. It is tempting, perhaps, to represent paradoxical leaders as dramatis personae that deal with conflict with elegance and poise; reality, however, is more complicated and nuanced. Paradox shows that leadership is about the handling oppositions, the search for dynamic equilibrium, a task that is never accomplished because it is necessarily precarious. In the remainder of

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this book we map some of the most salient paradoxes of leadership. They are many; nonetheless, in the real world, the world beyond the pages of this book, there are many more.

Guide for further exploration To further explore organizational paradoxes the reader can use an already ample range of resources. A rich academic volume is The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox, edited by Wendy Smith, Jarzabkowski, Lewis and Langley (2017). This volume provides a comprehensive guide to the paradox literature from an academic perspective. An academic audience may also be interested in Berti et  al.’s (2021) Elgar Introduction to Theories of Organizational Paradox.The book offers a compact and integrated view of the theme. For managerial audiences Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management (1992) offers a theoretical background as well as practical advice. Hampden-​Turner, O’Riordan and Trompenaars’ (2019) two volumes of capitalism in crisis provides a guide, with abundant illustrations and a notable sense of paradoxical humour. On leadership paradoxes the reader can explore the volume with the same title, Leadership Paradoxes, edited by Bolden, Witzel and Linacre (2016). The articles authored by Schad, Lewis, Raisch & Smith (2016) and Putnam et al. (2016) are also important for understanding differences between constructs (e.g., contradictions, dialectics, paradoxes) and the building blocks of a meta-​theory of paradox.

Notes 1 Willink and Babin (2015). 2 Peters (2001) 3 https://​news.yahoo.com/​13-​questions-​mary-​barra-​100742817.html

2 PARADOXES OF SELF-​LEADERSHIP

Leading oneself and one’s self Leading oneself is replete with paradoxical challenges as leaders struggle to meet diverging expectations. For instance, it can be the case that they are expected to be consistent and flexible, humble and confident, authentic and controlled, perseverant and cautious, imprudent and prudent. To discuss these challenges, we organize the chapter as follows. First, we discuss self-​leadership. Then we explain why leadership confronts those who formally exert it with paradoxical self-​challenges; subsequently, we present some practical implications with which to address these challenges. Let us start with an example. Bernard Ebbers (1941–​2020), the ex-​WorldCom’s chief executive, “presided over one of the largest US accounting frauds in history” (Chaffin & Fildes, 2020, p. 14). As a consequence, his name became synonymous with corporate malfeasance. He was convicted in 2005 as the orchestrator of a $11bn accounting fraud that led to the bankruptcy of the company. During the six-​week trial, Ebbers used what, in legal jargon, is called an “Ostrich defence”: he claimed that he did not know about the fraud. A  former board member of Worldcom observed that at the time of the scandal, Ebbers “had lost touch with what was going on below him in the company” (Chaffin & Fildes, 2020, p. 14). People familiar with the case observed that it was “perfectly feasible” that he was not aware of the unfolding crime. The interesting part is that, as the CEO of such a big operation, he had proven to be a cost-​obsessed, domineering boss, of whom it had been said that he suggested secretly filling water coolers with tap water to save money as well having coffee filters counted in the office because he suspected that staff were taking them home. It is surprising that even someone as much of a micromanager as Ebbers was not aware of the fraud. It may be possible that he was aware, despite denying knowledge, that the obsession he displayed with cost accounting was translated by others into an invitation to cut relative costs by

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inflating accounting revenues through fraud. To the extent that the values of the CEO frame the dominant values of the organization (Schein 2010), he may well have cultivated a “mobilization of bias” (Schattschneider, 1960) towards presenting data in the best light as the normalcy of the organization, a normalcy that drove others to fraud. The Ebbers case illustrates the paradoxical challenges confronting leaders, especially as they rise to the top: they need to be able to zoom in on detail and zoom out to the bigger picture (see also Chapter 6). An excess of zooming in will create micromanagement as described earlier, whereas an excess of zooming out can lead to an obsession with a grand strategy while the assumptions on which that strategy is founded shift, unnoticed and unacknowledged. Either way, a mobilization of bias is organizationally initiated. Being one’s self involves paradox. Being one’s self indexes the identity that one presumes one has, defining who one is. Identity is an idea necessarily related to power relations as it is an emergent property of social relations from birth onwards. One performs various identities for various audiences; various members of various audiences may acknowledge approval or cast a wry smile and wonder about the performativity and authenticity of these performances. Identities fused in socialization that initially shape us in the family are a way of learning who we are as we try out various forms of the self being socially constructed. These social constructions are tested and tried out in ever increasing circles of relationships with others and projected through materialities such as social media, peer groups, jobs, careers even, with maturation and ageing. Identity is always performative and always in flux as its edges are smoothed here and then negated on another occasion. Identity never stays the same and its malleability or plasticity has implications for leadership. The projected “best self ” (Roberts, Dutton, Spreitzer, Heaphy & Quinn, 2005) that one has as a leader is always temporally contingent on past performances. As Ibarra (2015b, p. 59) argued: Countless books and advisers tell you to start your leadership journey with a clear sense of who you are. But that can be a recipe for staying stuck in the past.Your leadership identity can and should change each time you move on to bigger and better things. The only way we grow as leaders is by stretching the limits of who we are –​doing new things that make us uncomfortable but that teach us through direct experience who we want to become. One’s sense of self is shaped in and by social relations that always involve communication and power.We see ourselves in the looking glass self of others as we perceive what we perceive others seeing in us. In each new experience, our identities (plural because we never stay the same) shift –​sometimes dramatically, other times, imperceptibly especially for ourselves, secure in our performances yet unaware of how a touch of bathos or pathos, vaudeville or tragedy, is creeping in to the tired old routines. That there might be a degree of concordance between what you presume to be your identity and what those in whose interactions and gaze this identity

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has been forged to see is merely contingent. As some authors claim, “the most important power is that of self-​persuasion” (Spillane & Joullié, 2015, p. 71). It is because we occupy multiple identities (as we understand them to be defined by family, profession, gender or any other relation), there are potential conflicts between them (Ramarajan, 2014). For example, being both a manager and an engineer entails different identities and different obligations (Leavitt et al., 2012). There can be conflicts between our ascription of self-​motives and justifications, between who we are and who we would like to be as leaders. All power relations have the potential to change perspectives and alter both ours and others’ perception of who we are. Research indicates, for example, that powerful people imagine themselves taller than they are (Duguid & Goncalo, 2012). Managing oneself is thus critically important to lead effectively. Dan McAdams describes identity as “the internalized and evolving story that results from a person’s selective appropriation of past, present, and future” (in Ibarra, 2015b, p.  59). Presumptions of identity afford opportunity to leaders to create stories that give order to a world rife with contradiction. Identity, as a work in progress, requires anyone aspiring to be or acting as a leader to develop competences and ideas that they do not yet have and often, in the case of aspiration, do not even recognize. For example, if someone recognizes the need to be more caring and competent in coaching, skills that do not come naturally, what is to be done other than try to become the person that one thinks those being coached want one to be, faking it perhaps, until making it an assumed part of identity, transitionally (Ibarra, 2015a, 2015b)? In the process it is possible that one will initially feel fake, albeit that one is growing into an assumed identity. While it is important not to confuse growing pains with manipulation, it is also critical to be realistic in order to avoid being a real fake. Assuming excessively high and unrealistic goals, being exceedingly perfectionist, expressing an obsession with the possibility of failure are all indicators that one’s identity is in jeopardy (Kets de Vries, 2005). Evidence suggests that not only do leaders have to deal with paradoxes but also that leaders sometimes create paradoxes as absurdities, such as when they transmit contradictory messages that imply that to obey one has to disobey (see Box 2.1 and Berti & Simpson, 2019). Leadership requires understanding the potential for both creating and handling paradox.The role of leaders in tackling paradox is now better understood but more needs to be known about how leaders are also creators of paradoxes, a facet equally relevant but less well comprehended. In some cases, leaders project forms of everyday life that trap their followers in behavioural paradoxes.

BOX 2.1  EXERCISE: LEADERS AS CREATORS OF CONTRADICTIONS BY SELF-​CONTRADICTING The Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, “Tamim the Glorious”, promoted the country as a beacon of openness and free speech in a repressive region, the “voice of the voiceless” (Bloomfield, 2011). Al Jazeera, a popular Arab station,

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was part of that vision. The channel broadcasts opinions suppressed in the Middle East. Yet, the Emir seems to be less tolerant of criticism directed at him (The Economist, 2020a), having approved laws that punish those who might disturb the social order. Al Jazeera is free to criticize others as long as they are not powerful elites in Qatar. As Roula Khalaf (2011, p. 8) wrote, Qatar “manages to act as the promoter of the democracy it lacks at home”. In Kazakhstan, President Kassym-​Jomart Tokayev appears to identify himself as a defender of the need for political reform. The country, he says, needs an opposition, and the citizens need greater freedom to create political parties. Zhanbolat Mamay, a documentary-​maker, took the words of the president literally and formed a new political force, the Democratic Party, only to find himself behind bars (The Economist, 2020b). He was released after a two days’ detention, long enough to make the message of arbitrary arrest clear. It is possible that both Tokayev and “Tamim the Glorious” believe what they say, despite their notions of opposition, citizenship and freedom being biased in favour of what it is convenient for maintaining their power relations in place as well as the status quo that supports them. These contradictions arise not from attempting to match words and deeds, changing the status quo, so much as maintaining elite privileges. From the point of view of a follower’s development, such contradictions are debilitating (see the section “Paradox dont’s”, on Chapter 1).

One does not have to live under an authoritarian regime to experience contradictions: “Google once encouraged its workers to ‘bring your whole selves to work’, rather than create a narrow workplace persona” (Waters, 2020). Predictably, this radical message of empowerment led people to express themselves beyond narrow work-​related issues. Some of these expressions became contagious and led to protest movements initiated by workers against some of the company’s practices, a form of employee-​led prosocial activism. Such activism, for example, targeted the launch of a censored search engine in China, leading to a change in policy, with Google now inviting people to focus more on work and less on politics or non-​work issues. Employees could bring their whole self to work as long as it has been self-​censored in anticipated reaction of what its uncensored identity might entail; the self-​censored elements should be parked outside the official domain.The case illustrates the tensions raised at the level of the self. Leadership is the process by which leaders strive to guide and influence others in order to reach what the leaders desire to be adopted as common goals. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, it is an inherently relational process. Leadership can be deeply democratic, premised on deliberations and assemblies in which all may contribute; while it can be, it rarely is the case. When leaders improvise around formal bases of authority, leading themselves in order to lead others, leadership becomes deeply personal. There are risks in this; strictly speaking, authority in a modern organization run on rational-​legal lines,

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inheres in the office, not the person. Personalizing authority, inasmuch as it involves personal exercises of power not grounded in the relations of office potentially breaches the matter of consent by those over whom authority or power is exercised (Box 1.3). Leaders need to discover in and through practice how to build and maintain authority. To the extent that they presume it to be premised on characteristics of the person, as well as the office, whether via the assumption of charisma or tradition, they risk self-​delusion (Weber, 1978).While office can be filled in many ways, it is always greater than the person occupying the role. Leaders come and go but the office remains, shaped no doubt, for good or ill, by each incumbent.The ascription of inner motives attributed both to themselves and to those with whom they relate (Blum & McHugh, 1971) colours the accounts that leaders might draw on but the authority of office ultimately resides in the office, not the person. The construction of selves, including one’s own, that leaders signal simultaneously to signify being authentic and independent, yet enriched by meaningful relationships based on interdependence, is no easy matter. If one goes too far in terms of investing in self, one can develop the bad habit that Goldsmith (2010) presented as the “excessive need to be ‘me’ ”. The conceits of ego can invest authenticity to an identity in a role but there is always the risk of over-​acting. Certain political figures filling significant leadership roles in recent history in both the United Kingdom and the United States bear testament to the dangers of the unlimited conceits of ego and narcissism in office.

Why is self-​leadership paradoxical? To influence others positively, leaders need to lead themselves.While attention paid to the self-​leadership dimension of leadership is perhaps peripheral in comparison with other traditional leadership paradigms, it has received scholarly attention (Stewart et  al. 2019); indeed, the idea of self-​leadership is far from new. To lead others in ways that achieve a will to power, the conscious channelling of inner strengths creatively to inspire others, leaders will be expected to be clear about why they want to exercise power as well as how, creatively, they will conduct themselves virtuously, expressing the strength of their character to provide a positive example.They should be able to answer a simple question: what do I aim to achieve with my leadership? Answering that question is the core of self-​leadership: being able to make sense of the motives comprising one’s inner theatre, as Kets de Vries (1994) has called it, in order to be a more accomplished leader (see also Kaiser & Kaplan, 2006). The process of self-​leadership is rich in tension and contradiction; what one leader envisions as good and desirable is not necessarily appreciated by others. Leaders need to self-​assess realistically, being aware of their weaknesses even while they strive to project a powerful identity. They are supposed to show that they care about their followers but also be prepared to follow the strength of their inner self as a rudder, even if it clashes with dominant views. The attempt to maintain consistency with the inner self is captured by the notion of authenticity, the

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set of mental and behavioural processes through which people discover and construct a core sense of self, and through which this core self is maintained across situations and over time (Kernis & Goldman 2006). Authenticity is recognized as a useful leadership trait, since followers identify with leaders they perceive as authentic (Wong, Spence Laschinger & Cummings, 2010), rewarding them with trust (Hassan, 2011) and increased work engagement (Gardner, Cogliser, Davis, & Dickens, 2011). Authenticity for a leader is not just a matter of being “true to one’s self ” but should be considered an ongoing achievement which has paradoxical implications. Being true to one’s self is something that leaders can project through consistency in both means and ends; however, situations change, such that consistency may be less a virtue than a vice as circumstances devalue the authenticity assumed. Holding on to an expression of the self as authentic in ways that have long been assumed and projected, whether as sincere expression or as sincerity faked (and who can tell the difference if the performativity is good?), is a sign of dogmatism not leadership. Leaders must adapt continually to changing requirements of their context and relationships (DeRue, 2011; Useem, 2010;Yukl & Mahsud, 2010). Since authenticity requires that leaders demonstrate –​in themselves and for others –​ consonance between their beliefs and actions (Gardner et  al., 2011; Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner,Wernsing & Peterson, 2008), trouble brews as circumstances change. Leading always occurs within a structuring of social relations and dynamic actor networks, meaning that leaders must “construct who they are in relation to whom they interact with” (Nyberg & Sveningsson, 2014, p. 440) while also maintaining a persuasive performance –​real or faked. Thus, leaders’ efforts to craft and act in line with authentic versions of their self, although it reduces their discomfort with inconsistencies (Festinger, 1957; Heider, 1958; Petriglieri et  al., 2019; Schneider, 1990), can also lead to contingently problematic decisions and actions. Leaders that strive for authenticity as part of a process to construct a coherent and distinctive identity, viable across time within a continuously evolving external world (Cunliffe, 2011; Sparrowe, 2005; Nyberg and Sveningsson, 2014), need to be exceptionally skilled performers, attentive to every contextual and social cue.

Janus-​like leadership Some of the most difficult paradoxes inhere in the domain of self-​leadership. It is no surprise, then, that historically leadership scholars have paid attention to the tensions of leadership, even before leadership research started to use the notion of paradox. Good leaders have been portrayed as Janus-​like figures (Sheldon & Barrett, 1977). The Roman god Janus, the god of time, was presented as a two-​faced divinity, looking towards the past and the future simultaneously (see Picture 2.1). The implicit intuition of this classical model was that the core of leadership is a paradoxical process that has to balance the self-​representations of the past with the evolving circumstances of the futures in which one may find one’s self. A lack of attention to either past or future could represent reduced leaderly effectiveness. In the leadership literature, the image of the god Janus is implicit in Blake and

Paradoxes of self-leadership  53

PICTURE 2.1  Janus

(the Roman god of time) –​a fresco in Aula Gotica in Santi Quattro

Coronati, Rome. Author: Fresko N.N., Foto Maurizio Fabre. Source:  Hattler, Klaus, Imperium der Götter, Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe 2013. Author: Fresko N. N., Foto Maurizio Fabre. (https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​ wiki/​File:40.7_​Janus.png). This work is in the public domain.

Mouton’s (1964) representation of integrative leaders as those that express a dual orientation to tasks and to followers. When leaders are one-​sided in their orientation, they are incomplete. They can be pleasant but ineffective or effective but not developmental, which will harm the sustainability of their performance. This dual orientation also resonates with Lewin, Lippitt and White’s (1939) classic framing of democratic leaders as those that manage to be both task and people oriented. The Janus-​like quality of leaders can be more complex than a clash between two poles, such as past and future actions. Even within the same polarity, tensions are possible. For example, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg Maria Teresa expressed a paradoxical inclination when she allegedly mistreated her employees in the royal house, acting as a “tyrant”, while supporting the Stand Speak Rise Up! association fighting sexual violence in less favoured areas, as well as the Red Cross (Bento,

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2020). The same person can thus act as both an agent of good and a practitioner of the bad, with ugly effects for the judgement of character.

Chameleonic leadership Contingency approaches, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, introduced the important element of context/​situation. Contexts do matter because leadership does not unfold in social-​material voids. The context refers to the sites in which relationships unfold, covering elements as macro as institutional structures and as micro as quotidian social grammars, such as how people communicate. No aspect of context is irrelevant. For example, the fact that Swedes are “less socially tactile” than Southern Europeans, as the Financial Times (2020a,b, p. 16) described, is not an irrelevant datum if you are trying to work out how to manage an evolving pandemic. Different situations will imply diverse combinations of task initiation and structure. What makes sense for one situation is not necessarily adequate for another. Hersey, Blanchard and Johnson’s (1996) situational leadership model emphasizes subordinates’ readiness and willingness to be led. The leader is supposed to use the appropriate style after they have established what kind of people work for them in each specific task (i.e., subordinates’ readiness is contingent on task at hand). The theory postulates that leaders can choose among delegating, participating, selling and telling, depending on associated follower readiness. The most appropriate leadership style depends on the amount of emotional support followers require in conjunction with the amount of guidance that they require to do their jobs  –​in other words, the follower’s readiness. There is no sense of authenticity at all in this framework other than being able to match the appropriate leadership style to the assumed competencies of followers. The leaders’ chief competence in this respect is being able to “read” the context and act accordingly. Such a competence sometimes becomes more visible when contexts change radically. For example, as the German football Bundesliga resumed with no public at the matches, RB Leipzing coach, Julian Nagelsmann, observed that “I coach in a very aggressive way and scream a lot so that my players hear me. I will have to change, for sure, because my way of leading, in the absence of public, might be somewhat frightening” (Sousa, 2020, p. 41). Leading your team means adjusting your style, managing yourself. The logic behind the situational leadership model is clear (see, e.g., Blanchard, Zigarmi & Nelson, 1993).The assumptions that it makes are also evident. Followers are treated as cultural dopes, as one-​ dimensional characters assessed simply in terms of their degrees of compliance. Once we admit that the cast of characters scheduled as followers differ, a leadership style that works and motivates some may not motivate and might even demotivate others (Hu, Erdogan, Jiang, Bauer & Liu, 2018; Mittal & Dorfman, 2012; Qin, Chen,Yam, Huang & Ju, 2020). For example, a humble leader may be effective in leading a team in which everyone values humility in leaders and/​or appreciates low-​power distance but assuming humility may be ineffective in leading those that consider humility in a leader a sign of weakness.

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Moreover, any team’s competences and their motivations are dynamic and evolving, such that teams confront leaders with different challenges as they change over time. A given team may constitute different contexts over time: at the outset, when it is first composed, a team may be motivated but immature. In such a context, leaders are expected to use a more educational style, acting mainly as coaches. As team members gain competence, if they remain motivated, they can now be empowered. Empowerment will be inadequate if the team starts to lose motivation, for whatever reason. Instilling a renewed sense of purpose, increasing challenges or defining new goals may be necessary. If the team maintains lack of motivation and fails to gain new competences, then a more authoritarian style may be adequate, for a time. What the example suggests is that not only do leaders need opposite skills but also they need to know how to balance them in order to respond to situations. Clearly, leading requires a degree of dramaturgical competence, in that leaders exposed to situational leadership models have to be able to gauge their audience and act the scripted part. One presumes that it must be a tad confusing for audiences not in on the trick at the time. The role of time and context reveals the importance of contextual intelligence. Because paradoxes persist dynamically, different moments in process will imply different configurations of opposites in tension. Representing affairs in this way does not invalidate the importance of the Janus metaphor but renders its implementation more complicated as a style that worked well in the past might well fail to succeed in the present. For instance, the current adoption of agile forms of organizing, built over digital technologies, is inviting managers to learn a new skillset (more on this in the section that follows). New paradoxical expressions have emerged, such as Level 5 leadership.

Level 5 leadership Jim Collins (2001) popularized the notion of the level 5 leader, a paradoxical combination of resoluteness and humility. In this view, leadership is a process marked by complexity, dynamism and paradoxicality (Kodish, 2006). Collins described Level 5 leaders as those possessing an unusual blend of contradictory traits: (1) a ferocious resolve, fearlessness and stoicism combined with (2) humility, modesty and shyness. The thesis is that great leaders, those possessing this combination of traits, would be able to develop great companies (or at least be interesting cases for the psychiatrists’ couch). Collins was the first to turn paradoxical leadership into a hugely popular and profitable topic. Leadership is an easy sell to those that assume the mantle only because the idea that the success of an enterprise is attributable to the character of the leader plays to the ego of leaders in thrall to their self-​belief in their leaderly qualities and the handsome returns that they think these should command in the market. For Collins, a lack of balance will be destructive; leaders have to know when to accentuate or diminish characteristics while acting in role. Leaders who are irresponsibly fearless may express determination beyond reason. An excess of

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fearless self-​confidence can be a sign of narcissism. Narcissistic leaders lack wisdom and groundedness. On the other extreme, an excess of modesty is devitalizing as it may project an image of weakness, a deficit of decisiveness. One without the other is potentially problematic as, at the extreme, it pits the malign narcissist against the self-​effacing manager (see Box 2.2).

BOX 2.2  EXERCISE: NISSAN’S “INVISIBLE” LEADER Consider the following story reported in the Financial Times (Campbell, Inagaki & Lewis, 2020, p. 13): Carlos Ghosn, who had been the joint chief of Renault and Nissan, made a dramatic escape from Japan after charges of misbehaviour in office had been levelled at him by the Nissan board. A new chief executive, Makoto Uchida, had been appointed. A  crucial turnaround presentation was delivered not by Uhcida but by the group’s number two, Ashwant Gupta. The new CEO listened quietly with the other directors. It was a low-​key approach that drew criticism from some insiders, for whom what Nissan needed in the wake of the scandal was a strong and decisive leader, able to restore internal order on warring factions.

Now reflect on the following questions • Leaders have been urged to share leadership. Why might Mr Uchida’s behaviour be a problem for some board members? • Mr. Uchida explained that he was in a “listening mode”. Isn’t listening important? • Imagine that Mr. Uchida adopted the opposite approach and presented a clear vision in an assertive way. Could he be criticized for that? On what grounds? • When this page of the book was written, in September 2020, the outcomes of Mr. Uchida’s approach were obviously not known. Feedforward to the moment you are reading these pages. How do you assess Mr. Uchida’s approach now? What are the reasons for your assessment? How has the situation changed? What does the whole episode tell you about leadership and its paradoxes?

Paradoxes and the self Leading oneself is paradoxical: roles have their scripts and regardless of what leaders would wish to do, there are things that they ought to do (Alvesson & Einola, 2019). Even the most humane of leaders, at times, need to do things that they would probably prefer to avoid, even if the image projected is often different. Consider the self-​portrait of many leaders, as painted by Blom and Alvesson (2015, p. 485): “The

Paradoxes of self-leadership  57 TABLE 2.1  Paradoxes at the level of self

Performing

Learning

Belonging

Contradictions in getting things done at the individual level:

Tensions between Tensions between individual desire desire for being for continuity and unique and desire change: to be accepted:

• Goals versus purpose • Intuition versus rationality • Independence versus interdependence

• Paradox of excellence • “Humbition” • Grit

Organizing Tensions related to loci of control over dimension of selfhood:

• Individuality and • Personal style identification as a behavioural • Compliance versus portfolio flexibility in rule • Know thyself application • Define priorities • Talking to others versus listening to one’s self

manager (as a potential leader) tends to describe him or herself in very positive moral terms: one is authentic, morally superior, oriented to the wants and needs of the employees, having integrity, and so forth”. In reality, things are more complex: for leaders, as Kets de Vries (2012; see also Box 2.7) has observed, getting things done carries multiple contradictions. Leaders are expected to care about others yet have their own goals. Some of these others will be signified as more important stakeholders than others: shareholders, for instance. Leaders of contemporary organizations have intense work lives that interfere with personal and family life; the stakeholders there can sometimes often play second fiddle to those that frame work. Other, more remote stakeholders, such as the communities in which the business is situated, supply chain organizations overseas or the ecology which the businesses’ products and processes may damage, are far from front-​of-​mind concern. Leaders may have naturally preferred styles but circumstances determine that they need to learn unnatural ones (Ibarra, 2015a, 2015b).These tensions make leadership a highly demanding work that may lead to exhaustion (see, e.g., the case of Horta Osório, as the Lloyds Banking Group CEO, who had to take a two-​month sick leave as the consequence of burnout; Treanor, 2011). In this section, following the structure of Table 2.1 (which is a part of the totality of Table I.1), we discuss the paradoxes of leading at the level of self, starting with the paradoxes of performing.

Self and the paradoxes of performing Leaders are confronted with many tensions around “task orientations” –​the ways of accomplishing things. Sometimes leadership can be assumed to be entirely a matter of task orientation –​“let’s get Brexit done” proved to be a very powerful slogan for British Prime Minister Johnson as an electoral goal. After the advent of the pandemic caused by Covid-​19 the simple task of getting a new “it” done changed. The relevant “it” changed from something relatively easy to present performatively

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(even if accomplishing the details in practice might prove somewhat intractable) to an “it” that was a highly contagious virus that did not respect slogans. Many were tried, people became confused and the virus continued replicating, sickening and killing. Leadership by task orientation proved to be far more problematic under the circumstances of the new “it” that had to be accomplished. Performing leadership in critical situations confronts leaders with choices about the types of goals they define, their inner motivations and the way they make decisions, for example, in terms of activating intuition and/​or rationality, choices well represented in Prime Minister Johnson’s vacillation between economy and society, gross domestic product and gross domestic health.

Self-​goals Leaders accomplish the “it” that they intend to achieve by defining goals. Goal setting is one of the most popular approaches to people management, equally popular among scholars and practitioners (e.g., Latham et al., 1981). Yet from the perspective of the individual leader, goals are defined not only for others but also for oneself. One question leaders need to ask is what kinds of goals they should define. Do they prefer proximate or ultimate goals (Spisak, 2020)? Proximate goals deal with how types of questions: how to reach a goal? In this case, goals involve, above all, technical aspirations.Technical questions include: is the goal SMART?1 Is the feedback adequate? These are the questions raised by a technical understanding of goals. Getting Brexit done could be packaged up as such a simple SMART goal for political consumption. Yet there are also ultimate goals. These are goals of the why type: why do we aim to reach this goal? The goal is meaningful in what way? Whom does it benefit? Ultimate goals offer a sense of purpose. Discovering a vaccine to inoculate the world’s people against Covid-​19 is such a goal. In the interim, seeking to manage the contagion through clear policies of testing, tracking and tracing can be a proximate goal. As such, it is one that can be used to compare the leadership in different countries that have been more or less successful in limiting contagion, with New Zealand and Australia at one extreme (good) and the United States and Brazil at the other extreme (bad). In any global crisis there are failing states and more successful states, depending on the metrics. No metrics can be more profound than preserving life. Political leaders’ self-​achievements can be seen in the reflection of all those whom they have served or saved in critical times, such as a pandemic. On this basis, leader such as Trump, Johnson and Bolsonaro have failed dismally. The goals that a leader defines for their self come to define them and the lives they live; Johnson, who desperately sought leadership because it was there, will forever be defined by his twin management of Brexit and contagion rather than his desires to be a leader. The goal of leadership that has no goal other than to lead so as to be in power is corrosive. In business, this has been pointed out by a cleric, Reverend P. J. Gomes (2001), in an article for the Harvard Business Review, where he

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notes that it is not infrequent that executives that have reached high levels of professional success have difficult private lives, as they lack the other two spaces of life (the family and another third space). Work becomes a black hole, an attractor that consumes every dimension of life. It is important not to confuse purpose and goals. In the words of Reverend Gomes (2001, p. 66): I often cross paths with successful people in business at just the point where they are asking such questions. (…) “How do I reconcile my success with my sense of emptiness?” And the short answer I  give is that you have put your ultimate confidence in penultimate enterprises. Business has to be a means, not the end. If you treat success in business as life’s ultimate goal, then it becomes a great, glowering, impressive, but ultimately empty and futile, tin god. The wisdom of having a clear notion of what distinguishes proximate from ultimate goals may be what allows leaders to answer questions such as: (1) is, or is not, my career success a path to my eudemonic happiness? and (2) does my focus on getting money and material goods satisfy my emotional, relational and spiritual needs? Answering these questions effectively and acting accordingly is, however, a complex endeavour. What leaders often have to do is pursue career success and eudemonic happiness, material goods’ acquisition and immaterial ones. Pursuing proximate goals does not necessarily hinder pursuing the ultimate; rather it is otherwise, the challenge being choosing, in a wise way, those proximate goals that allow pursuit of ultimate ones, in a way that is the former that contribute to the latter are not jeopardized.

Independence versus interdependence Organizations tend to see individuals as independent agents, a conception that a strong focus on the leader encourages. Individuals, including leaders, may often see themselves as “independent individuals” to whom all success is due (perhaps not failures) or they may see themselves as “interdependent individuals”, i.e., as persons whose identity is embedded in an interdependent or a collective identity. Similarly, an organization may be viewed as a collective of interdependent persons (see Chapter 3) as in the case of W. L. Gore. By seeing oneself in a particular way, one makes choices, such as, for example, the extent to which one is prepared to give and to take (Grant, 2013), i.e., to contribute to the system or to benefit from the system. The decision is not strictly an individual choice as organizational cultures influence the process but individuals make decisions that affect who they are and how they work. Between assuming that one’s being is independent of others or interdependent with others, there is an inevitable tension as both perspectives are important. We all expect to be independent agents, able to express character in decisions and choices, while we also know that we

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are dependent on the kindness of strangers, something that becomes most evident when the self is at risk and others come to its rescue in critical situations of health or struggle. Regardless of how one sees one’s self, human beings are socio-​relational entities who develop as individuals only in relation and cooperation with other individuals. As Stewart et al. (2019, p. 55) put it: Because any single person, as a human being, will experience limits in terms of knowledge, experience, and overall capabilities, focusing on obtaining behavioral and performance resources from only one’s self is, by definition, suboptimal. In fact (…) establishing too much self-​influence and autonomy for oneself can be self-​defeating. Even in potentially productive empowerment situations, too much focus on the self can perhaps result in dysfunctional results (see, for example, Langfred, 2005). As such, this introduces another key paradox of self-​leadership, which we term the paradox of self-​leadership through collaboration. Therefore, in life and in the many small and larger spaces of leadership that life affords, instead of orienting solely to either independence and dependence, the important decision is finding a balance between them. Both processes can be managed for effectiveness. For example, showing vulnerability and seeking help can be a lever to gain power and become more independent (Pfeffer, 2021). Such balance can be important in reaching performance levels that will allow objectives to be achieved with whatever help is necessary, as nobody can be a top performer without some help and support (see Box 2.3). Paradoxically, collaboration may be used as a self-​leadership strategy. As Stewart et al. (2019, p. 55) argued, “to address this paradox, (…) collaboration with others can be used as an intentional self-​ leadership strategy to obtain support and potential synergies related to working with others, as well as expanded access to expertise and resources beyond one’s own”. These authors also suggest that collaboration can be an antidote to personal blind spots and skill weaknesses. Through collaboration one can supplement one’s capabilities beyond personal limitations.

BOX 2.3  EXERCISE: ANNE MULCAHY Anne Mulcahy became CEO of Xerox in 2001. The company was close to bankruptcy. She was able to turn it around in a process that revealed great leadership skills. Her leadership was based on deep listening (to subordinates and customers), contentious town hall meetings and great teamwork. She assumed that her limitations in terms of finance would be a major weakness during a company turnaround. But she was a relentless hard worker and she always told the truth: “Part of her DNA is to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly”, said one colleague (Morris, 2003).

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About herself, she pointed out: I’m not perfect at it myself. My team will tell you that when my pen starts tapping in a meeting, it’s time to run for the hills. But CEOs have to manage those unintended displays, because of how much impact they have on other people. She also adds: “You can destroy someone by showing your emotions, particularly negative ones. CEOs have to manage those unintended displays, because of the impact they have on others” (Mulcahy, 2010b, p. 50).

Questions • What does the case of Mulcahy tell you about “heroic leadership”? And about humility in leaders? • Why do leaders fail to listen if listening is so importantly necessary? • Were Anne’s weaknesses a strength? Here is an excerpt from a teaching note (Mastering Strategic Management, by University of Minnesota2): Hidden gems are CEOs who lack fame but possess positive reputations. These CEOs toil in relative obscurity while leading their firms to success. Their skill as executives is known mainly by those in their own firm and by their competitors. In many cases, the firm has some renown due to its success, but the CEO stays unknown. For example, consider the case of Anne Mulcahy. Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox, started her career at Xerox as a copier salesperson. Despite building an excellent reputation by rescuing Xerox from near bankruptcy, Mulcahy eschews fame and publicity. While being known for successfully leading Xerox by example and being willing to fly anywhere to meet a customer, she avoids stock analysts and reporters. Question: why might Mulcahy have behaved like a “hidden gem” while many leaders brag about their (real or pretended) successes?

Intuition versus rationality Leaders need to analyse their decision premises and preferences. To perform effectively it is important to deploy facts and evidence (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006). Being aware of the limitations of numerical data and measurements, of their nature as social constructs, should not imply dismissing the opportunity provided by statistics and mathematics to compare cases and to establish orders of magnitude of phenomena

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(Piketty, 2020). Good management thrives on wisdom, not only the practical wisdom gained through repeated practice but also that of expert knowledge. In the case of the two least successful large countries in managing Covid-​19 (Brazil and United States) practical wisdom was premised on highly performative showmanship rather than a sober assessment of expert opinion. The wisdom of phronesis, in which practice and expertise are balanced, is important because it equips leaders with a capacity to balance rational and intuitive forms of knowledge. The interplay of rationality and intuition has been presented as a paradoxical competence with potentially productive outcomes (Calabretta, Gemser & Wijnberg, 2017). It is a skill honed by reflection and engagement with others and with a complex reality. The mythical image of the rational manager is no longer cherished as in the past (see Box 2.4). Research indicates that rationality does not favour making better decisions (Damásio, 2006). Decision making involves a complex interplay between reason and emotion, as the popularity of the idea of emotional intelligence attests. It is also important that managers nurture the art of intuition. Cultivating their “emotional radar” and analysing patterns also offers possibilities to avoid the extremes of cold rationality and of hot intuition, a combination that has been synthesized in the idea of “cold passion” (Pops, 2009). In business, rationality is critical, yet it is insufficient per se for delivering value in all its forms. As exemplified by visionary managers, such as Steve Jobs, vision involves a cultivated capacity to use information that is pre-​rational or intuitive, intuition referring to judgements that are emotionally rich and that result from associations that are rapid, non-​conscious and holistic (Dane & Pratt, 2007). They can be aesthetically rational rather than economically rational: not how much profit can we make if we do it this way but is this way beautiful, simple and appealing?

BOX 2.4  CAN “THINKING TOO MUCH” REDUCE THE QUALITY OF PREFERENCES AND DECISIONS? In a study, college students’ preferences for different brands of strawberry jams were compared with experts’ ratings of the jams. Findings suggested that students who were encouraged to analyse why they felt the way they did agreed less with the experts than students who did not –​in short, they made “worse” decisions. In a second study, in which college students’ preferences for college courses were compared with expert opinions, a similar pattern was found. According to the researchers (Wilson & Schooler, 1991, p. 181), “analyzing reasons can focus people’s attention on nonoptimal criteria, causing them to base their subsequent choices on these criteria”.

Questions for reflection Do you see any relation between these findings and evidence you have seen in real organizational contexts?

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• Is “thinking too much” always bad for the decision-​making quality? Why? • Does this mean that when humans have to rationalize their choices, they risk removing intuition and emotions from the decision-​making process? • Does this evidence imply that leaders should make decisions without weighing the pros and cons of each path or alternative? Is such a stance  wise? • Is it possible to be rational, emotional and intuitive?

Self and the paradoxes of learning To learn, people need to engage in a number of personally discomforting processes. Learning can be seen from a romantic perspective, as a noble pursuit. Noble it may be but learning lessons is tough, especially late in life and career. It takes work, practice and application, creating a paradox of excellence.

Paradox of excellence DeLong and DeLong (2011) introduced the notion of a paradox of excellence. Accepting that excellence is a state rather than a stable condition associated with individual disposition-​based competences, individuals can accept that over their working lives, they will be challenged to do different things and to assume different responsibilities. The effort involved in this implies a curious challenge: to progress, people need to learn different things and to gain new competences. It means that, if they were competent in their previous positions, they will need to accept that the new challenge implies the acquisition of competences that they do not possess –​in the meantime (i.e., when learning the new competencies), they are not excellent.They need to accept the discomfort resulting from this challenge as well as the need to make themselves vulnerable (see Box 2.8).Vulnerability is not a weakness but a strength in the sense that, to become better, leaders have to accept that they will need the help of others. The willingness to assume one’s limitations can thus, paradoxically, be a show of strength.

Humbition Learning requires an attitude of humility, the acceptance of one’s limits. Yet, as a virtue, humility is an elevated middle ground between two extremes, those of lack and excess. The lack of humility breeds the hubris so often associated with leader derailment (Claxton, Owen & Sadler-​Smith, 2015). The excess of humility may project an impression of weakness, a problem because so much energy is expended on search and longing for strong leaders. The search by opinion leaders and those whom they influence for the strong leader, habitually the strong man, is a form of collective containment of anxiety through wish-​fulfilment (Petriglieri, 2020b). While strength of character is necessary as leadership performs important symbolic functions, the apparent strength of heroic and forceful leaders is often a form of weakness. When a self-​belief in the strength of someone’s self-​ability to lead puts

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that leader at the very centre of leadership, dangerous possibilities occur. Instead of expressing social stewardship and personal expression, leaders become imaginary characters, heroes in their own lives and those that clutter the mise-​en-​scène. To maintain the illusion, they will often surround themselves with characters whose shortcomings make their strengths shine. These big characters come with many problems, such as narcissism (see Box 2.5).

BOX 2.5  NARCISSISM: GOOD AND BAD? One of the most attractive characteristics of leaders is resoluteness. Resolute leaders tend to be larger-​than-​life characters with corresponding egos (Kodish, 2006). The impression created by characteristics such as resoluteness is often well appreciated, even taken as a proxy of charisma. Yet this resoluteness is sometimes a symptom of narcissism rather than a wise orientation for action. Narcissistic leaders are sometimes more inclined to satisfy their ego (Picture 2.2) than to steer their organizations in appropriate directions. Thus, paradoxically, a seemingly positive attribute can hide a highly negative trait. Hence the need to take self-​leadership into account. Self-​aware responsible leaders are motivated by the desire to leave healthy organizations. Narcissistic leaders may be more inclined to leave successors that will not diminish their reputations. As Louis XV of France allegedly exclaimed in a moment of self-​exaltation, Après

PICTURE 2.2  Caravaggio’s

Narcisus.

Source: https://​upload.wikimedia.org/​wikipedia/​commons/​d/​de/​Michelangelo_ Caravaggio_​065.jpg.

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moi, le deluge (Kodish, 2006). These leaders are more interested in themselves than in their organizations. Other leaders (e.g., Steve Jobs, years after having been “humiliated” by being “chased” from “his” Apple) develop a paradoxical stance, by being both narcissistic and humble (Owens, Wallace & Waldman, 2015). In this regard, Grant (2018) wrote: Who would you rather work for: a narcissistic leader or a humble leader? The answer is more complicated than you think. In a Fortune 100 company, researchers studied whether customer service employees were more productive under narcissistic or humble leaders. The least effective bosses were narcissists –​their employees were more likely to spend time surfing the Internet and taking long breaks. Employees with humble bosses were a bit more productive: they fielded more customer service calls and took fewer breaks. But the best leaders weren’t humble or narcissistic. They were humble narcissists. Grant explained the paradox as follows: The two qualities sound like opposites, but they can go hand in hand. Narcissists believe they’re special and superior; humble leaders know they’re fallible and flawed. Humble narcissists bring the best of both worlds: they have bold visions, but they’re also willing to acknowledge their weaknesses and learn from their mistakes.

Questions for reflection • Read about grandiose and vulnerable narcissism (e.g., Besser & Priel, 2010; Derry, Ohan & Bayliss, 2019; Miller, Price, Gentile, Lynam & Campbell, 2012; Miller, Lynam, Hyatt & Campbell, 2017). Which is more problematic for leaders’ effectiveness and ethics? • Think of recent world leaders –​which of them display what sorts of narcissistic tendencies? • Why do people follow narcissistic leaders  –​even those that are more “dangerous”? • Do you know humble narcissistic leaders? Have they got good results? Why?

The word humility comes from the Latin Humus, for ground. A humble leader is grounded, down to earth and realistic (see Box 2.6). One of the most common frameworks used to understand leader-​expressed humility was proposed by Owens, Johnson and Mitchell (2013, p. 1518). They defined humility “as an interpersonal characteristic that emerges in social contexts that connotes (a) a manifested willingness to view oneself accurately, (b) a displayed appreciation of others’ strengths and contributions, and (c) teachability”. Sample items for measuring each component are, respectively, (a) “This person acknowledges when others have more knowledge

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and skills than him-​or herself ”; (b) “This person often compliments others on their strengths” and (c) “This person is open to the advice of others”. Humility in leaders has been associated with a number of positive effects such as employees’ proactivity, creativity and speaking up behaviours, as well as team performance, team innovation and creativity and even organizational performance (see, e.g., Ashford, Wellman, Sully de Luque, De Stobbeleir & Wollan, 2018; Bharanitharan, Lowe, Bahmannia, Chen & Cui, 2020; Mao, Chiu, Owens, Brown & Liao, 2019; Owens et al., 2013; Rego et al., 2020a; for an overall perspective about antecedents, moderators, mediators and consequences of humility in organizations, see the literature review of Nielsen & Marrone, 2018).

BOX 2.6  KEEPING ONE’S FEET ON THE GROUND: KING CANUTE Cnut (died November 12, 1035; Picture 2.3), or Canute, as it is more often spelled, was king of what was known as the North Sea Empire, formed by

PICTURE 2.3  King

Canute (Illustration of the Cnut and the Waves).

Author: Alphonse-​Marie-​Adolphe de Neuville. Source:  reproduced in John Henry Haaren, Famous Men of the Middle Ages (1904), p.  153. (https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Canute_​rebukes_​ his_​courtiers.png). This work is in the public domain.

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Denmark, England and Norway. Even today he is popularly remembered through the legend of King Canute. The legend originally depicts him as a king of wisdom who ordered his throne to be placed close to the seashore. He then ordered the tide to stop so that his feet and robe would not get wet. The tide did not stop, obviously, and the King explained that there are things that even the most powerful monarch cannot command. His lesson was subsequently retold, so that he became portrayed as a ruler who believed so much in his own power that he thought he could stop the tides. Leadership narratives develop in their own mysterious ways and these narratives are sometimes conveyed according to the sentiments of the observers or the followers. To continue your exploration of Canute, consider Hay (2009).

The quality of being grounded refers to well-​ calibrated self-​ awareness. A humble person does not think less of their self but thinks less about their self. Humble leaders know that their success depends on the willingness of others to collaborate, to work together while they also know that the motivation of others will depend on the leader’s capacity to help them reach their goals and satisfy their needs for growth and success. This is more likely if they combine humility and ambition, if they act as what some authors have called humbitious leaders. “Humbition” (Taylor, 2011) is a neologism that transmits the idea that it is possible to be both bold and humble (see Rego et al., 2020 for how leaders may be both gritty and humble, a profile similar to the humbitious one). Ambitious leaders can be interested in growth as a process that is instrumental in obtaining given material outcomes, such as market share, profits or some other objective. Sometimes this leads to the definition of overambitious or even impossible goals, turning dilemmatic choices into false paradoxes. For example, when Volkswagen established its plan to develop a car that would be cleaner, faster and cheaper, it was turning a trilemma that implied either-​or types of choices into a false paradox, i.e., an impossible articulation of achieving both-​and types of objectives when they were incompatible (Gaim, Clegg & Cunha, 2019). A clean, green, high performance and economical diesel engine proved to be a contradiction in terms. Paradox should not be taken as a license to set impossible goals.What was lacking in VW’s leaders was humility. Whereas an ambitious leader can become greedy, humbition may be a way of flourishing. It is possible that humbition may lead to improved outcomes; nonetheless, it is as equally probable that such outcomes will be an oblique consequence, rather than the target itself.

Grit The combination of passion and perseverance (Duckworth, 2016) has recently been named as “grit”. Grit is a necessarily paradoxical synthesis, as the presence of grit in a too intense way will lead to obsession or stubbornness. Grit is important

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for organizations because, without it, members may well be lacking in passionate care, purpose and performance. For example, the creation of lean organizations has been described as requiring “enormous, relentless effort. Persistence, not genius, is the key” (Staats & Upton, 2011, p. 110). While grit implies both passion and perseverance for long-​term goals, an excess of grit is not grit anymore –​but rather a stubborn orientation to some goal. Werner Herzog’s (1972) epic movie Aguirre, Wrath of God, the story of Spanish soldier, Lope de Aguirre, who leads a group of conquistadores down the Amazon in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado, is a brilliant cinematic treatment of this stubborn goal orientation. Aguirre’s dogged pursuit sees him lose all the crew and soldiers to various misfortunes as he sticks to his vainglorious search, accompanied in the end only by death, decay and rebellious nature. In pursuit of a vision, everything –​lives, health and sanity –​was sacrificed. The need to avoid the extreme of grit by maintaining a cold passion is well expressed in Yeats’ poem “The Fisherman”. The notion of a cold passion is itself paradoxical as passion is the opposite of coldness. The implication is that leaders need to cultivate passion but also to distance themselves from their objects of desire to avoid being consumed by them. It is possible that cases such as that of Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes was a consequence of a passionate pursuit of an impossible project (Carreyrou, 2019). Her dedication to the pursuit of a medical innovation that was technically impossible prevented her from pulling the plug when that would have been the best decision. One should not discount, however, that a psychological pathology may explain, at least partially, Holmes’ approach (Bilton, 2018). Holmes herself is exploring a “mental disease” defence for her criminal fraud trial (Rosenblatt, 2020).

Self and the paradoxes of belonging The need to belong is a basic human drive: social needs matter (Kets de Vries, 2001). We next discuss the tensions between the desire to belong and to be different, the tension between making rules and breaking them and the need to talk so that one can listen to an inner voice.

Similar and different Humans strive to be both similar and different from others in a craving for identity, both different and the same, individual and tribal, alone and in a community of others. The need to belong means that we need to share something in common with the other members of our ingroup. In fact, in spite of the championing of diversity, people tend to be more at ease with similar people. For example, narcissistic CEOs may appoint narcissistic directors to their boards (Zhou & Chen, 2015). People try to find common ground with people from groups that are extremely broad in number and variety. For example, two Greeks, whose nationality is their only shared bond, can develop a strong sense of belonging to the same group even if they are very different in many respects other than their language and cultural

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background while, at the same time, preserving their individuality. In other words, people expect to feel that they are similar and different. Interestingly, one way to satisfy simultaneously the needs to belong and the need to be different is to belong to a group that is different from other groups (Hornsey & Jetten, 2004; Rego & Cunha, 2012).

Role makers and rule breakers Leaders need to play dual roles. They need to define rules and to serve as role models, keeping the tradition and offering a sense of continuity while simultaneously impeding the group from crystalizing. They need to act as creators of tight-​ loose cultures. An excess of tightness and the leadership is seen as domineering and paternalistic; an excess of looseness and it will be perceived as laissez faire. In this sense, leading is a balancing act of protecting a past and preparing for a future. This requires an intense inner dialogue and a sense of awareness that will help to calibrate the tight-​loose tension. The excess of tightness can be as damaging as the excess of looseness, even though the investment in each of these two poles is expressed in very different ways (Gelfand, 2019). The challenge here lies in the fact that this paradox refers not to doing one thing or the other but one thing and the other, in an integrative fashion, rather than as two independent practices. Orienting to the two poles independently creates trouble. In family firms, parent incumbents often express paradoxical behaviours, empowering and dominating child successors (Huang, Chen, Xu, Lu & Tam, 2019). Child successors, in response, need to imitate their parents in terms of their willingness and capability to lead the business but they also need to express their individuality. As such, these children are exposed to a double bind: “Imitate me!” and “Don’t imitate me!”. These contradictory requirements compose a double binding paradox (Bateson, Jackson, Haley & Weakland, 1956) that needs to be navigated appropriately to facilitate integration and individuality. Moral leadership has been associated with the capacity to balance continuity and change. As Solinger et al. (2020) note, the excess of rule conservation around the values of the status quo creates leaders that are perceived as excessively principled in excess whereas an excessive focus on change will lead to pragmatism without consistency.

Talking to listen to oneself Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk. (Doug Larson in Malik, 2019) The awareness needed to conduct balance in a system (a team, an organization, a nation) is difficult to obtain. Because leaders do not always feel comfortable sharing their doubts with their peers or subordinates, some of them hire professional coaches

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to play this role. The role of the coach in a sense is similar to that of the jester (see Box 4.11): coaches are those habilitated to tell the truth to the person when no one else does.These people, as the leader’s confidant(e)s, play a very important role: they are the sounding board for the leader, the persons that help them to think and engage their inner selves. In short, for that listening to be developmentally effective, the leader has to talk with the coach and other confidants in unguarded conversations. Effective listening requires effective talking and the latter requires the former also, advice that is valid for leader-​follower relationships. On the one hand, talking without listening is risky because decision making may be biased and based on incomplete (although available) information. On the other hand, listening without talking may make the leader appear as weak (see Box 2.2) and does not allow the leader’s message and intentions to be clarified.

Self and the paradoxes of organizing Organizing poses a number of self-​challenges for leaders. They need to discover who they are as leaders and to use this awareness in practice.

Project leadership Leaders have dispositions that define their tendencies as natural. In other words, we all feel performatively more comfortable with some tasks rather than others. Goleman (2000) argues that more than finding performative comfort in style that becomes naturalized, leaders need to gain comfort in adopting and performing a number of styles, varying them depending on the occasion. They need to complement their naturalized styles with others that are relevant but not performatively familiar. Leadership can be seen as a competence or a meta-​competence, a competence of competences. Styles of leadership are not genetically inherited:  they need to be learned. Therefore, to do organizing, leaders need to gain comfort with performing in a variety of styles if they are to create viable organizations with willing followers: directing, supporting, coaching and so on. Herminia Ibarra explains that leaders need to act as leaders (Ibarra, 2015a, 2015b) which means that behaviours that do not come naturally need to be practiced: her injunction is to fake it till you make it (Box 2.7)! The recommendation is not that leaders should lie (even though sometimes they will; see Pfeffer, 2016b). The point is that several leader competences are developed. Star performers that gain the admiration of others are often insecure (Kets de Vries, 2019). The fact that they sometimes project an image of extroversion and security does not mean that they are what they perform. For leadership the message is clear: the job comes with the need to develop the necessary skills and to correspond to expectations of leadership, sometimes broaden them, even change them as the times change. Being authentic does not mean that one does only what is performatively naturalized; it means

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being loyal to character through various forms of performativity. Being authentic is not an excuse for not learning how to perform leadership.

BOX 2.7  KEY THINKERS: MANFRED KETS DE VRIES, HERMINIA IBARRA The self is a domain of contradictions and some of these contradictions will be cascaded down through an organization’s hierarchy. One of the authors that consistently explored this dimension is Manfred Kets de Vries. Through a psychoanalytical lens, Kets de Vries explored the paradoxes of leaders and their leadership, noting how these paradoxes are characteristic of different key organizational players such as leaders and top performers. He helps to understand one of the reasons why paradoxes are difficult to address: they are based on unconscious motives. The individual level approach has also been used by Herminia Ibarra to explore the contradictions involved in leadership, such as the paradox of authenticity. She is the author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, a book that explains how leader development involves an element of faking until one makes it, meaning that the transition to different levels of competence implies acquiring competences, namely social competences, that create tension and discomfort.

Define priorities Finally, organizing oneself implies defining priorities  –​both at work and outside work. Defining priorities helps in making choices. Defining priorities helps to establish preferences and navigate the management of contradictions. A central paradox facing any society is that it must reproduce itself if it is to survive. To do so entails that some of the population at some stages of their life will give birth to a dependent infant that needs to be cared for, a caring that will interrupt working life. How societies resolve this issue of social reproduction tells one a great deal about their character. Some societies, such as the United States, are particularly tough on women in terms of their life-​stage priorities for being at work and caring for infants. In the OECD, all countries except the United States offer nationwide paid maternity leave for at least 12 weeks, and over half grant fathers paid paternity leave after the birth of an offspring. Increasingly, paid parental leave, i.e., a longer period of job-​ protected leave, is available to both parents. Perhaps the best provision comes from the Norwegian government, where mothers can take 49 weeks at full pay or 59 weeks at 80% pay, while fathers can take between 0 and 10 weeks depending on their wives’ income. Together, parents can receive an additional 46 weeks at full pay

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or 56 weeks at 80% of their income. In some countries, such as the Scandinavian social democracies, these benefits extend into state-​provision of early child care in kindergarten on the basis that the years after birth and before school should be a collective responsibility if the society is to reproduce itself successfully and make the most of the talent that it has. A recent contribution to the Australian Financial Review makes the logic abundantly clear (Crosby, 2020). First, it increases workforce participation. Second, “high-​quality, early childhood education develops social competency and emotional wellbeing. It prepares for a successful transition to school. And, perhaps most importantly, it reduces the effects of social disadvantage” (Crosby, 2020). Third, it generates employment of early child educators. Even the biggest leaders were once children; if the self is an important aspect of being a leader, which it clearly is, we should be cultivating all our future national selves from the outset. Establishing priorities demonstrates what matters most –​for countries, leaders and individuals. It helps to define agendas. Knowing one’s priorities assists in finding mentors or allies to help deal with challenges and obstacles. Although mentors can help one in a number of ways, the definition of priorities is initially, an individual business. As we discuss in Chapter 3, finding help is important but one needs to know what one needs help for: to progress in one’s career; to achieve work-​family balance; to change an organization? Doing so involves trade-​offs:  choosing one thing normally implies not choosing others. We noted before that while this may be a personal quest it is one in which dialogue and interaction help to clarify one’s mind (see Chapter 3).

How to manage the paradoxes of self-​leadership Leading oneself is paradoxical because, as discussed earlier, leaders are confronted with roles that imply the execution of opposite tasks as well as an attitude of ambivalence. Although successful leaders need to project a positive image and leave a respected legacy they also demonstrate humility and prepare succession. They need to appear strong but sometimes it is the assumption of vulnerability that projects strength (see Box 2.8).

BOX 2.8  LEADER’S WEAKNESSES BEING THEIR STRENGTH: THE CASE OF ANTÓNIO HORTA-​OSÓRIO By Professor Sir Cary Cooper, CBE, 50th Anniversary Professor of Organizational Psychology & Health at ALLIANCE Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK In the field of leadership, we frequently talk about various styles of leaders; charismatic, participative, command & control, bureaucratic, etc. But we rarely explore bravery in the face of weaknesses as a

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strength. It was the CEO of Lloyd Banking Group, António Horta Osório, who demonstrated this important characteristic in admitting that he had mental health problems and was taking time off work to deal with them. In the financial sector, this opened up a floodgate of senior people admitting they had problems as well, such that the finance sector moved rapidly to decrease the stigma of mental ill-​health by creating the City Alliance on Mental Health as well as taking on board the training of managers to recognize the symptoms and create a supportive infrastructure to support high risk people. Senhor Osório not only returned to work after his sick leave but also successfully helped to transform his bank in difficult times. So being able to admit your weaknesses (in the context of the stigma of mental health) is not really a weakness at all but a sign of an authentic leader, someone who is honest and open about strengths and weaknesses. By leaders being themselves, they invite others to do the same, enabling a more open workplace culture. As Confucius wrote: “Our greatest honour is not in never failing but rising every time we fall”.

Further suggestion from the book authors Read the article of Horta-​Osório (2018) about why “It’s time to end the workplace taboo around mental health”. Do you agree with him that neglecting mental health at work is perverse for productivity? Or do you (also) consider that an extreme focus on productivity may give rise to mental illness at work? How do you interpret the following advice?: When an employee breaks a leg or suffers an infection, we know how to respond. Mental health should be dealt with in the same way. With a culture of adequate support and sufficient time off, an employee can return to work with confidence and without embarrassment.

Self-​leadership is a balancing act, an art, it is sometimes said (Box 2.9). The exercise is made more complex because leaders have multiple roles and their legacies are distributed not only as bosses as they were but also what kind of spouses, parents, neighbours and so on. They face an obvious truth: “no matter hard leaders may try, they cannot expand the number of hours in the day” (Hill, 2020b, p. 12). As a simple fact of life this means that trade-​offs are inevitable. For instance, the time one devotes to work cannot be dedicated to family and vice versa. Managing tensions therefore is something that we all do, all the time. Yet, because of the temporary comfort afforded by investment in one problem, namely achieving the apparent resolution of a paradox, leaders may feel tempted to ignore paradoxes.Yet they know that it will necessarily confront some trade-​offs. Pfeffer (2021) identified a number of leadership trade-​offs:

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•

Visibility: more power comes with more curiosity on the part of others. The lives of the powerful are more salient and attract more attention than the lives of the multitude. Therefore, as one gains power, one will be affected by being more visible and reportable a situation that affects not only the powerful person but also, potentially, their family; of course, the more powerful one is, the more easily one can keep all the inconvenient others at arms’ length, far from one’s yacht, chateau, estate and so on. Mark Knopfler explained the process: I detest [being famous]. It has no redeeming features at all. Once you’re on television and on the cover of all these magazines, it comes as shock to the system that suddenly instead of watching the world, the world’s watching you. (McNair, 2020, p. 63)

•

•

•

Autonomy: one can enjoy positional power in relation to others or autonomy but not both. Powerful people’s networks come attached to obligations and responsibilities that cannot be ignored. Paradoxically, therefore, the powerful do not control their agendas (see Porter & Nohria, 2018). When BP’s CEO claimed that “he wanted his life back” after the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, he was expressing this wish, albeit in a highly inappropriate formulation, one that obliged the CEO, Tony Hayward, to apologize (Lubin, 2010). When the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was forced to return from holiday because the country was facing catastrophic bushfires in 2019 (Murphy, 2019), he was experiencing the same reality. Time: building a power base and investing in leadership takes time and effort. This time is taken from other activities which means that the more one invests in leadership the less time is left to invest in other spheres of life including the family. As such, it is not uncommon to find people with very successful professional lives, experiencing strained marital and family lives. The question asked by Luke Johnson (2014, p. 10) in the Financial Times, “Can you be a good father if you are running a business?”, is one that makes sense. Paradoxically, again, as life at home gets complicated, individuals may further invest in their highly satisfactory professional lives, deepening the circle even more (Hewlett & Luce, 2006). As Johnson (2014, p. 10) observed, “Every entrepreneur knows about trade-​offs, and consciously or not, many decide that personal glory is more important than domestic bliss”. Rivalry and enmity: the higher one’s position, the more appealing it is for others.Therefore, even if one tries to avoid rivals, rivals will rise. Power struggles are pervasive and become more intense at the top as the prize is higher, as predicted by tournament theory (Connelly,Tihanyi, Crook & Gangloff, 2014). If one expects to have more freedom at the top, it is better to anticipate that such freedom will be accompanied by closer vigilance from rivals and other interested parties.

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As Pfeffer’s work suggests, it is good to be prepared. He even says that anticipating the above-​mentioned trade-​offs constitutes a sort of a realistic job preview. It is better for leaders to be ready! How can leaders use paradox work to be more effective in their self-​management? We consider several possibilities.Yet, the lack of salience in the short run may also mean that one paradox is being kept from view, as happens when the organization invests in one pole while ignoring the other (Pradies,Tunarosa, Lewis & Courtois, 2020). For a time, this may be adequate; however, the latent pole may become manifest at some point, as we discuss next.

BOX 2.9  EXERCISE: WAS LINCOLN BOTH HONEST AND A “SKILFUL LIAR”? Mark Zupan, Dean, University of Rochester’s Simon School of Management, wrote about Abraham (Abe) Lincoln (1809–​ 1865), the 16th US President (Picture 2.4):

PICTURE 2.4  Abraham

Lincoln, February 5, 1865.

Photographer: Alexander Gardner (1821–​1882). Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Abraham_​Lincoln,_​Pres% 27t_U.S._​LOC_​3253742644.jpg. This work is in the public domain.

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Abraham Lincoln is the most revered president. This is especially striking in light of the fact that Lincoln presided over a period more challenging and economically destructive than any other in America’s history. (…) [W]‌hy does Lincoln instead elicit such high esteem? Many factors have been advanced –​his rise from lowly origins, humility, compassion, integrity, self-​made character, ability to overcome adversity, and humor. (Zupan, 2012) Lincoln’s virtuousness led him to get the epithet of “Honest Abe” and “all through his life, the honor and weight of his word had been ballast to his character” (Goodwin, 2018, p. 133). His personality and political profile, however, was much more complex and paradoxical than this epithet would imply: Possessed of a powerful emotional intelligence, Lincoln was both merciful and merciless, confident and humble, patient and persistent –​able to mediate among factions and sustain the spirits of his countrymen. He displayed an extraordinary ability to absorb the conflicting wills of a divided people and reflect back to them an unbending faith in a unified future. (Goodwin, 2018, pp. 126–​127) Paradoxically, as Adam Grant noted, Lincoln also had the “virtue of contradicting himself” (Grant, 2015, SR5): When historians and political scientists rate the presidents throughout history, the most effective ones turn out to be the most open-​minded. This is true of both conservative and liberal presidents. Abraham Lincoln was a flip-​flopper: He started out pro-​slavery before abolishing it. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a flip-​flopper, too: Elected on a platform of balancing the budget, he substantially increased spending with his New Deal. One person’s flip-​flopping is another’s enlightenment. Just as we would fear voting for candidates who changed their minds constantly, we should be wary of electing anyone who fails to evolve. The paradoxical nature of Lincoln was also pointed out by Goodwin (2018, pp. 126–​127), regarding his honesty, as follows: Even Honest Abe (…) was a skilful liar, says Meg Mott, a professor of political theory at Marlboro College in Vermont. Lincoln lied about whether he was negotiating with the South to end the war. That deception was given extended treatment in Steven Spielberg recent film “Lincoln”. He also lied about where he stood on slavery. He told the American public

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and political allies that he didn’t believe in political equality for slaves because he didn’t want to get too far ahead of public opinion, Mott says. “He had to be devious with the electorate”, Mott says. “He played slave-​holders against abolitionists. He had to lie to get people to follow him. Lincoln is a great Machiavellian”.

Questions for reflection • Is it possible to be both honest and a “skilful liar”? Why? • Trump sometimes compares himself with Lincoln. Do you consider Trump as a “skilful liar”? Why? • In which conditions you consider that lying is acceptable, or even recommendable, in a leader? Why? • How do you explain the other paradoxical dimensions of Lincoln’s personality? • Considering the pervasiveness and permanent scrutiny of leaders by the media in general and the social networks in particular, would such a paradoxical profile prosper politically nowadays? Why?

Natural propensity towards one of the poles Managing implies dealing with opposing forces, such as being strategic and operational or forceful and enabling. Most managers tend to lean one way or another, an imbalance that may cause ineffectiveness as the two forces are necessary (Kaplan & Kaiser, 2009). It is important that managers learn how to balance their naturalized with learned inclinations, which can be facilitated by finding help from others (see Box 2.10).The exercise implies an awareness of the weak side (Kaplan & Kaiser, 2003).

BOX 2.10  EXERCISE: DEVELOPING ONE’S STRENGTHS In order to develop a balanced approach, Kaplan and Kaiser (2009) suggested that we can ask ourselves three simple questions: • What should I do more? • What should I do less? • What should I continue doing? In case you have doubts, ask someone:  a family member, a close friend, a trusted peer. The authors add that it can be unrealistic to assume that people will be fully balanced but the journey to get close is critical. A complementary source of help is constituted by 360º feedback exercises (Kets de Vries & Rook, 2018; Toegel & Conger, 2093).

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Lack of self-​awareness Reflections such as the one triggered by the questions in Box 2.10 is that they allow people to gain self-​awareness.This is an important source of self-​development as people may tend to overdue their strengths and underdo their weak side. For example, the natural inclination of a gifted operational boss may lead to hyper control, while a “people person” may become too soft. In other words, leaders should reflect about whether they are “underdoing a strength’s polar opposite” (Kaplan & Kaiser, 2009, p. 101). This is important because the strength’s polar opposite is also a strength while overdoing a strength turns it into a weakness. Leaders thus need to become versatile and broaden their behavioural repertoire (Kaplan & Kaiser, 2003). The paradoxes of self-​leadership can be best accommodated if we view ourselves as “works in progress” (Ibarra, 2015b, p. 54). As works in progress, we are faced with challenges, professional and otherwise, that force us into transitions that take them out of our comfort zones. This causes discomfort because learning implies unnatural behaviours. The process of learning forces people to evolve with experience and to discover facets of ourselves that we were not aware of. In such a perspective leadership development is more an experiment with possible selves than working or perfecting a current self, putting people in the position of being “adaptively authentic” (Ibarra, 2015b, p. 58) rather than statically authentic. To cultivate this attitude of adaptive authenticity, leaders can follow several strategies. For example, they can look for coaching and work with several role models; they can cultivate reflexivity.

Reflexivity Managerial choices are consequential. Because managers tend to make choices aligned with an existing strategic intent, they propend towards consistent choices. These choices define the leader’s signature; in cases where they work, they will be reinforced. Consistent choices with a signature have a downside:  they reinforce tendencies and potentially create tunnel vision. The late Jack Welch used the logic of Six Sigma to create a highly disciplined machine, which came at the cost of reduced innovation.Vijay Govindarajan explained: “The dark side of worshipping at the altar of Six Sigma is that breakthrough innovations get cut” (The Economist, 2020, p. 56). Welch, sometimes anointed as “manager of the century” was also slow in responding to the opportunities created by the Internet. In summary and with the benefit of hindsight, Jack Welch was extremely successful in creating a disciplined organization that produced very fast and consistent results for a couple of decades, but less successful in preparing General Electric (GE) for the digital age. Although any leader may gravitate towards solutions that work, it is important to keep a critical watch over the unintended consequences of our choices, including good choices that can potentially become negative. Time will tell the difference. One should also recognize that Welch’s reputation benefited from the corporation’s results –​which were the outcome of many factors, not just his leadership. He was labelled “the manager of the century” at a time when GE

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showed good results; subsequently, when the corporation’s results started to fade, Welch’s legacy began to be filtered by a less positive lens (see Rosenzweig, 2007).

Mindsets Leaders should interrogate themselves about the mindset that they activate. Carole Dweck introduced the notion of mindsets to distinguish fixed and growth orientations, or the difference between an orientation to prove or an orientation to improve (Dweck & Yeager, 2019). A mindset is a belief regarding the nature of human capacities as fixed or developable. The growth mindset is a way of thinking, a belief that human capacities can be developed over time. A growth mindset stimulates a logic of “learning it all” rather than one of “knowing it all”, more characteristic of a fixed mindset. The growth mindset implies a paradoxical attitude: in order to grow, people and organizations must accept the presence of mistakes as part of the growth process. Leaders’ mindset affects how they assess themselves and the subsequent development decisions and actions. Leaders play a critical role in instituting the growth mindset in their teams and organizations (Waters, 2019). Those espousing a growth mindset show that a culture of learning is anchored in trial and error experiments, that honest mistakes should be represented as sources of learning, that change is to be embraced rather than resisted, and that effort matters when combined with feedback and mentoring practices that support learning. The growth mindset implies a paradoxical orientation, stimulating a balance between confidence and doubt, learning and performing, positive and negative (see Box 2.11). It is not effort per se so much as effort combined with learning that changes people’s capacities over time.

BOX 2.11  SATYA NADELLA AT MICROSOFT As the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella became famous for his transformation of the giant company based on Dweck’s notion of mindsets. He defended the need to move from a culture of know-​it-​alls to a culture of learn-​it-​alls; he defended the need to adopt a positive approach. Yet a positive approach is necessarily paradoxical: positive leadership is not about ignoring or removing the negative but rather about trying to find positive uses even in negative occurrences. As he put it, “you you’re a leader in this company your job is to find the rose petals in a field of shit” (in Ibarra, Rattan & Johnston, 2018, p. 11).

Questions for reflection • As person of the year (2019) for the Financial Times, Satya Nadella’s journey was described as “The relentless rise of a humble engineer” (Waters, 2019, p. 8). How do you interpret this narrative? • Is it necessary to be humble to develop a growth mindset? Are leaders with a fixed mindset more likely to be arrogant? Why?

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Conclusion Leader identities are often portrayed as intrapersonal and static (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). As will be discussed in the next chapter, while this is limiting leader identity matters. Self-​leadership is a never-​ending learning journey. Leading implies being aware that new times bring fresh challenges and that the division of qualities into strengths and weaknesses is a gross simplification (Kaplan & Kaiser, 2009). In fact, a strength may become a weakness, as well as vice versa. The emergence of digital organizing, for example, opens new tensions and trade-​offs (Ready, Cohen, Kiron & Pring, 2020). The new economy puts a new emphasis on speed, but speed may create barriers to the emergence of rich personal relationships (see Chapter  3). Leaders therefore need to adjust to this new need. The solution? “Great leaders today are addressing these tensions head-​on with a simple remedy: They ask for help” (Ready et al., 2020, p. 7).

Guide for further exploration To further explore paradoxes at the level of self, Herminia Ibarra’s Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader is a good starting point (Ibarra, 2015a). The author discusses the leadership development journey with some important paradoxical incursions. Manfred Kets de Vries is a long-​time explorer of the paradoxes of leaders and organizations, including those occurring as inner theatre. Read, for example, his books Riding the Leadership Rollercoaster (2016), and Coach and Couch (2015). The paradoxical combination of passion and perseverance can be explored in Angela Duckworth’s Grit (2016). A  highly recommended read for all, but especially for our female readers, is Tomas Chamorro Premuzic’s Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It) (2019).The author discusses some habitual differences between men and women and their implications for leadership. Dacher Keltner’s The Power Paradox (2016) is a good introduction to how power affects cognition and behaviour. To get a scholarly view of self-​leadership as a paradoxical endeavour, the review of Stewart et al. (2019) is very helpful.

Notes 1 SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. 2 https://​open.lib.umn.edu/​strategicmanagement/​chapter/​2-​4-​the-​ceo-​as-​celebrity/​

3 PARADOXES OF DYADIC RELATIONSHIPS

“The backbone of successful organizations” We can easily place a dyadic interactional system into larger family, extended family, community, and cultural systems. Also, such subsystems may (with theoretical impunity) overlap other subsystems, since each member of the dyad is involved in dyadic subsystems with other persons and even with itself. (Watzlawick et al., 1967, p. 123) Leadership entails accomplishing outcomes through directing, motivating and commanding others. In this chapter we discuss how leaders can create better organizations through dyadic behaviours. Leading in order to manage means exercising power at a distance, through others, these others being those persons interacting with the leader. In the past, organizations relied on communication, coordination and control to interact as leaders with others. Communication tended to be one way and top down; coordination flowed from the top of the hierarchy through the functional units arrayed below the apex; control was transmitted through the power of command from the top down. Today modern organizations that are effective increasingly supplement these basics of leadership with a concern for compassion and collaboration (Cunha, Rego, Simpson & Clegg, 2020), as building blocks of good relationships. Because “good relationships are the backbone of successful organizations” (McKee, 2017, p. 73), interactions need to be constructive enough to support collaboration and considerate enough to exercise compassion (Simpson, Cunha & Clegg, 2015). When the Brisbane river flooded much of the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, not all employers were sufficiently compassionate to deal decently with their employees. Crises reveal character: how leaders lead in a time of crisis, where they place their priorities, how they communicate, foster collaboration

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and control shows their true mettle. Leaders that emerge from crises enhanced are usually those displaying critical traits of honesty, courage, compassion and decency. When New Zealand’s leader, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, responded to the mass shooting of worshipers in two Canterbury mosques by a terrorist, she embraced the community and the nation; her raw honest emotion and decency in solidarity with the grieving community was apparent; in embracing that community as an integral part of New Zealand, she symbolized the embrace of the nation. A symbolic collective embrace was communicated by an ability to demonstrate compassion, closeness and care for individual members of the community. One-​to-​one (dyadic) relationships are an essential aspect of the exercise of leadership, whether with associates or the community at large. Robert Sutton, from Stanford, pointed out that “the higher the people move up the organization, the less likely they will be told the truth” and he adds that “senior executives will tell you ‘how much funnier they’ve got and how much better looking’, he quips” (as reported by Jacobs, 2020, p. 15). How can one get things done if people are not telling the truth? A  classic example is the Trump Presidency. A  narcissist surrounded by only those that toady, otherwise they are dismissed, Trump was acutely unfit to handle the Covid-​19 crisis. Indeed, his initial response was one of questioning the crisis, asking “what crisis”, dismissing the reports as “fake news”, a conspiracy to discredit him and America by his political opponents. By mid-​March 2020, reality broke through the cocoon of nonsense obscuring the reality: the initial response was to bail out business while resisting any suggestions that executive compensation should be limited, employees retained, paid federally, if necessary, to maintain not only the health and vitality of the market but, more importantly, the people, as the New  York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin (2020) argued. It is now clear that Trump lied. He was very well aware, from the very beginning, of the dangerous nature of the coronavirus. He told Bob Woodward, on February 7, 2020, that the virus was “more deadly than even your strenuous flus” (in Goldberg, 2020, SR3). He told Woodward that “I wanted to always play it down. I  still like playing it down, because I  don’t want to create a panic”. In reality, rather than in the world of deceit that he constantly spins, his behaviour “sabotaged efforts to contain the coronavirus, almost certainly leading to many more deaths than it would have caused under a minimally competent and non-​ sociopathic leader” (Goldberg, 2020, SR3). Indeed, what Trump’s statements and spin demonstrate is deceit practiced as an art form for which the technical term is “bullshitting” (Frankfurt, 2005). The important difference between a bullshitter and a liar is that the latter has a clear concern for the truth (actively working to hide it); conversely bullshitters are interested only in deceiving their audiences. Indeed Trump “doesn’t seem to care much whether such statements are actually true” (Christensen, Kärreman & Rasche, 2019, p. 3). Bullshitting is a very widespread practice in organizations (Spicer, 2013, 2017), as leaders often articulate statements whose contents are either composed of wilful misrepresentations or unclarifiable vagueness (Christensen et al., 2019).

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Truth about the state of reality is more difficult to occlude when deceit is communicated in a genuine two-​ way conversation, especially between equals that are equally well-​informed. It is for this reason that dyadic relationships are important. It becomes much more difficult to bullshit when in an intense and face-​to-​face relationship with one to whom one is close, either personally or professionally.Yet, a dyadic relationship is intrinsically unstable: it only takes one not to tango. President Trump is a past master in telling people that might have imagined they were in a dyadic relationship with their leader that they were “fired”, often for showing independence of judgement in the face of an onslaught of deceit and bullshit. Healthy dyadic relationships need balance to avoid entering vicious circles, either escalating in symmetrical conflicts (in which one tries to match or outdo the other’s aggression) or becoming locked into rigid complementarity (wherein a pair’s member submissiveness becomes regarded as an invite to become more overbearing) (Watzlawick et al., 1967). The organizational importance of dyadic relationships resides in the fact that they are vital to “mentoring, negotiation, workplace friendship, coworker  –​exchange relationships, employee–​organization relationships, and employee –​customer service relationships” (Tse & Ashkanasy, 2015, p. 1176).These one-​to-​one relationships, “ongoing interaction systems”, as Watzlawick et al. (1967, p. 148) called them, in various ways are of the utmost importance in the aforesaid cases. Direction, compassion and motivation are conveyed through close personal relationships, often in dyads. Of particular importance are those of leader to follower and follower to leader but other dyadic relations can include those of leader to leader or peer to peer in general, customer to employee, instructor to student and so on. In some cases, dyads constitute dynamic duos that combine competences that do not exist at the individual level alone.These duos, because they are dynamic, entrain their activities, creating relational rhythms and cycles that evolve through process (Bluedorn & Jaussi, 2008). The paradox of the dyadic relationship of leaders to followers is that to the extent that the followers depend on the grace and favour of the leader and the less bound by rules, conventions and protocols that leader is, the more followers have to fear truth telling. Hans Christian Anderson’s (2008) tale of the Emperor’s new clothes comes to mind. Organizations can do many different things to try and see that even vainglorious leaders, intoxicated by their very stable genius (even if others are sceptical), can be made to see the truth of a reality they do not wish to comprehend. They can, for example, hire executive coaches that will then walk a “knife edge”, between “telling the truth and being fired” (Jacobs, 2020, p. 15). This is especially important for senior executives because “when people get very senior you might be the only person to tell the truth” (Jacobs, 2020, p. 15). In other cases, organizations may hire professionals to play a role equivalent to the medieval jester, the sage-​fool who was supposed to convey the messages that others could not, such as Madame Zazou, the clown hired to counter the corporatist tendencies at the Cirque du Soleil (Gregersen, 2017). Another possibility consists in hiring a chief of staff that, among other roles, acts as a truth teller and confidant, helping the

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leader to analyse problems with reduced considerations related to “turf ” (Ciampa, 2020, p. 106). Being able to discriminate between evidentially warranted truth and falsehood is obviously important because how can one manage a reality whereof one does not know that it is really real rather than being a deceit of rhetoric?

Why are dyadic relationships paradoxical? Without compassion, resilient leaders will fall short. Kauffman (2020) Leaders are engaged in leading managers working with people in teams, departments or organizations.Within all of these settings there are dyadic interactions constituting the fabric of organizing.The fabric is woven through what Weick terms the “double interact” (Weick, 1979) in which one person influences and is influenced by another as they engage in organizing, socializing and managing. From this perspective, organizations are much more than merely a collection of individuals: relationships, especially dyadic relationships, make or break teams and organizations. Followers react to leaders not only according to the way leaders behave in relation to the team, organization or community but also according to the dyadic relationships that are or are not forged (see Box 3.1). It is possible that interactions thus constitute the most important aspect for analysis in organizing systems. Koestler, in The Act of Creation, offers a clear explanation of the importance of dyadic systems: A living organism or social body is not an aggregation of elementary parts or elementary processes; it is an integrated hierarchy of semiautonomous sub-​ wholes, consisting of sub-​sub-​wholes, and so on. Thus the functional units on every level of the hierarchy are double-​faced as it were: they act as whole when facing downwards, as parts when facing upwards. (Koestler, 1964, p. 287)

BOX 3.1  OWED RESPECT AND EARNED RESPECT Employees tend to rank respect as the most important leadership behaviour. However, respect is not a unidimensional construct. According to Kristie Rogers (2018, p. 64), there are two types of respect: Owed respect is accorded equally to all members of a work group or an organization; it meets the universal need to feel included. It’s signaled by civility and an atmosphere suggesting that every member of the group is inherently valuable. In environments with too little owed respect, we typically see Tayloristic overmonitoring and micromanagement, incivility and abuse of power, and a sense that employees are interchangeable.

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Earned respect recognizes individual employees who display valued qualities or behaviors. It distinguishes employees who have exceeded expectations and, particularly in knowledge work settings, affirms that each employee has unique strengths and talents.

Questions for reflection • What would happen with you, how would you react, if you worked for a leader who conveyed high earned respect to you but showed low owed respect? • And how would you react if your leader showed low earned respect to you but high owed respect? • What are the consequences for the whole team when (1)  both types of respect are low; (2) both types are high and (3) owed respect is low and earned respect is high and (4) vice versa?

The quality of relationships defines the qualities of a system. A great team is more than a sum of competent individuals. If the relationships are poor, competent individuals will not make a competent team. In this sense, becoming an excellent organization is not something that resides in the excellence of the individuals that are the sum of its parts but rather in the interactions among them. If it were simply about excellent individual players, Brazil would have beaten Germany in the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Rio. As it was, it was not the most gifted individuals that won but the team that collaborated best. It is not only in football that high quality relationships make high quality organizations (Dutton, 2003). Good relationships or connections energize people and organizations; low quality connections are toxic and create political rather than open communication (Heynoski & Quinn, 2012). Relational interactions, be they regular or merely episodic, are rich in tension and contradiction, as illustrated by current attention to microaggressions. Microaggressions may be defined as those everyday acts of thoughtlessness and lack of consideration that, perhaps inadvertently, communicate offence (Agarwal, 2019). Leaders, in particular, have to guard against such semiotics in words and deeds. Collinson (2005, p. 1435) points out that even though prevailing views of leadership present leadership relationships as inherently consensual and uncontested, “in leader-​follower relations there is always the potential for conflict and dissent”. Organizational leaders, for instance, may ask people to do different, even opposite things, such as when they ask them to raise service quality and cut costs. As Berti and Simpson (2019) suggest, this type of requests may easily create pragmatic paradoxes, because people have to disobey one or other injunction in order to obey: service quality is not free and reduced cost are not free of service implications. These paradoxes do not just emerge in dyadic relationship because someone makes contradictory requests (such as “be spontaneous”), but also because the receiver of the command is not able to step out of a rigid, oppressive relationship, to question

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the absurdity of the request and to renegotiate it (Watzlavick et al., 1967). To overcome pragmatic paradoxes, it is important to create rich supportive and generative dialogical spaces. In these spaces people can try to discover how to turn apparent dilemmas into “both-​and” situations, creating generative paradoxes that can become opportunites for learning and innovation (Smith & Lewis, 2011). Leaders may learn how to use these tensions productively to create better organizations. In the absence of support, this process will be more problematic (Francis & Keegan, 2020). Tension and conflict are inevitable and minimizing them is not always wise; out of dissensus, innovation and creativity may flow. Thus, good organization is not organization free from conflict and power struggles but is organization that realizes and relishes its essential political nature and strives to orient this to good purpose. The paradox of power can reassert itself in these contexts; faced with tensions and conflicts on the part of followers, leaders may strive unilaterally to exercise their power of decision to settle matters as they determine. Macho exercises of power, however, signify a failure of organizational idea work (Coldevin et al., 2019) as they do not resolve tensions through creative dialogue but through authoritarian diktat, albeit clothed in the authority of the leader. It is more realistic not to stamp out tensions but to use dyadic relations to manage tensions more productively (Box 3.2), something that can be done dyadically by the leader leading the ways in setting the terms of engagement.

BOX 3.2  USING DYADIC POWER TO CREATE HIGH QUALITY CONNECTIONS Consider the case of Margaret, a pseudonym, who participated in one of our executive programs. Margaret came from what she called a noisy family in Northern Portugal. When asked, as were her colleagues, to identify the best leader she had ever met, she answered with no hesitation: “My grandmother”. Because, she explained, “I was her favourite granddaughter. But if you ask my sisters, they will also give you the same answer. She made us all feel that we were her favourite granddaughters”. This is a powerful illustration of the power of dyads. Good leaders use the dyad to show that for them every employee is special. But here’s the paradox: if everybody is special then nobody is special. Not necessarily. In this chapter we appreciate the critical level of the dyad in organizations. Interestingly, however, in spite of its importance, the dyad has been understudied (Tse & Ashkanasy, 2015).

Question for reflection • How do you interpret the behaviour of the grandmother and her granddaughters from the perspective of the content of Box 3.1? What would have happened within family if only Margaret had felt that she was the favourite?

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Leading, even when knowing that tension is inevitable in relational spaces, implies understanding others’ points of view, their experiences, anxieties, hopes and projections. For this reason, empathic understanding is important in leading (Pfeffer, 2021). Tensions will be inevitable for the reasons outlined in Chapter 1: different people will have different histories and motivations and their interests will often collide. The point is not to remove conflict from relations so much as learn how to live with conflict and turn it into a force of growth. Definitions of organization often emphasize the individual as a major unit of analysis. In this perspective, an organization is a collective formed by individuals working in a coordinated mode.There are elements of truth in this definition, especially in organizations that practice extreme individualization of employees through remuneration schemes. Such behaviour is graphically represented in the film Glengarrry GlenRoss (Foley, 1992). As the film demonstrates, what really matters in terms of organizing is less the individual and more the spaces between them: how do people relate? How do they interact? What basis is there for trust? How do they create what kind of value?

Tensions in dyadic interactions Leadership is a relational phenomenon, as articulated by leader-​member exchange theory, abbreviated as LMX (a useful overview can be found in the meta-​analysis carried out by Dulebohn, Bommer, Liden, Brouer and Ferris (2012). LMX presents leaders as engaging in exchanges with their hierarchical subordinates. As people are different in their dispositions, motivations and experiences, they necessarily engage in differential relationships with their leaders. Such differences are normal but differential relationships between leaders and different team members create tensions (Boorman & Diebig, 2020; Henderson, Liden, Glibkowski & Chaudhry, 2009; Hooper & Martin, 2008; Yu, Matta & Cornfield, 2018), especially when people expect to be treated uniformly by their leaders. Much of the symbolic infrastructure of organization, their formal bureaucracy, codes and rules, is designed to try and iron out differences in relations. Yet, using formal rules to reduce interpersonal tensions can cause paradoxically vicious circles. Impersonal rules can reduce the conflicts that derive from direct, one-​to-​one supervision, while having the side effect of demotivating people, inducing ritualistic behaviors that call for additional control and supervision (Gouldner, 1955). Analogously, bureaucratic rules that are introduced in order to curb discretional behaviors require interpretation, thus expanding the space for discretional action (Crozier 1964). For example, leaders’ experience with differences collides with the expectation that they should treat their people in the same way: there will always be some that are preferred more or less than others for reasons that are multifarious, often complex, not always articulated. Hence, two sets of expectations are created that are in opposition to each another. Leaders should treat people differently, because they are unique in their differences while they should treat people uniformly because organization members of the same team have, in principle,

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equivalent rights and obligations (Rogers, 2018; Rogers & Ashford, 2017). An organizational catch 22 occurs: damned if you do respect uniqueness, damned if you don’t (Ashforth, 1991; see also Box 3.3). One can in principle be critical about a boss if this person treats everyone uniformly well or bad but the boss can also be criticized if they treat each member’s unique differences differently because such treatment may reveal preferences and favoritism (please revisit Box 3.1).

BOX 3.3  KEY THINKER: PAUL WATZLAWICK Even if Watzlawick was not an organizational scholar, his contribution to the study of organizational paradoxes is instrumental to acknowledging that paradoxes, once considered only in the realm of formal logic, have important implications in the social sphere. His most influential work, Pragmatics of Human Communication (co-​authored with Janet Beavin and Don Jackson), he built on the seminal contribution of Gregory Bateson to discuss the performative effects of communication, i.e., the intertwinement of communication and action. Exploring the pathologies of communication, Watzlawick uncovers the existence of “pragmatic paradoxes”, contradictory and interdependent (thus paradoxical) requests. Examples are the paradoxical injunctions:  “Do something spontaneous” or “Don’t follow my advice”. When these absurd requests are experienced in the context of an intense and power-​distanced relationship, hindering the possibility of discussing the order, they give raise to “double binds” that can be experienced as paralysing situations that can even degenerate into forms of mental illness.

As discussed in Chapter 1, relations are a process which take place in time and space. Organization demands collaboration and collaboration requires a measure of proximity between people, often quite close proximity if they are working collaboratively –​one of the reasons why, when social distancing was being practiced during the Covid-​19 crisis, much normal working and organizing became problematic. Even in normal times, proximity is never simple; over time relationships change and proximity can generate separation as tensions emerge between collocated members. A study by Uribe, Sytch and Kim (2020) suggests that a history of collaboration, instead of facilitating future collaboration, can become a liability and escalate conflict between the former partners. As the authors summarize, friends can become foes. All relationships have their histories and some histories can be toxic.

Paradoxes at the dyadic level Close relationships, such as those implied by many dyads, are rife with paradoxical resonance. Proximity generates intimacy as well as rivalry and animosity. Dyads are thus an important, if somewhat neglected, level of organizational action and analysis.

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Dyads are important in organizations for several reasons. A number of crucial organizational processes take place in dyads:  performance feedback tends to be dyadic; coaching takes place face to face; organizations stimulate their people to engage in one-​to-​one communications and relations. In other words, dyads provide the framework within which some of the most important conversations take place. Yet, this face-​to-​face intimacy also creates its own problems. Even when a leader is giving the other their best attention, the gift may not be well received: To give is to show one’s superiority, to be higher in rank, magister. To accept without giving in return, or without giving more back, is to become client or servant, to become small, to fall lower (minister). (Mauss, in Dunne & Spoelstra, 2010, p. 70) Therefore, one’s gift of time and attention may not be well received by the person on whom it is bestowed. In cases where the receiver feels to be under an obligation to the communicator, the gift may not be perceived as such. Many communications in organizations are framed in this way; a superordinate requests a private meeting with a subordinate, always a potentially stressful situation. Perhaps the meeting is just to exchange views or information; nonetheless, the difficulty of communication in organization is that it not only involves information but also relationships as depicted in Figure 3.1 (Watzlawick et al., 1967). Reducing communication by maximizing information, through email or websites, simply makes organizations seem more disembodied, minimizing the possibility that leaders will understand what is at stake on those occasions when people

Positive relations

There is some tolerance from the part of the receiver. But if the low quality of information persists, it may hurt the relationship.

Information is well received. Gaps and incorrections can be corrected. The relationship is generative overall.

Poor content

Rich content

The relationship is toxic. It will be difficult to rescue it. It may even act as a deterrent to improve the quality of the information.

The information is rich and accurate, yet it may not be well received. The relationship will constitute a communicative “black hole” that will suck in the information.

Negative relations

FIGURE 3.1 Two

parallel communication tracks: content and relationship.

Source: Based on Watzlawick et al. (1967).

90  Paradoxes of dyadic relationships TABLE 3.1  Paradoxes at the level of dyads

Performing

Learning

Contradictions in getting things done at the level of a pair:

Dyadic tensions between stability and change:

• Equality and difference • Star performers • Tough love

Belonging

Tensions between maintaining identity while being a couple: • Multiplying versus diminishing • Intimacy without • Learning dyads intrusion (I): coaching •  Empathy • Learning dyads •  Distant proximity (II): reverse coaching

Organizing Tensions between controlling and opening up in a dyad: • Reciprocity • Dis-​empowering •  Contradictory obligations

engage in dyadic interactions. The content of these communications may be rich but there is no reciprocity or feedback, no chance for reflexivity in communication where the relation is minimal, with little chance of moving into the positive zone. Leading authentically requires forms of presence, something that many organizations in thrall to digital communication might well learn the hard way. The tensions of close presence are discussed next, as depicted in Table 3.1 (part of Table I.1).

Dyads and the paradoxes of performing Dyadic relationships are important for performance; they are a way of communicating authenticity. If not managed well, dyadic relations can just as easily communicate inauthenticity through indifference, lack of attention or microaggression. Face-​to-​face relationships help establish how performativity is being interpreted in real-​time recursive reflexivity. Face signifies what types of performativity is important for people in an organization and shows what matters in the ways that people are managed and led through various interaction rituals involving “face work” (Goffman, 1967). Face work entails important processes that help define the difference between treating individuals as people with identities or as resources that are barely registered.

The paradox of equality and difference Performance matters not only because of its economic worth but also because it is important in interpreting and defining social worth. Leading and managing this process is complex because there is a tension between two assumptions that people often bring to work: (1) They expect to be treated as equals, in the sense that we expect general rules and principles to be applied equally on egalitarian principles. (2) They expect their unique individuality to be respected.

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These two principles are opposite and interdependent, implying that people expect to be treated in an individually fair way within the context of collective general rules. These themes have been addressed in literature on organizational justice (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter & Ng, 2001; Moorman, 1991) and respect (Rogers, 2018; Rogers & Ashforth, 2017) and they imply a delicate balance between the two forces of rules and relations (see Box 3.1). Rule clarity facilitates the work of leaders. In terms of relations, as studied by LMX theory, leaders may not provide followers with consistent treatment. In fact, over time leaders typically develop differentiated relations with each team member which, repeated over time, will lead to the creation of in-​g roups and out-​g roups. When repeated interactions crystallize patterns, LMX theory predicts that in-​ groups and out-​g roups (Graen & Uhl-​Bien, 1995) will form. These subgroups are potentially managed differently: the in-​g roups are led while the out-​g roups are commanded. Originally targeting vertical dyads, recent developments are now emphasizing more diverse interactions, including other informal, unstructured and interpersonal exchanges in the workplace (Gottfredson, Wright & Heaphy, 2020). The LMX and differentiated leadership (Harris, Li & Kirkman, 2014; Wu, Tsui & Kinicki, 2010;Yu et al., 2018) approaches indicate that unique dyadic relationships necessarily introduce tensions as different people will interpret differential treatment in different ways (e.g., favouritism), which subjects leaders to paradoxical expectations:  they need simultaneously to differentiate and integrate at the level of their teams. Leaders need to understand that their job is closer to playing chess than checkers (Buckingham, 2005). Yet it is important to make sure that they treat their teams homogeneously and idiosyncratically.

Star performers Fighting the war for talent is hazardous to your organization’s health. (Pfeffer, 2001, p. 248) Teams and organizations benefit from the presence of star performers, something that is especially obvious in sports, where the star commands disproportional amount of attention and dedication from fans. The same phenomenon has been identified in organizations. Star performers contribute disproportionately to collective performance (Aguinis & O’Boyle Jr, 2014). Stars, thus, seem to display positive effects. However, stars can be perceived as arrogant and be envied by those less in the limelight. They may behave arrogantly and damage team cohesion and cooperation. Regardless of how they behave, they may be received and treated with “suspicion” by the current team members, a reason that explains why hiring stars may be risky and does not necessarily contribute to increasing team performance (Groysberg, Nanda & Nohria, 2004; Pfeffer, 2001). On the one hand, some organizations will celebrate stars, especially where they are collaborative and compassionate with respect to others. Other organizations, such as Netflix, develop

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anti-​prima donna approaches (Schleckser, 2006). In other cases, organizations try to coach potential stars so that they shine brighter. The work of Casciaro and Lobo (2005) is important in respect of coaching: they consider two types of competence, social and technical. Socially competent and thus more likable individuals express a specific type of competence that should not be discounted. When people combine social with technical competence, they have the preconditions for stardom. Thus, a star is not merely a technically superior colleague but one that is also socially more competent in considering others. Such people are paradoxical, as Kets de Vries (2012) remarked. Their likability comes from the fact that they often question their own competence. In turn, their prosocial behaviours make their competence less threatening for others. The expression of concern for others by competent employees makes talented colleagues allies and collaborators rather than potential competitors (Bolino & Grant, 2016). The capacity to deliver superior performance without an attitude of superiority stimulates respect for and learning from the star performer, rather than hostility, something to which “rank and yank” environments are particularly prone.

Tough love Aspire to be a leader that people want to follow –​It’s not about the leadership, it’s about the “followership”. By being ‘tough, fair and trustworthy, you create a cadre of constituents’ that have a stake in your success. “Followers get to determine who the great leaders are”. (Anne Mulcahy’s advice, in Von Bergen, 2013) It is classically assumed that good leadership involves a sense of consideration for the led. Leaders, in other words, have to be benevolent. Benevolent leadership refers to leaders acting in ways that demonstrate holistic care for employees (Gu, Hempel & Yu, 2019). Benevolence may stem from care for the other or what has been called companionate love (Barsade & O’Neill, 2014). In some cases there appears to be an element of voluntary servitude in the relationship between leaders and followers (Lindebaum & Courpasson, 2019), where an authoritarian boss may be respected and perceived as a condition for individual growth. Such a relationship is expressed in characters such as Anne Mulcahy, in some TV star chefs, sports coaches such as Bill Campbell, as well as in movies such as Whiplash (Chazelle, 2014). Here is how Mulcahy was portrayed in this regard (in Von Bergen, 2013): Toughness and empathy go hand-​ in-​ hand. “Toughness comes from the willingness to make the decisions that others don’t want to make”. More toughness? Having the courage to deliver the tough message also counts. When Mulcahy was slashing jobs, she delivered the bad news herself to each business unit and didn’t rely on underlings.

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Tough love characterized this paradoxical dimension of care as a paradoxical combination of softness and hardness. An excess of protective care can be problematic for organizations as it may reduce the sense of accountability, which is when a measure of authoritarian leadership, understood as leader inclination for control and obedience (Aasland et  al., 2010), may come into play. The bulk of research tends to assume, since Lewin et al.’s (1939) classic work on “social climates”, that authoritarian leadership is negative (Zhang, Tsui & Wang, 2011). Yet, some work indicates something different:  authoritarian control and a measure of dissatisfaction do sometimes stimulate positive outcomes, such as creativity (Zhou, 2006), provided that the leader can also be compassionate and benevolent. The relationship between love/​care and direction/​authority can thus be more complicated than suggested by a linear view that would establish a negative correlation between authoritarian leadership and loss of creativity, for example. The presence of benevolence and moral leadership, as Gu et al. (2019) have pointed out, acts to offset the negative effects of authoritarian leadership on processes such as creativity. There are many possible explanations for this result, including the attempt of autocratic-​benevolent leaders to coach and mentor their young employees. There are other explanations:  an element of authority may increase stress that, up to a point, may act as a stimulus for employee activation. The tough love paradox is not meant to be perceived as offering carte blanche for authoritarian behaviours.

Dyads and the paradoxes of learning The fact that leaders are agents for learning is well established in the organizational literature (Garvin, Edmondson & Gino, 2008) but learning and innovation do not happen because some superordinate someone wants them to happen. The will to learn may backfire and even reduce the organization’s learning capacity. Demanding goals may lead people to engage in first-​order types of learning that paradoxically end up reproducing the status quo. Therefore, organizations may benefit from seeing learning as a paradoxical journey. We highlight three processes that may stimulate learning: multiplying versus diminishing leaders, coaching and reverse coaching.

Multiplying versus diminishing Leaders play an important role in the learning process depending on the choices they make with regard to relating with others. Leaders may multiply talent, i.e., expand it, via the interactions they establish with their teammates. In this perspective, as in others (see the discussion of mindsets in Chapter 2), leaders support development by seeing talent as something that is malleable. The case of Bobby Robson is emblematic (Box 3.4).The English football coach played an important role in the development and professional success of two Portuguese coaches, José Mourinho and André Villas  Boas.

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BOX 3.4  EXERCISE: A TALENT MULTIPLIER Bobby Robson (Picture 3.1) first met José Mourinho as a member of his staff when working with Sporting CP, in Lisbon, Portugal. He was fired and travelled to FC Porto, where he met André as a 16-​year-​old neighbour in the city of Oporto. He was able to spot talent where others would possibly see no special gifts. He played a critical role in the professional ascent of both of these coaches. He supported them in different ways and played a fundamental role in their careers. Mourinho won the Champions League twice (with FC Porto and Inter) and Villas-​Boas won the Europa League, the youngest coach ever to win a European trophy.

Consider the following questions • What makes some people such as Sir Bobby Robson able talent spotters? • What are some effects of working with people like Robson? • Might the same approach work in other professions than sports?

PICTURE 3.1 The

statue of Sir Bobby Robson outside Ipswich Town F. C.’s home stadium Portman Road in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. Source:  Author:  Nick. https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Sir_​Bobby_​ Robson_​statue_​in_​Ipswich,_​15_​August_​2009_​(2).jpg. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

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Leaders may facilitate learning when they project high expectations in their followers, the so-​called Galatea effect (Eden & Kinnar, 1991). The way leaders differentially interact with their teams and more specifically with their team members is thus a relevant part of the process of professional development. An excess of expectations can backfire in different ways. On the one hand, leaders may project excessive expectations towards their subordinates and because failures are more likely in those circumstance, such expectations may lower subordinates’ self-​efficacy, with negative consequences for their performance. On the other hand, leaders may make subordinates believe that their talent is not negotiable; being appointed, they must be talented which means that people will be predisposed to think that they will be successful because the organization and its leaders make the right personnel choices.

Learning dyads (I): coaching Coaching became a popular leadership approach with a regular presence in the management discourse (e.g., Ibarra & Scoular, 2019 for an illustration). Coaching is an example of the power of dyads for learning. As we will explore in the next chapter, learning in teams is fundamental for organizations. Dyads are also important in their own terms. In well-​functioning dyads, people have the space to discuss things that might not be broached in small team contexts. Dyads are protected spaces on which rich conversations flow more easily. Some of these conversations may also happen in teams but dyads provide the space for people to confess their fears and anxieties and these human moments occur mostly (although not obligatorily) in dyads. The dyad in a coaching relationship or in a mentoring relationship offers a safe space for emotional messages to be conveyed in the open that might be difficult in more political contexts (Gratton & Ghoshal, 2002). Even in high trust contexts, some messages are too personal to be shared. Good leaders create space for people to cultivate their dyadic safe spaces, something that can happen in friendship relationships, coaching (with the leader or a professional coach) or mentoring (a young professional with a more seasoned one). What these relationships have in common is a quality of professional intimacy, spaces for professional engagement with an element of trust. Such trust is often neutralized in more political organizational contexts. When a coach is also the boss there is paradoxicality in a coaching dyadic relationship. In such cases, subordinate sharing with the leader as coach may be in conflict with what one is willing to share with a leader as supervisor. Being coach/​ leader/​boss is not easy and is probably better avoided.

Learning dyads (II): reverse coaching Typically, coaching and mentoring relationships involve people with different levels of seniority. Some organizations, however, are experimenting with reverse coaching (e.g., Harvey, McIntyre, Heames & Moeller, 2009). Reverse coaching aims

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to facilitate learning through flows of communication that are directed “upstream”. Roles can be reversed with advantages both ways. For example, given the current emphasis on the Millennials’ generation (as employees and as customers), it can be considered that Millennials can teach more senior managers how to cope and prepare organizations for their futures. Doing so is a positive process conducted more easily in the protected setting of a dyad characterized by mutual respect. In a dyad, hierarchies can be cancelled and liminal spaces created in which the usual order is suspended. In these spaces new possibilities may be explored; learning from one another mutual respect can develop as well as leader arrogance diminish. The process is not as simple as sometimes it is supposed to be. In reverse coaching, the follower, as a transparent and frank coach, is also simultaneously a subordinate. The paradox is obvious: the coach is expected to speak truth to power and counsel weaknesses in that power, a power that can act with prejudice towards them.

Dyads and the paradoxes of power and belonging The dyad is an important unit of analysis for transmitting a sense of belonging. People are part of teams and organizations but their relationships with some colleagues, individually, are critically important. In some moments having a best friend or a close boss are critical resources for providing the sense of support one needs.

Intimacy in the absence of intrusion Gender relations complicate dyadic relations, a topic that is so important we give it extra space in this chapter. The development of second and third wave feminism has highlighted issues of inappropriate behaviour at work. #MeToo serves as a high profile social movement founded out of this experience which, in the case of Harvey Weinstein, precipitated successful criminal conviction. Everybody who is employed brings their self to work. One cannot be one’s self at work without being embodied. Judith Butler (1993) discusses the body as a material thing whose construction is framed by a field of power relations that shape its contours, characterizing it as sexed and gendered. Butler notes that such construction is “a temporal process which operates through the reiteration of norms” (1993, p.  10). Gender relations are performed within the context of regulatory norms whose performance frames the materiality of the body as an object and sometimes a subject of organization. It is the case in many organizations that there is neither sufficient normative regulation of these relations on the part of the organization of all men employed therein nor on the part of all the male employees. Sexual harassment of females by males (the reverse is less common but not non-​existent) is a workplace hazard where dyadic relations are marked by unreconstructed attitudes towards gender relations from the past. Today, many women have achieved professional distinction in careers that were once wholly male preserves (Goldin, 2006), assuming positions of leadership. Recent research has highlighted how female leadership can involve a “paradox of

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power”: “rather than reducing exposure to sexual harassment, power in the workplace seems to put women at greater risk” (Folke, Rickne & Tateshi, 2020, p. 180). High rates of harassment have been discovered in a major US study of women in their 30s that have reached supervisory positions (McLaughlin, Uggen & Blackstone, 2012). Various reasons have been advanced. One reason is that as women advance in their careers and find themselves in settings with more men, they are likely to be engaged in more dyadic relations with them than in the past, becoming more distanced from a still subordinate female cohort. Supervisors are often the focal point of subordinates’ opinions and actions, exposing them to whatever accounts of supervisor actions are current, some of which may draw on familiar prejudicial gendered tropes. In addition, females that gain authority positions over men may be subjected to the mobilization of masculinist biases and resentments embedded in being in an inferior role to a woman. Comparative research in the United States, Japan, and Sweden by Fiolke et al. (2020) supported the paradox of power hypothesis. Empirically, female supervisors were the women most likely to report being harassed in widespread survey research conducted in three waves in Sweden, culminating in 2007, as well as in research conducted in 2019 in Japan and the United States. In Japan and Sweden, the rate of harassment of female supervisors was reported as being 30% higher than for women in general; in the United States it was 50% higher. In all three countries, women who supervised “mostly male” subordinates faced about 30% more sexual harassment than those with “mostly female” subordinates. The levels of harassment were greatest in industries such as construction, seen as typical masculine preserves. Harassment diminished with the seniority of the supervisory position. Norms of leadership may clash with stereotypical perceptions from male subordinates of what women are or should be. Pragmatic paradoxes are frequently experienced by women in the workplace (Berti & Simpson, 2019). In some working roles (think of flight attendants, for instance) female bodies are expected to be simultaneously sexualized and de-​sexualized objects (Wendt, 1995). When performing professional roles that are traditionally “masculine” (e.g., being an engineer), women may be implicitly expected to renounce aspects of their femininity if they are to be accepted as a peer by male colleagues. Female leaders are particularly exposed to contradictory expectations: they have to be authoritative to be taken seriously, “but they will be perceived as ‘bitches’ if they act too aggressively” (Oakley, 2000, p. 324). Taking charge and delegating work motivates higher rates of harassment as women are exposed to higher status than men but if they stay the course and succeed to higher level positions, the harassment is likely to diminish. Not only is it the case that subordinates are a problem; promotion produces greater interactions with leaders, exposing supervisors to higher status men who can take advantage of their relatively junior position (MacKinnon, 1979). Only elevation to senior leadership positions lessens exposure to harassment in dyadic relations. Typically, in many contexts women become scarcer on the higher rungs of organizational hierarchy, in which the experience of prior harassment plays a part. Where organizations are characterized by a lack of normative regulation of identity-​based forms of

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harassment, such as gender, the dyad as an important relation for transmitting a sense of belonging can instead lead to a sense of not belonging, of being stigmatized on the basis of difference. The hazard of sexual harassment leads many women in supervisory positions to abandon leadership ambitions because of its effects on their psychological well-​being, productivity at work and sense of belongingness in the workplace, leading to women becoming scarcer in leadership positions in organizational hierarchies (Bertrand, 2018; Blau & Kahn, 2017). Gender is the most statistically evident of abused identities but there are many others that can lessen the sense of dyadic belongingness, such as ethnicity, age, language and disability, structuring leadership in seemingly exclusive traits of able-​bodied and ethnically homogenous masculinity. As Folke et al. (2020, p. 118) argue: The paradox of power means that, because sexual harassment can potentially discourage women from seeking promotion, women’s leadership talents are not realized at the same rate as men’s. Organizations are losing women’s skill and potential for these higher positions, while women are losing the wages, status, and voice in society that such jobs can bring.

Empathy Empathy is an important organizational ingredient and a crucial characteristic for developing positive dyadic relationships, helping to create rich and generative organizational relationships. The case of Microsoft is illustrative: Satya Nadella, the CEO (see also Box 2.11), considers empathy a critical factor for healthy organizing. Empathy makes relationships richer as they allow leaders to cultivate a more humane approach to work. Empathy is important in seeing workers as people rather than “human resources”. Emphatic relations are supported by a relational-​expressive use of language (Tsoukas, 2016) where language is employed to relate with the other rather than to convey one’s thoughts. Instead of just thinking about the other we become responsive to the other. This relational use of language facilitates dialogical uses of language that are potentially more constructive than the defence of one’s point of view (see Box 3.5).

BOX 3.5  EMPATHIZING WITH A RACIST It is possible to use relational language even with people whose opinions one abhors. Consider the following illustration from Manuel Monteiro (2019). On a trip, he came across a man who disliked black people. Because it would be useless to recommended books or studies or to offer non-​racist arguments, he kept quiet. The man possibly interpreted silence as acquiescence. He heard the man’s arguments without responding. At some moment, around lunchtime, he suggested a restaurant. The food was good and in the restaurant they

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encountered an African man from Cape Verde, who was intelligent, educated and polite. Monteiro’s companion said that it was possibly a single case as he never met anyone from there to which Monteiro rejoindered that there are others like him in Cape Verde. It could be a singular case, the man responded. “But look”, Manuel insisted, “I have also met people from Mozambique that are very smart and peaceful”. The man also said he had never met anyone from there. At the end of the conversation, he recalled someone he had once met from Mozambique, as a nice man with great mathematical skills. And he concluded:  “Maybe you’re right”. Monteiro notes that possibly this man is probably still racist but he felt happy because, for a period of 20 minutes, he planted doubt in his mind. As Monteiro points out, using the speech of hate against a speech of hate is normally not terribly effective.

One may use the opportunity of conversation and dialogue to create empathetic understanding with another that ended in the other’s practical everyday consciousness, shifting just a little. Leadership can be similar to this at times, coaxing and coaching the other in ways that are empathetically preferred. Yet, as Waytz (2016) has pointed out, the quality of empathy, if unaccompanied by other virtues, such as courage and honesty, can become problematic (see also Box 3.6 and Picture 3.2). Leaders with an excessive amount of empathy may have difficulties in doing the work of leadership. They can hold back from taking necessary measures when these measures might be discomforting to the other. Imagine what will happen to a leader of a healthcare unit who, being so empathic, suffers with the others’ suffering and is thus unable to make tough but wise decisions. Empathic leaders may even protect (or, at least, avoid confronting) an unethical follower, peer or boss because they don’t want to feel the pain they anticipate if they speak up against unethical actions. Yet, avoiding problems for others may create problems for organizations; for example, in the face of ethical misconduct, incivility or other areas that require leaders to set the tone. Empathy can thus cause ethical breaches.

BOX 3.6  EMPATHY –​A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD FOR CEOS AND OTHER TOP LEADERS? In their paper “A blessing and a curse”, König, Graf-​Vlachy, Bundy and Little (2020, p. 130) suggested the following about the effects of CEO’s empathy in times of crisis: • Empathy is a blessing in that “highly empathic CEOs will recognize warning signs more quickly, have access to more crisis-​related information, gain greater stakeholder appreciation via displays of compassion, and be more committed to healing the organization’s relational system”.

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PICTURE 3.2  New

Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visiting the Muslim community the day after the Christchurch mosque shootings, March 16, 2019. Source:  Christchurch City Council (https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​ File:NZ_​PM_​Jacinda_​Ardern_​-​_​Kirk_​HargreavesCCC.jpg). This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. • Empathy is also a curse because highly empathic CEOs “may be more predisposed to false alarms, more biased in processing crisis-​related information, over inclined towards apologetic sensegiving, and less committed to repairing the organization’s operational system”.

Questions for reflection • Considering these arguments, should, or should not, a company select a highly empathic CEO? • Is there any way of benefiting from the blessing while avoiding the curse? How? What kind of leader profile is more consistent with such a paradoxical endeavour? • Do you identify any leader, in the political or corporate arena, with such a paradoxical profile? In case you don’t, read about Jacinda Ardern and try to understand how she reacted towards the Covid-​19 pandemic. Do you consider that she corresponds to such a paradoxical profile?

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Helping behaviours Dyads are also important because they constitute spaces, par excellence, for helping behaviours. To carry out their tasks, organizational members may benefit from seeking and receiving help, and some organizations see helping behaviours as a core behavioural pattern of their organizational culture (Amabile, Fisher & Pillemer, 2014). In periods of distress and anxiety, people do need human moments (Hallowell, 1999), moments of proximity that typically happen in moments of closeness. Creating these is easier said than done because seeking help can be perceived as threatening, especially between people of different status (Lee, 1997). In cultures in which seeking help is interpreted as a weakness, helping others may lead the receivers to adopt opportunistic behaviours that jeopardize the givers.Yet, work as a deeply human activity, when reduced to a merely functional practice, is diminished. Work potentially can be performed with creativity and pride, appreciation of which is positive feedback. Where this is lacking work becomes alienating, tedious, routine, soul-​destroying. Paradoxically, asking for help can be a manifestation of strength rather than of weakness and contribute to creating stronger bonds rather than dangerous dependence (see Box 2.3). Coupled with expressions of gratitude (e.g., saying “Thank you”), help seeking and help giving behaviours may create a culture where prosocial behaviours are common and contribute to individual and collective performance (Grant & Gino, 2010). Close relationships, especially of attraction, can become organizational taboos (Cunha, Clegg, Rego & Story, 2015). When work is represented only as a productive endeavour in which people are regarded merely as cogs in a machine, some close relationships hardly have space for expression. There are moments in which people might need support in the toughest moments, for example, the death of a loved one (see, e.g., how leaders of Reuters behaved after 9/​11; Vera, Samba, Kong & Maldonado, 2020). In this case, it is important that the manager allows and helps people to grieve. Managers therefore need to create spaces for intimacy without intrusion. Consider the following analysis by Petrigleri and Maitlis (2019, p. 121): Close colleagues typically will reach out to grieving coworkers, but it is especially important that a manager does. Managers represent the organization, and their demonstration of support is a signal that the workplace cares. Helping need not be a strictly inter-​individual behaviour as some organizations instigate the creation of helping cultures (Amabile et  al., 2014). Yet, personal moments have effects that are not strictly work-​related because they are important in showing that the organization sees itself as a human and caring community, as well as a professional community of practice (Wenger, 1998; Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002). Helping behaviours are important within and across levels. For leaders, because power creates a subjective sense of separation (Lee & Tiedens, 2001), leading is an

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exercise with a dimension of solitude that makes human moments of fundamental importance in moments of stress. To prevent growing isolation and derailment that can lead to leader self-​destruction (Kets de Vries, 1989), it is important that leaders have someone they trust and with whom the burdens of leadership can be shared. Human moments are important in containing anxiety and helping leaders sensemaking of stressful situations (Weick, 1995). Creating these moments is valid not only for those in leadership positions but also for individuals in general: we all need a friend to help us cope with adversity. The feeling of social support, of not being alone, increases resilience (Giustiniano, Clegg, Cunha & Rego, 2018; Luthans,Youssef & Avolio, 2015), which is especially important in moments of crisis (Giustiniano et al., 2020). Having a good friend at work has been found to be a characteristic of great workplaces (Clifton & Harter, 2019) and an important component of employees’ engagement (Gallup, 2017).

Dyads and the paradoxes of organizing Organizing a dyad can be seen as a natural process, something that simply happens as two people adjust. While the process may take place spontaneously, making its organization explicit rather than implicit, may facilitate the process. In this section we explore three paradoxical tensions of organizing at the dyadic level.

Reciprocity As we mentioned earlier, dyads are important because this is the level where some of the most intimate and important interactions happen in organizations. People share their thoughts when they feel they are respected. It is important that those in leadership positions understand that what they do is embedded in a relational power differentia. It is not only what they do and the positions that they hold that is important; the way that they semiotically signify their position, even when well-​ intentioned, creates power distance, be it distant or close.The basis of organizational action that is less power distancing is reciprocity and mutual respect, rather than accentuation of difference. Reciprocity and mutual respect is ethically preferable to being dictatorial and brutal. Stouten and his colleagues (2013), however, have found that leaders that act in highly ethical ways are often perceived by followers as being somewhat arrogant and superior. The consequence is that followers reduce their willingness to engage in organizational citizenship behaviours. Organizations face a dilemma between having highly ethical leaders acting to reduce unethical behaviours while simultaneously promoting positive, cooperative behaviours.

Contradictory obligations Some jobs and the organizations in which they are situated are paradoxical in their content. Consider prisons: almost all prisons have as part of their goals and

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objectives to reform the criminally convicted so that they do not reoffend. Given this, we have to conclude that most prisons are permanently failing organizations because they consistently produce more recidivism than renunciation of criminal behaviours. The mission of prison consists in both punishing and reintegrating, creating contradictory obligations, both in-​role and between roles (therapists and guards). The interactions between elements of these groups and sometimes within the groups involves both collaboration and contestation. There are power struggles and the system incorporates these power struggles as part of the status quo. For prison governors, as leaders, managing these tensions imposes emotional labour, creating the need for mutual adjustment on the part of prison officers. To cope, organization members sometimes split roles and play the well-​known “good cop –​ bad cop” approach (Tracy, 2004). In addition to being a negotiation tactic, the role split allows prison guards to regulate their authenticity (Wenzel et al., 2019). These role plays imply a measure of mutual knowledge and respect, often combined with some animosity. Similar approaches can be found in numerous organizational interactions that do not involve actual legally empowered officers. They happen in all walks of life, for example, in families in which parents sometimes assume different roles that in reality can switch. In management teams, namely in cases of co-​leadership (see Box 3.7), one person may play the role of the inspirational leader and the other the role of the disciplinarian manager and so on.

BOX 3.7  CO-​LEADERSHIP 1 We tend to think about leadership as something that one person (the leader) does. This idea is rarely true. Organizations have management teams, and inside these there are often two people with critical roles, the “two in a box” approach:  the chief executive officer and the chief operating officer. These two people can perform dual leading functions for different reasons such as expertise complementarity (medical and managerial competences in a hospital), role complementarity (a good cop, a bad cop) or cognitive complementarity (e.g., a poet and a plumber, see Introduction). For these dyads to offer different but complementary perspectives, there must be trust reward alignment and a shared vision. When it happens, pairs can offer more complete competences than individuals.

2 That good leaders should express tough love is a proposition we have advanced. Miles and Watkins (2007) point out that it is difficult for a leader “to be both feared and loved” (2007, p. 94). Some people can perform both

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roles while others are more comfortable in just one. They have what in theatre is called a narrow range. In addition, when someone specializes in one role (e.g., the bad cop), people may simply not accept them as good cops. That was the case of Douglas Ivester as CEO of Coca-​Cola. Ivester acted as COO for Roberto Goizueta. As a team, they performed extremely well: the urban diplomatic Goizueta and the “hard edge disciplinarian” Ivester (Miles & Watkins, 2007, p. 98). When Ivester took the CEO role, after the unexpected death of Goizueta, he was not able to swap roles. He failed as a CEO. Even if he tried to assume a softer role, it is not clear whether people would have accepted the change.

3 On August 27, 2011, Deutsche Welle (Schneibel, 2011) published the following: Deutsche Bank on Monday appointed Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen to jointly succeed Josef Ackermann as CEO in 2012. It will be the first time the bank has had a dual leadership structure since the 1980s. Jain and Fitschen will be expected to share responsibilities in leading Germany’s most established international bank (…). Deutsche Bank was last under dual leadership in the 1980s. News that it would revert to the power-​sharing model and has been met with mixed responses by analysts and experts. Rick Vogel, a professor of Business Organization and Management at the University of Hamburg, says Deutsche Bank currently has good reasons to introduce a dual leadership structure. In the best-​case scenario, co-​CEOs complement each other; in the worst case they block each other. Four years later, Henning, Enrich and Strasburg (2015) wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the co-​CEOs had resigned: The joint resignations follow a series of financial missteps and regulatory penalties at the giant Frankfurt-​headquartered bank. In recent weeks, the pressure has intensified, with an increasing number of shareholders and employees losing confidence in the bank’s performance and the management team’s turnaround plans.

Questions for reflection • Why the worst case scenario materialized? • Explore also the conditions that make the co-​ leadership more likely to flourish and those that jeopardize the partnership success.

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While performing these roles, it is important that people gain awareness of the benefits of the paradoxical-​by-​design relationship or it can be a source of friction. The roles imply “styles” that are not necessarily dispositional but job-​related. It is important, though, that the inspirational leader and the realistic manager appreciate and defend the other in public or the relationship can go awry. Managing these tensions is a difficult balancing act, as attested by the rarity of co-​leadership; nonetheless, when dual competences are hard to find in a single person, combining the two differentiated roles via co-​leadership can be a viable solution.

Dis/​empowering Disempowerment is a source of pragmatic paradoxes. Empowerment refers to the process of feeling a sense of control over one’s work. When leaders disempower those they lead, they create absurd contradictions that cannot be escaped. These are more frequent than is often assumed. For example, when a boss pushes people to be creative, an absurd situation is created because creativity is not something that you can command. When a supervisor tells an employee that “I am punishing you for your own good”, a paradoxical situation is enacted. When a leader tells people that they must take initiative, an initiative is being mandated that can only be responded with conformity. The life of organizations is replete with situations in which leaders inadvertently create paradoxes that are difficult to avoid. Organizational values and policies need to be validated at the interactional dyadic level.The result is that in the same organization, the same policy may be articulated in very different ways depending on the quality of the relationship with the leader. For example, Cunha and his colleagues (2019) found that the value of psychological safety was appropriated in two very different ways by people in different teams in the same organization, depending on their differential relationships with their direct manager. Managers validate or invalidate the organizational guidelines. On the contrary, when the quality of the relationship with the boss is good, people do not necessarily wait for empowerment because they already feel empowered. Consider the case of Ben & Jerry’s as described by Philip Mirvis (1994, p. 83): Ben & Jerry’s fed ice-​cream overflow to pigs near its headquarters some years ago. A heavy fine and adverse publicity over untreated waste-​water led the firm to redesign quality control and construct a treatment greenhouse. But it was not until Gail Mayville, secretary to the president, led a self-​initiated programme in recycling and voluntary “green teams” were formed in plants that executives took up the mantle of environmentalism. Here environmental activism developed “bottoms-​up” and moved to the top of the corporate agenda only when Ben Cohen, a co-​founder, had to “run to get in front of the parade”.

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Instead of giving orders that create absurd contradictions, managers may empower people to create situations propitious to the desired behaviours. Empowerment as an element in organizational culture is deeply anchored in the relationships with one’s boss, paradoxically so because to be subordinated and to be empowered are mutually contradictory poses. If I do not trust my boss’s advocacy of my initiative, I will be ignoring the organization’s indications to do so by being aware of my relative lack of power to be innovative, display initiative and be creative.

Managing dyadic paradoxes Managing a dyadic relation is in practice managing a system. As everyone engaged in a relationship knows all too well, such a system is no less complex and its management no less demanding than other larger systems. As Watzlawick et al. (1967, p.  132) explained, “Interpersonal paradoxes are reciprocal and interlocking (…) with both parties in a complex, untenable, yet apparently inescapable bind”. From this, we extract three main lessons for managing dyadic paradoxes: (1) leaders are expected to be caring and directive while being close and distant (being impersonal and personal); (2) leaders are expected to be stretching and protective (being directive and protective) and (3) they are expected to create relationships that are dynamically equilibrated (relationally formal and informal). Recent work suggests that leaders should do quite contradictory things. On the one hand, it is advised that they project what can be called a form of companionate love (Barsade & O’Neill, 2014), an expression of care that is fundamental for good leadership to flourish. On the other hand, however, research also indicates that leaders need to establish challenging, sometimes even stretching goals (Locke & Latham, 2002; Sitkin, See, Miller, Lawless & Carton, 2011). How can these two expectations be connected? Leaders need to care and protect, challenge and keep a distance. Lack of care creates a solitary situation while the absence of challenge may maintain people in their comfort zone, which means that learning will be residual. An excess of challenge is demotivating, as suggested by goal setting theory (Locke & Latham, 2002). Excessive demands cause anxiety; too little demand may produce boredom. As such, leaders may need to express tough love, i.e., a form of action that is both demanding and caring, an exercise that is delicate as it requires a combination of proximity and distance. As Solomon (1998, p. 525) observed, to think of care as only a kindly, nurturing affection is to get less than half of the story. Caring can also hurt, and we can understand –​though we do not forgive  –​the “tough-​minded” executive who uses his façade of indifference to avoid the pain when he is forced to let go a trusted and faithful subordinate. Finally, it is important to remember that interpersonal dynamics evolve over time. Therefore, it is important to consider that leaders expect relationships to change.

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A protégé will become independent; a close colleague may become a rival. Indeed, a goal of leadership is to develop people to become independent. Coaching serves to develop leadership skills and the test of a leader’s quality resides in a capacity to help others grow. Therefore, it is important to consider that leadership concerns developing people rather than making friends. Occasionally, co-​ workers may become friends and it is certainly important to have friends in the workplace but leading is not necessarily the easiest way to make friends.

Conclusion As Watzlawick et  al. (1967) point out “interaction can be considered a system” (p.  119). Therefore, the dyadic interactional system deserves to be treated with the theoretical respect offered to any other system. The dyadic system has specific challenges, given its particular attributes. This is the space where proximity is built and where individuals make sense of the quality of their organizations. Phenomena such as learning, justice, meaning and support are all affected by what happens in the dyad. It is thus important to be mindful of the great power of this small organizational unit.

Guide for further exploration To continue the study of the paradoxes and tensions of dyads, Watzlawick et al.’s (1967) classic book Pragmatics of Human Communication offers a fascinating account of the paradoxes that people produce as they interact.The book also contains a very important and often ignored message for leaders and managers that communication is both content and relationship. On the relational dimension of management and organization, Adam Grant’s (2013) Give and Take is recommended reading. Aguinis and Bradley (2015), Aguinis and O’Boyle Jr (2014), Groysberg et al. (2004), Kets de Vries (2012), and Pfeffer (2001) help to understand challenges and paradoxes of hiring and leading star performers.

4 PARADOXES OF TEAM DYNAMICS

Teams are not collections of individuals As Dalal (2009, p. 74) has pointed out, “human groupings are not found but made” (italics in the original). While groups can be an informal congregation, such as seeing a group of friends at the beach, teams are formally organized both in sport and work in organizations more generally. “A team can be defined as two or more people psychologically contracted together to achieve a common organizational goal in which all individuals involved share at least some level of responsibility and accountability for the outcome” (Clegg, Kornberger, Pitsis, Mount, 2019, p.  75). Therefore, teams are not mere collections of individuals who work independently for one another in the same space. The making of teams is a process with paradoxical resonance. In teams, as well as in society in general, “one finds oneself emphasizing certain differences in order to create a differentiation” (Dalal, 2009, p. 76, italics in the original). The process is explained by Norbert Elias (1969) in his book The Civilizing Process, in which he argues that a core function of the rules of etiquette created by European nobility was to establish difference between their elite caste and other status groups, solidifying class distinctions, which in many subtle ways are founded on matters of taste and aesthetics in consumption (Bourdieu, 2012). Inevitably, once difference was introduced by the nobility, it was imitated by aspirational status seekers and spread over time in a rationalized form throughout what was seen as constituting and defining the social order. Elias’ thesis in The Civilizing Process (1969) identifies a long-​term trend in Western European societies towards a restriction and refinement of social behaviour (for discussions of Elias’ work and approach, see, e.g., Clegg & van Iterson, 2013; Fletcher, 1997; Kilminster, 2007; Mennell, 1998; Smith, 2001;Van Krieken, 1998, 2019). In organizations there are processes that have some similarities with the civilizing process:  the groups of people congregated organizationally through individually

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random processes invest time and resources in managing their similarities and differences, especially as they are composed into teams. In these teams, individuals are expected to act in concert with other “interdependent individuals who share identities and have common interests” (Spisak et al., 2015, p. 292). Restrictions and refinements find organizational expression in ingrained dispositions (cf. Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) to act, think and feel in ways emotionally controlled, curbed and refined, according to organizational formal rules and informal team norms. People strive to be similar but also different, to be unique, in their individuality. In an organizational context, groups of people, especially as they form or are formed into teams, can learn to express deep needs for belongingness while also establishing difference from other members (Rego & Cunha, 2012). Teams within the same organization need to cooperate with other teams –​but they also need to compete with them for resources, members, prestige and so on. Teams can not only be paradoxical internally as members strive to both emphasize collective and individual identity, but also create organizational paradoxes: they are created to add value but often reduce it by erecting barriers that define a collective as a team differentiating it from other teams. To make matters worse, when they don’t function well, perhaps because of insufficient collectivity in identity and too much individuality, teams require significant effort to run (the Brazil side in the 2014 FIFA match against Germany is the classic case in point). That being the case, all the advantages of teamwork become disadvantages: • • •

Diversity becomes a barrier and a source of disagreement rather than a source of richness and complementarity. Relational ecosystems become individual egosystems. Time is wasted in power struggles (within and between teams) rather than invested in elevating complementarities.

A single example may illustrate the paradox. A team composed by individuals with very high individual self-​efficacy may develop lower team self-​efficacy if they are not able to cooperate and to share knowledge effectively. This occurrence may be not frequent –​but one can observe the phenomenon, for example, in soccer teams where narcissistic and self-​centred stars may contaminate team spirit (see Box 4.3). The late Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos, epitomized this idea in an interview (in De Smet & Gagnon, 2017, p. 8): It’s also important to understand that the best-​performing teams are not created by simply putting together the best-​performing individuals. Have you heard of the “super chicken” research? With chickens, you can measure productivity through how many eggs they lay. And so, in this study, Strategy One was to breed, say, ten chickens in a cage, find the best-​producing ones, breed them for the next generation, and then see what happens six or seven generations down the line. And what they found was that at the end of the six or seven generations, Strategy One had these super, alpha chickens, and

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any one of them was an amazing producer. The problem is they killed half of the other chickens in the cage. Teams thus constitute both a source of advantage as well as a source of disadvantage: teams can increase the agility of an organization when they collaborate and move fast in high priority projects (Yeung & Ulrich, 2019); however, they can also be a source of rigidity when they project their uniqueness and difference, sometimes settling into feuds and local turf wars (Buchanan & Badham, 2008). In his book The Hedgehog Effect, Kets de Vries (2011) describes teams as relational soups, just as a homemade soup is composed of various bits and pieces of unrelated ingredients that are available to go in the stock pot. Sometimes the flavours blend and gel; other times thin gruel results rather than rich potage. So it is with teams; they can easily be more or much less than the sum of their individual parts, depending on the blending. To illustrate, teams can create tensions because they have multiple goals and different people may have different views about these goals and how to achieve them with these preferences changing over time. Think of famous groups in music:  The Beach Boys, Beatles, Rolling Stones, ABBA, The Kinks and Oasis all had dysfunctional internal relations (see also Box 4.1). As Alexis Petridis (2019, p. 17) explained, “the internal psychology of rock bands is a tricky thing for outsiders to fathom”.

BOX 4.1  THE PARADOXES OF CLASS IN THE MOVIE PARASITE Bong Jon Ho’s Oscar-​winning movie Parasite offers a nice illustration of the logic of paradox when the poor Kims, who live in a subterranean nook, join the domestic staff of the wealthy Park family. “She’s rich but she’s still nice”, Ki-​taek says of Yeon-​kyo, the rich wife; “She’s nice because she’s rich”, replies Ki-​taek’s wife, Chung-​sook. As the film critic Danny Leigh (2020, p. 6) described, one of the strengths of the film is that it seems to always have “two thoughts in its head at once”. He described the movie as “a spectacular epic and a tightly wound chamber piece, chicly sophisticated, brutal as a hammer”. Holding two thoughts at once, as F. Scott Fitzgerald (1936) also observed, may be just another way of speaking about intelligence as the capability of handling paradox.

Why are teams paradoxical? The idea that teams express paradoxical qualities is well established in the literature. Smith and Berg discussed this idea in their now classic book on The Paradoxes of Group Life (Smith & Berg, 1987; see Box 4.2). Teams can be seen as an organizational microcosm, in which the inevitable tensions that criss-​cross organizations are

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present.While teams are spaces for collaboration they also incorporate rivalries; they stimulate proximity but proximity triggers a desire for difference; they sometimes develop a “team spirit” (Silva et al., 2014), but an excess of such “spirit” stifles the benefits of difference. In summary, teams incorporate tensions and contradictions that replicate what happens at other organizational levels. Good teams add potency to individual qualities, whereas poor teams reduce such potency (Rego et al., 2013).

BOX 4.2  KEY THINKERS: KENWYN SMITH AND DAVID BERG; AMY EDMONDSON The paradoxical nature of teams was the theme of Kenwyn Smith and David Berg’s book The Paradoxes of Group Life. The authors laid the ground for future work on the tensions pervading teams, such as the tensions involved in speaking and engaging. The call of attention to the contradictions of teamwork were important in opening up the “black box” of the team as paradoxical unit. Another important contributor to the study of the paradoxes of teams and teamwork has been Amy Edmondson. A professor at Harvard Business School, Edmondson studies the way the process of learning unfolds in teams and organizations. She explains how great teams learn by paradoxically combining psychological safety and accountability. Even though paradox is not explicit in her work, the tension between these two processes is clear.

To lead teams is an exercise in paradox because teams imply that contradiction washes all the way through their life cycles. While composing a team there is benefit in introducing diversity that is not easy to manage, especially if it introduces fault lines. These may be demographic differences, implicitly dividing the team into subgroups. Fault lines (see Thatcher & Patel, 2012) introduce divisions potentially harmful to the quality of interactions. As they perform, teams face another paradox: they are more successful when people identify with the whole and contribute to the team with their distinctive personal strengths (Smith & Lewis, 2011). Teams are at their best when they accentuate both similarity and difference. But the similarity-​difference, collaboration-​r ivalry interplay has the potential to elicit strong emotions (see Box 4.3).

BOX 4.3  THE VALUE OF HAVING AN I IN A TEAM DEPENDS ON HAVING A TEAM IN THE I In 2017, the football star Neymar transferred from FC Barcelona to Paris Saint-​ Germain FC, a successful French football team, with great media attention. The move cost PSG the record-​breaking €222 million, and expectations were

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very high. PSG’s president, Nasser Al-​Khelaifi, showed delight at getting the star:  “Today, with the arrival of Neymar, I  am convinced that we will come even closer, with the support of our faithful fans, to realising our greatest dreams” (Lowe & Aarons, 2017). However, shortly after, Neymar’s stardom started generating damages in the team. On September 17, 2017, during a match between PSG and Lyon, when Cavani (the penalty taker in the 2016/​ 2017 season) was carefully placing the ball on the spot, Neymar suddenly blocked his way and harsh words were exchanged. The Guardian explained (Lowe & Aarons, 2017): Within hours of the final whistle, the rumours were already swirling as newspaper reports suggested that the pair had to be separated by team-​ mates in the dressing room after the match, with Cavani then eschewing his press duties in the mixed zone and sneaking out of a back entrance less than 20 minutes after the match had ended. (…) As the days passed, more rumours began to emerge of the incident’s destabilising effect on the PSG squad. The Catalonia-​based newspaper Sport even went as far to suggest that Neymar informed Khelaifi “that his coexistence with Cavani is totally impossible and he has asked for the transfer of the Uruguayan striker”. Dani Alves, another PSG player, by trying to throw some water in the boil, organized a dinner for the whole squad at an exclusive restaurant. However, it was claimed that the dinner “had been ‘as animated as a funeral wake’, with the majority of the squad said to have sided firmly with Cavani since Neymar’s arrival in Paris”. Despite efforts carried out by other players and the PSG’s president that have been aimed at placating Neymar’s expression of ego, a new tantrum by the star on January 17, 2018 led the crowd to boo Neymar. Reason:  he had impeded Cavani from scoring a penalty that would have allowed him to break a personal record (White & Devin, 2018). PSG fans chanted “Cavani, Cavani” as the Brazilian superstar took the penalty. As the consequence of the big “I” of Neymar, the Spanish magazine Marca wrote on March 14, 2020 that PSG expected Neymar to leave, valuing him at 150 million euros.1 Two weeks earlier, the same magazine had considered Neymar as “the king of kindergarten” (Hurtado, 2020) and wrote: “He’s the king-​to-​be of the nursery and has been angry since the beginning of classes. One day he hits an opponent, the next day he gets angry about a change, the next day he threatens to leave for Barcelona or promises to stop breathing”. The risks of individual stardom are not exclusive to sports. In business, performance is a collective and systemic endeavour. This explains why some stars “lose their shine” after moving to another team and why it is risky to hire them (Groysberg et al., 2004). Is a big “I” and the rivalry between team members

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perverse for the team’s cohesion? Not necessarily. The rivalry between the oarsmen of the Cambridge University Boat Club pushes them to make every effort to be included in the team to compete in the Oxbridge race (Picture 4.1) –​and this healthy rivalry strengths the team. Something similar happens in “normal” organizations. Nick Wilkinson, former CEO of Dixons Retail, argued: “The I in team is important but there’s no scope here for people that are only ever I, meaning it’s always about them and them alone, and everyone else got to hell” (de Rond, 2012, p. 61). Mark de Rond (2012, p. 68) argued that the seemingly contradictory forces of cooperation and rivalry may coexist in a productive way, as “competition weeds out inefficiency in an otherwise collaborative environment”. However, this represents a big challenge for leaders: “To get the balance between competition and collaboration right is one of the most difficult team-​leadership challenges” (de Rond, 2012, p. 62). Here’s the lesson: whether a big I in the team is a good or bad thing depends on having or not having a big team in the I. They compete within their own team (for being selected to participate in the race) and against the other team.

PICTURE 4.1  Oxbridge

boat race, 2002, just after the finish of the 2002.

Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:2002-​oxbridge-​boat-​race.jpg. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-​Share Alike 3.0 Unreported license.

114  Paradoxes of team dynamics TABLE 4.1 Types of team paradoxes

Performing

Learning

Contradictions in Team tensions getting things done between stability at the level and change: of the group: • Psychological safety • Performance and accountability • Cohesiveness • Team porosity • Team versus • Exposition to individual goals alternative logics

Belonging

Organizing

Team tensions between individuality and belonging:

Tensions between autonomy and control in a team:

• Team fault lines • Hedgehog  effect • Less hierarchical • Consensus and designs dissent • X-​teaming • Winning and losing

Different teams find different ways of addressing the paradoxical tensions they face. There are no recipes. In their study of British string quartets, Murnighan and Conlon (1991) found that high performing quartets “played through” the tensions instead of embracing confrontation. In other cases, confrontation is accepted. In fact, in each situation the members need to define ground rules; failure to do so is one of the most divisive things teams can do. The team level is thus as rife in paradox as are other levels of analysis. You have probably intuited the idea that teams have a paradoxical potential from what we have written. We all know it from experience:  working in a team can be a wonderful experience but it can waste energy. Teams are composed to benefit from diversity but sometimes they end up being dominated by one person or clique. Teams can be working well but then a new member joins and destroys team balance and equilibrium. In summary, teams are fragile social ecologies that need constant care. Good teams are not spontaneous creations but are constructed by their members through the totality of their interactions. In the sections that follow, we discuss some of the tensions that team leaders and members have to balance to create well-​functioning teams. Paradoxes mentioned in Table 4.1 will be discussed.

Teams and the paradoxes of performing Teams have multiple goals. In line with previous work, we consider three major criteria of team effectiveness: performance, cohesiveness and learning (Hackman, 2002). These goals offer different types of gains:  social belonging, learning and development, material compensation. These cannot be taken for granted. There are paradoxical challenges contained in all three which help to explain why teams that look so similar when seen from the outside can in fact be so different when experienced inside.

Performance Teams are evaluated primarily in terms of performance. Sports teams are effective if they win; researchers are rewarded for the research grants they attract and the

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journal publications they achieve; salespersons receive bonuses for what they sell. Of course, teams are evaluated by their capacity to get things done; thus, teams may be said to depend on the presence of technically skilled individuals, although this oversimplifies knowledge of the true nature of teams. Teams also depend on how people help others to reach their goals and work cooperatively. Even in seemingly very objective jobs, such as sales, salespersons are evaluated not only for their sales but also for their willingness to help others when necessary. Sales managers manage their teams not only in regard to the function of sales performance but also their organizational citizenship behaviours (Posdakoff & MacKenzie, 1994). Performance may mean very different things for different observers of a team. For a CEO, performance may be a measure of the attainment of a number of metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). For the team leader it may refer to these metrics and to the overall functioning of team culture, whereas for the members it may refer to personal goal achievement, combined with social metrics such as the individual’s attitude towards other members of the team and the type of local culture it encompasses.This last item is of the utmost importance as people may prefer to leave a team with which they feel little fit (Buckingham & Goodall, 2019). The previous notes on performance may seem intuitive for many readers who may have experienced them one way or another as a team member; however, they contain paradoxical undertones. Bergeron (2007) has observed that there is a tension, a trade-​off, between task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours. The more organizations emphasize performance in terms of billable hours and sales figures, the more they discourage forms of social solidarity and extra-role behaviors. It makes sense: if I help others in performing their tasks (thus contributing to team performance), I will have less time to focus on my in-​role tasks and thus develop lower individual performance. Finding a balance between these forms of performance is thus imperative.

Cohesiveness Team cohesiveness is a valuable outcome. Cohesiveness suggests images of collective harmony, people moving in the same direction.Yet this is one of the topics whose nefarious effects have been most documented in research. A number of historical disasters, such as the launch of the Challenger space shuttle and the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, as well as recent scandals such as VW’s dieselgate, have been associated with groupthink phenomena, the process by which teams pressure their members in the direction of conformity (Gaim et  al., 2019). Team cohesiveness may be a facilitator of groupthink: to protect the sense of team cohesiveness, team members avoid to speak their minds and focus instead on reaching a (fictitious) consensus. Sometimes, it is the team leader who protects his/​her ego and power (or hides his/​ her real problematic goals and ambitions) by emphasizing that the dissensus and disagreement kills team cohesiveness and damages team spirit. This “strategy” was used by Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos –​a highly promising company that was, after all, based on fraudulent promises (Carreyrou, 2019). Thus, team leaders need simultaneously to promote consensus and dissensus.

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Ground rules define the team’s identity and can be formed to promote both consensus and dissensus. Teams often do this implicitly in what some authors call the norming phase of forming, but it is possibly advantageous to clarify and render ground rules explicit. Ground rules, or a small set of simple rules, may permit the group to handle tension in a paradoxical way, allowing them to agree to disagree (Sidle, 2007). A Project Charter can often provide such a baseline of project rules for a project team (Clegg, Skyttermoen & Vaagaasar, 2020). Agreement about disagreement is more constructive when people distinguish functional and personal conflicts. Disagreements around substantial issues may allow better decision making and create a culture that respects diversity and difference, something that does not necessarily come naturally but must be cultivated (see Box 4.4). An organization that nurtures diversity through formal policies may be sending a strong message to its teams.

BOX 4.4  NURTURING DIVERSITY: AUTISM-​FRIENDLY WORKPLACES When we think about diversity, we tend to consider factors such as gender and race. Yet diversity can have a much broader meaning. Some organizations are developing programs to hire people with neurodiversity, such as being on the autistic spectrum, a syndrome that affects people at all levels of intellectual ability. People with this syndrome can be very productive. But increasing employment of neurodiversity requires work and preparation. For example, as noted by Judith Williams, head of diversity and inclusion at SAP, in the recruitment process you should not ask a person with autism vague questions such as “How are you?”. The autistic person may simply answer “I feel terrible”, which will raise doubts in a regular job interview. Autistic people have proved to be highly dedicated in solving problems that require intense focus in areas as diverse as customer support and quality control. Steph, a person with autism, explained that “Looking out for these patterns is just how my brain works. I can sit happily with a spreadsheet all day, going through data in a way that some non-​autistic people would probably find quite boring” (Rovnic, 2019, p. 43). Creating neurodiversity-​friendly workplaces implies more than human recruitment and job design. Auto Trader, a UK-​based online car marketplace, prepared office space to accommodate the needs of people with autism that were more sensitive to noise or lightning.

Team versus individual goals Teams have collective goals, such as playing great music in the case of a string quartet or winning a game in the case of a sports team. These collective goals

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coexist with individual objectives. Leading a team implies facilitating a combination of both. Good teamworking helps the team reach their goals by allowing individuals to reach theirs. To some extent these objectives must converge. In their study of the meaning of team spirit in a non-​professional football team, Silva et al. (2014) found that team members were aware of the tension and they considered that this was an important factor for nurturing a team spirit. This was evident, for example, in the idea that different players in different positions have distinct objectives. For example, strikers tend to be more individualistic. Their goal is to score, which makes them a special case in which an extra dose of individualism seems acceptable. Research and anecdotal evidence indicate that teams perform better when they accept the tension between the individual and the collective. Even when intentions are aligned, the operation of a team will inevitably bring tension and disagreement to the fore. For this reason, it is better to assume that great teams are not those that suppress difference but are the ones that accept it as a motor for teamworking. Some teams’ achievements stand out because of their appreciation for difference (see Box 4.5).This is especially important in complex decisions and when creativity and innovation are at stake.

BOX 4.5  EXERCISE: THE BEATLES Who was the most important member of the Beatles (Picture 4.2)? Options may vary but one of the reasons for their continued success lies in the fact that every member was valued and appreciated. There were tensions but the band managed to make sure that every member felt valued. Some of the strategies they used were the following: they offered visibility to all the four musicians, namely by putting Ringo Starr’s drumkit on an elevated plane so that he could be seen by the audience. The goal was to assure the four that they were all fab. They made sure that songs composed by every member were recorded, although initially they were a covers band, with only Lennon & McCartney composing. Later, as George Harrison matured as a songwriter, his compositions became increasingly incorporated. By the time of their last studio album, Abbey Road, his were the contributions that stood out from the other tracks. When they each recorded their solo albums, it was Harrison’s that contained both the most and the most consistently polished material as he drew on compositions that had not made it into the group repertoire as the tensions in the band grew.

Questions for reflection • What lessons can other teams take from the case of the Beatles? • How can a team you know give a member a higher stage? What is a higher stage for a normal team?

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PICTURE 4.2 The

Beatles, June 5, 1964.

Source:  https://​noord-​hollandsarchief.nl/​beelden/​beeldbank/​detail/​a540bcd3-​ cad5-​6309-​a5b1-​11d42ac6aa9e (see also:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​ wiki/​File:The_​Beatles_​in_​Treslong._​NL-​HlmNHA_​1478_​2588K_​08.JPG). Author: Poppe de Boer. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Note:  the drummer was (temporarily) Jimmy Nicol because Ringo Starr was ill. • Was this strategy credible considering the preponderance of Lennon and McCartney? • Was The Beatles’ success the fruit of the interdependency and complementarity of its individuals members? Why no individual member, after the band dismantled, got the stardom that the band had gotten?

Teams and the paradoxes of learning Teams are a critical unit for organizational learning (Edmondson, 1999; Rebelo, Lourenço & Dimas, 2020). Part of what people learn in organizations they learn within teams that have a diversity of competences and perspectives; these are crucial for learning. Yet learning does not happen necessarily just because people are working in teams. Teams are more than a simple assemblage of people; they are fragile human ecologies that need to be nurtured for learning to be possible. The case for teams as anti-​learning units is possibly best illustrated by the phenomenon of groupthink, situations in which “the members’ striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (Janis, 1982, p.  9). Groupthink is caused by uniformity pressures, by team polarization (the

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tendency for group discussion to enhance a dominant viewpoint) and by framing effects (a higher attitude to risk-​taking that derives from having to choose between unattractive options) (Whyte, 1989). Because of groupthink, it is particularly difficult to play the role of the “gadfly”, alerting other team members of possible mistakes, or going against common opinion revealing faults in assumptions and reasoning. Past successes can also embolden decision makers, entrench particular ways of acting and thinking and lead to a concentration of power that makes team decisions more inertial and rigid (Miller, 1993). It is therefore necessary to put in place a number of measures to help teams to overcome these rigidities and to learn to embrace learning paradoxes.

Psychological safety and accountability Amy Edmondson (see Box 4.2) contributed to our knowledge of the team learning process by emphasizing the paradoxical combination that is necessary for teams continuously engaging in learning. Learning requires effort; its accomplishment is habitual: people that might otherwise prefer the status quo, especially in contexts where confronting the status quo is viewed with suspicion and where failure is taken as an indicator of incompetence rather than as the result of an experimental attitude, have to make a habit of learning new things that also means letting go of old ways of acting and thinking. In her work, Edmondson (e.g., Edmondson, 1999; Edmondson & Lei, 2014) found that learning depends on the presence of psychological safety. Psychological safety can be defined as expectations that the team will provide a secure base for assuming one’s point of view, to try and even to fail. Psychologically safe places offer a sense of protection in which it is acknowledged that failure and honest mistakes will not be stigmatized. Seeking and giving help is not risky, rather it is acceptable and even recommendable. These cultures appreciate the aesthetics of imperfection (see Box 4.6).

BOX 4.6  CELEBRATING FAILURES Thomas Murton (2004) wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the approach adopted by Ely Lilly towards failures: Lilly has long had a culture that looks at failure as an inevitable part of discovery and encourages scientists to take risks. If a new drug doesn’t work out for its intended use, Lilly scientists are taught to look for new uses for a drug. In the early 1990s, W. Leigh Thompson, Lilly’s chief scientific officer, initiated “failure parties” to commemorate excellent scientific work, done efficiently, that nevertheless resulted in failure. Other drug companies are also seeing the importance of tolerating  –​and

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learning from –​failure, a valuable strategy since about 90% of experimental drugs in the industry fail. For example, Pfizer Inc. originally developed the blockbuster impotence drug Viagra to treat angina, or severe heart pain. Lilly has taken this approach to unusual lengths. (…) Many Lilly drugs have risen from failure. This approach helped to turn the failure of Alimta (experimental chemotherapy drug) into an effective treatment for mesothelioma.

Questions for reflection • Does it make sense to carry out “failures parties” and celebrate failures? Why? What are the advantages and risks? • Ten years later, Alicia Clegg (2014) published an article in the Financial Times with the following comment: “The drugmaker subsequently realised this was poor motivational psychology. Used to learning from experimentation, its scientists did not take kindly to seeing their best efforts paraded as flops”. Why “failure parties” may be a “poor motivational psychology”? Does it mean that “learning from failures” is a bad team/​organizational policy?

The notion that there is an aesthetic side to mistakes and imperfections has been advanced by Weick (2003). Drawing from jazz,Weick defends the idea that mistakes be incorporated in the learning process and that good mistakes are a source of learning (see also Barrett, 2012).This is reflected in the defence of Google’s “fail fast, fail cheap” logic (Hall, 2007), in W. L. Gore’s attribution of “Sharp Shooter” trophies to managers who kill projects by identifying problems that others left unspotted (Lovallo et al., 2020), or in the advice of the great jazz musician, Miles Davis: “do not fear mistakes, there are none” (in Chang, 2006, p. 295). In the absence of psychological safety, mistakes will be dangerous and a culture of fear will prevail. Fear precludes learning and improvement (Deming, 2018; Ryan & Oestreich, 1991). Psychological safety needs, however, to be tempered with an element of accountability. In the absence of accountability, safety may amount to complacency. Complacency is as dangerous as fear. A  paradoxical combination of toughness and caring (see Chapter  3) is thus necessary to nurture good teamworking (see Figure 4.1).

Team porosity A third component, in addition to safety and accountability, must be added: cognitive diversity (Reynolds & Lewis, 2018). Without such a diversity, a psychologically safe team develops a uniform approach towards problems and opportunities. Differently, when a psychologically safe team is also cognitively diverse, this diversity

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High accountability Toughness Leaders are demanding and not protective Possible actions: Risk avoidance Hiding mistakes Low psychological safety Laissez faire leaders Leaders are hands-off Possible actions: Careless cultures ensue

Tough love Leaders are demanding but protective Possible actions : Mistakes create innovation

Protective leaders Leaders are paternalistic and over-tolerant Possible actions: Mistakes serve no learning

High psychological safety

Low accountability

FIGURE 4.1  Learning

in teams as paradox (inspired on the research of Edmondson).

has a favourable stage to flourish –​the team being curious, encouraging, experimental, inquiring, creative and innovative. As we have noted throughout the chapter, teams develop identities that serve them as sources of differentiation from other teams.Yet an excess of team identity is problematic. To counter the pernicious effects of identity, organizations can create conditions for openness, for example, introducing some team porosity (see, e.g., Pentland, 2012). Such porosity is characteristic of X-​teams (see the next section) and it can be used to unearth assumptions and to call attention to established logics. Inviting a customer, a member from another department, a rival, are all strategies that can be used to stimulate groups to look critically upon themselves –​to zoom out. Bringing external experts to allow organizations to learn is advised as an antidote to groupthink. Because groupthink is a process of convergence, organizations can counter this tendency by stimulating teams to open up. Opening up can also occur by taking teams out of their habitual workplaces and spaces and making them see the world with the eyes of the customers as in the methodology known as gemba: you learn by walking around. Doing the same things with the same people in the same space leads to funnel vision. Opposing this may be achieved by doing different things with different people in a different space –​ even if everything is taking place in the same organization. Outsiders may help us to see a problem or an opportunity from a different and wiser perspective. As Katherine W.  Phillips (2014) argued in the Scientific American magazine, “Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-​working”.

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Expose your team to different logics To learn and avoid insularity teams may expose themselves to other teams with different ways of thinking. A  study in a food cooperative (Ashforth & Reingen, 2014) offers some valuable evidence. The cooperative was composed of two main groups of members, the idealists, attracted by the values and the purpose of the coop, the other group being the pragmatists, interested in buying good foodstuffs at advantageous prices. Each group was deeply aware of the presence of the other group and they split on an ingroup-​outgroup basis. Relationships were often tense because of this cleavage, but each of the groups was also aware of the relevance of the other. People were able simultaneously to send positive and negative messages to the other group. Relationships were repaired when necessary. The pragmatists considered the idealists too unrealistic. The idealists disliked the materialism of the pragmatists. Yet each group realized that the tension that the other group brought was indeed valuable for the organization as a whole. In other words, although the tension was intense, it facilitated organizational learning. The implication for management is that organizations can stimulate teams to engage with other teams with which they will, in principle, disagree. Agreement is important; indeed, it is agreeable; nonetheless, disagreement is valuable, especially when it occurs over substantive rather than personal issues because we learn from difference more than from similarity. Leaders may thus think about how to invite team members in agreeing to disagree. Exposure to different logics is important to be able to develop the necessary ability to align, at the same time, with contradictory demands (i.e., adopting a both-​ and approach). For instance, the trade-​off between creativity and standardization cannot be simply “solved” by finding the right balance between the two. Research has shown that there are contexts in which customers privilege the reliability and lack of ambiguity that comes from standardization while, at the same time, creativity is necessary to maintain team performances (Gibson et al., 2005). Therefore, teams need to foster both creativity and standardization in their activities.

Teams and the paradoxes of belonging As de Rond (2012) points out, there is an I in team (see Box 4.3). Teams are simultaneously a group of individuals (a group of “I”s) and a sum that transcends the individuals (a team, with a specific identity). From a paradox perspective, a team is not one thing or the other: it is both. To be both it needs to cultivate a delicate balance between integrating and differentiating individuals.

The hedgehog effect Teams thrive on proximity; as a unit of analysis, they offer space for proximity and intimacy that big organizations cannot provide. Yet, proximity can be excessive, as

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we discussed in the previous chapter. With intimacy can come feelings of aversion and resentment. On the basis of these observations, authors build on 19th-​century German philosopher Schopenhauer’s metaphor of the hedgehog to explore the role of proximity and distance in human relations, including in teams. The hedgehog effect, transferred to the group context, proposes that teams in organizations face the same dilemmas of the hedgehog.When the winter comes the animals get close to benefit from each other’s body heat that allows them to hibernate and survive in cold climes. However, as they get close, they hurt one another with their spines, which leads them to move away. As they move, the cold induces them to huddle again. The process repeats until the hedgehogs realize that they need to be close but maintain some distance. The dilemma of the hedgehog is the dilemma of human teams. As Kets de Vries (2011) puts it, how much closeness is too much? In every long-​term relationship, there is a sediment of hostility and negative feelings. Teams therefore need to find a balance between these extremes.There are several possible measures enabling teams to find this balance. One of them consists in finding an equilibrium between consensus and dissent.

Consensus and dissent “Strong” leaders often expect the members of their teams to express an unconditional acceptance of their ideas. Those who dare to criticize them are labelled bad team players or worse, as happened in famous cases, such as the launch of the Challenger space shuttle and in the Theranos scandal (Carreyrou, 2019). It is important that teams cultivate cohesion and dissent as an antidote to too much conformity. Leaders are fallible and in their own interest should heed critical voices, the voices of those who indicate ways to improve the quality of their decisions (see Box 4.7). Many leaders have difficulties with listening to criticism and, to be fair, most of us resist negative feedback. We prefer to receive good news and, if interlocutors have no good news to bring, we prefer them not to bring any (Dylan, 1967). Leaders are no exception and, when surrounded by sycophants and cyphers, may become even more impregnable. Power attracts followers; followers reflect the power of those they follow for if they do not do so, where leaders suffer from hubris and autocratic tendencies that lead them to believe in their infallibility, they will not long bask in the warm gaze of the leader. The Trump presidency is a remarkable example of this in its unstable and rapid turnover of non-​family members of the administration, as was the composition of the Johnson Cabinet in post-​Brexit Britain. Loyalty and obeisance to the Brexit ideology counted for far more than competence (see John Crace’s Parliamentary Sketches in The Guardian, especially that of Crace [2020] who has sketched the full impact of the Covid-​19 crisis).

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BOX 4.7  RED TEAMS, JESTERS AND PRE-​MORTEMS A red team is a group with the mission of helping organizations to improve themselves. They operate through the provision of opposition to the dominant perspective of the organization that they serve. In this respect they do have elements of an organizational “fifth column”. They are often used to help organizations overcoming cultural biases and deeply held assumptions. They are used by the military (e.g., Mulvaney, 2012) as well by other organizations for studying vulnerabilities in cyber defence systems. Historically, a similar paradoxical function was performed by court jesters, who were employed by sovereigns not just to entertain them, but also to provide a frank advice and critique. Playing the role of the “intelligent insane” (Dols and Immisch, 1992, p. 349), the jesters were able to reveal unpleasant truths without offending their masters. Some contemporary organizations have rediscovered this role, introducing “corporate jesters” among their ranks (McMaster, Wastell & Henriksen, 2005; Otto, 2001). Another paradoxical strategy based on role reversal that has been suggested to overcome groupthink effects and to identify hidden flaws in strategy is the premortem. In this case a project team is tasked to imagine that a project or organization has failed, and then works backward to determine what potentially could lead to this failure (Kahneman, 2011).

Winning and losing Winning and losing was one of the tensions identified by Silva and her colleagues in their study of the spirit of a football team (Silva et al., 2014). Of course, at a more superficial level, winning and losing is about performing. But the lessons are relevant for belonging. Members of the team pointed out that their collective identity and sense of belonging were critically dependent on both.Victories are important because they do energize the team and instil a sense of pride. The late Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, accurately understood the power of winning as a motivator and a source of pride, given that one of the books he wrote was called Winning (Welch, 2005). The motivating power of winning is also reflected in the phenomenon of basking in reflected glory (Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman & Sloan, 1976). The phenomenon is well known: when a sports team, say a national team, wins an important international trophy, people wear the shirt of the winning team. One of the authors recalls seeing Portuguese people wearing the German Mannschaft shirt after Germany won a football world cup. The reason why he recalls the episode is because the individuals in question were, he knew to be, Portuguese, with no connection whatsoever with Germany, except owning the shirt and perhaps enjoying German football. The process speaks as much about psychology as about

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football: people love to be associated with victories. This helps to understand why and how some leaders instrumentalize followers through promising them “big wins” –​even when those promises are “bland” ones. The love to be associated with victories was mentioned by the participants in Silva’s study. Interestingly, however, people in the study also mentioned the crucial importance of losing. Losing was important to test the interactional richness of the team. The team was robust, they said, when it responded to defeats in the right way. The right way of dealing with defeats, they observed, was when they assumed the defeat as a collective outcome. In other words, nobody was responsible, individually, for a collective outcome. For the participants in the study, this was the acid test of team quality (see Box 4.8).

BOX 4.8  ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL It is likely that the majority of our readers know the expression “One for all and all for one” (Dumas, 1846). It is also possible that our readers do associate this with the motto of the three musketeers (Picture 4.3). Most of the people with whom we discussed this facet of groups were familiar with the idea even if they haven’t read the book. The question is why

PICTURE 4.3  D’Artagnan

and the Three Musketeers.

Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Musketeers_​by_​Dumas,_​ Condom_​(Gers)_​23.jpg. Author: René Hourdry. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-​Share Alike 4.0 International license.

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do we know a passage of a book we have not read? One possible explanation lies in the fact that the expression transmits something that profoundly resonates with personal experiences. Amidst adversity, “all we need is love” from our teammates. Great teams are those where people share a common destiny. This is acid tested in moments of failure.

As the previous discussion indicates, therefore great teams depend on winning and losing. Winning proves their performative competence; losing demonstrates their social worth.

Teams and the paradoxes of organizing Teams became a core constituent of the design of organizations. Some organizing challenges at the level of teams are permanent. Others became more important recently, with agile designs emphasizing teams more than hierarchies, a change that raises multiple challenges for leaders, organizations and teams. We explore three: team fault lines, leadership in less hierarchical designs and X-​teaming.

Team fault lines Teams potentially create organizing paradoxes due to invisible fault lines. Fault lines designate subgroups that emerge within teams along some shared characteristics (Gratton,Voigt & Erickson, 2007; see Box 4.9).They result from differences between people, across several dimensions, namely demographic or background differences (Van Knippenberg, Dawson, West & Homan, 2011). Fault lines are a form of resistance to diversity. Diversity is a fundamental ingredient of teams, yet diversity brings friction. Friction is not necessarily a bad thing but not all teams live equally well with diversity. Fault lines may create subgroups and cliques that end up corroding the team’s supposed unity and cohesiveness.

BOX 4.9  DIGGING (AND BREAKING) A FAULT LINE One of the authors of this book remembers the initial processes of an executive course with middle managers of a European bank. The institution had recently gone through a merger between two rival banks, one bigger (Bigger Bank) the other more agile (Better Bank, the names obviously being pseudonyms). Before the session started, the instructor asked participants briefly to introduce themselves. The first said his name, department and unexpectedly added that he came originally from Bigger Bank. The second participant followed the script and so did the third, in this case adding that he came from Better Bank.

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As the classroom was turning glacial, our instructor was thinking about a fast strategy to break the construction of this faultline. Fortunately, he didn’t have to:  a woman at some point said that her name was Mary, worked with the marketing and originally came from Neverland. After an explosion of laughter nobody mentioned the bank of origin. The instructor is eternally grateful to this wise woman.

Instead of ignoring fault lines team leaders should assume that fault lines will be present. They can ask if there are dividing lines in this team and if so, which lines are these? Some lines are obvious, such as gender and disciplinary background but others are possible as well. Some forms of previous collaboration, ideological views, country of origin, even regional identity or the football team that one supports can lead to internal divisions. The role of leaders is to build bridges and smooth the interactions as much as possible. Instead of keeping them implicit, they may be made salient. Instead, by letting the team spontaneously navigate difference, leaders can open discussion about the team’s ground rules. Ideally this will create awareness of divisions that otherwise may go implicit and even unnoticed, generating or amplifying bias and stereotyping that can derail a group. Helping the team to identify and focus on shared objectives may mitigate the negative effects of fault lines or even make them turn into better team outcomes (Van Knippenberg et al., 2011).

Less hierarchical designs In new organizational designs, traditional bosses give way to new leadership “team captains”. Team captains are network brokers, articulating the work of the team with the work of other teams, via their team captains. The team captain is a coach more than a traditional boss and does not normally play traditional supervisory functions. The role is close to that of team captains in sports: they play important functions in a way very distant from the traditional roles of command and control. As some organizations become a team of teams, these designs have the important function of connecting the teams. Less hierarchical designs thus depend on some level of porosity. The traditional self-​contained stable team is less relevant for new organizational forms and is a vehicle for development and learning rather than an execution unit. Less hierarchical designs demand strong organizational leadership able to provide a “north star” (see Box 4.10), a clear ultimate goal or definition of purpose that will assist people in their action. Empowerment can be a source of pleasure and independence with coordination remaining a necessity. A clear sense of purpose is not only a source of motivation but also a coordination scaffold, whose generality can make it applicable across a range of situations.

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BOX 4.10  EXERCISE: THE ORGANIZATIONAL NORTH STAR (SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA) Polaris, also designated the Ursae Minoris, commonly known as the North Star or Pole Star, is the brightest star in the Ursa Minor constellation. It is close to the north celestial pole, making it the current northern pole star (Picture 4.4). Polaris is a triple star system, composed of the primary star, Polaris Aa (a yellow supergiant), in orbit with a smaller companion (Polaris Ab); the pair in orbit with Polaris B (discovered in August 1779 by William Herschel).

Questions for reflection • What is the meaning of the North Star for organizations (look at Picture 4.5 to reflect on the issue)? • Can you identify real organizational “North Stars”? • Read the book “Discover your true North” authored by Bill George (2015), former CEO of Medtronics. What does it mean to have a “true North”? • In the Introduction, p. 1, Bill George writes: Have you discovered your True North? Do you know what your life and your leadership are all about? Leadership starts with being authentic, the genuine you. The purpose of Discover Your True North is to enable you to become the leader you want to be. In the process you will discover

PICTURE 4.4  North

Star, Big Dipper and Cassiopeia.

Source:  FM 21–​76:  Survival; Headquarters, Department of the Army; 5 June 1992. Author:  United States Army. (https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​ File:North_​Star,_​Big_​Dipper_​and_​Cassiopeia.jpg). As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

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PICTURE 4.5  Free

and not free.

Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Toy_​balloon_​in_​the_​sky_ of_Eastern_​Siberia.jpg. Author:  Oleg Bor. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-​Share Alike 4.0 International license. your True North  –​the internal compass that guides you successfully through life. Is it possible, and recommendable, that a leader be the leader he/​she wants to be? How do you relate this argument with the suggestion of Ibarra (2015a, 2015b) discussed in Chapter 2: “Fake it till you make it”. • Can North Stars backfire? Why and in which conditions?

Paradoxically, organizing self-​ managing teams implies a combination of leaderful and leaderless components that need to be carefully balanced. The excess of leadership will reduce the agility and speed necessary to be agile in fast changing environments, whereas the absence of strong leadership may potentially cause lack of coordination. That may help to explain the fact that some proponents of holacratic approaches to organizing have leaders that act not as supervisors that closely monitor people but as role models that define the purpose and shape the culture.

X-​teams As Dalal (2009, p.  80) put it, “Constant work is required to keep groupings distanced from each other”. Teams can understand this so well that in some cases

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they become too extreme in the process of distancing themselves from others. When that happens, teams do not collaborate with other teams. Teams as units have their identities. In fact, following Spisak et al.’s (2015) definition presented at the onset of this chapter, a team identity is what defines a team and distinguishes it from a mere group of people assembled together as well as differentiating the team in question from other teams. Identity thus defines the team as a team. The identities that unite are also those that divide. Sometimes identities are strong enough to create rivalries between teams in the same organization. As a result, teams that should collaborate may compete for resources such as prestige, material resources and protagonism. Leaders should strive to make it such that identities are not so intense that they prevent collaboration (Ramarajan, 2014). Having multiple identities (such as that of being a member of a team and an organization) can facilitate intergroup collaboration. This can be done through the creation of X-​teaming cultures. X-​teams constitute “a new brand of team –​one that emphasizes outreach to stakeholders and adapts easily to flatter organizational structures, changing information and increasing complexity” (Ancona, Bresman, & Kaeufer, 2002, p. 33). X-​teams are, in other words, teams that are capable of collaborating with other teams. They express a paradoxical capability: they have a clear internal identity and the capacity to reach out to external teams. They are both open and closed, an important competence as organizations redesign themselves as holacratic teams of teams (see the case of Zappos on De Smet & Gagnon, 2017 and Feloni, 2016). The creation of teams that are capable of being cohesive without being inward focused has been identified by Pentland (2012) as one of the attributes of great teams. These teams have parallel interactional mechanisms that prevent them from becoming insular. They allow differential communications in dyads inside the team  –​dyads being a crucial even if sometimes ignored system in organizations (see Chapter 3) and their members, leaders in particular are not suspicious about interactions with other teams. In other words, engaging in conversations with other teams is fine. In some contexts, such interactions would be viewed as a potential sign of treason and discouraged (see Box 4.11). X-​teams embrace this by accepting, for example, relatively fluid forms of membership.

BOX 4.11  THE VEGAS RULE FOR TEAMS The fact that good teams communicate with other teams does not mean that they communicate everything. Some information stays inside the team, following the famous idea that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Two of the authors of this book once conducted a project with the top management team of a food company. The team was composed by what others saw as competent individuals but there were relational issues. These were damaging the dynamics of the team. The authors were hired to facilitate the creation of a set of ground rules for the team’s functioning.

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Among the rules created was what the group called the Las Vegas rule. It happens that it was common that some tense interactions between members of this team occurred by email. Frequently these messages were sent to other people in CC, which created unnecessary tension and corroded the team’s identity. It was obviously decided that the personally sensitive interactions among the members of the team should stay inside the team. This may sound obvious but system dynamics (such as in a team) are never simple when seen from the inside.

How to manage team paradoxes Leaders face a number of paradoxical challenges while managing their teams. We highlight three:  confronting groupthink; leading virtual teams and teaming processes.

Confronting groupthink A danger that was explored in this chapter referred to the tension between cohesiveness and dissent. Cohesiveness is socially gratifying as it fulfils an important human need, but when taken to excessive levels, it is damaging, as it neutralizes the diversity advantages of teams. Excessively cohesive teams are not able to benefit from the diversity of perspectives of team members.To counter the dangers of cohesiveness, organizations use different strategies, such as, for example, devil’s advocate. The “devil’s advocate” is a centuries-​old idea, used by the Vatican in processes of beatification (see Box 4.12). The tool is, however, limited, in that the other team members know that the devil’s advocate is behaving as an actor, not as an authentic dissenter (Nemeth, 2018). Therefore, it is important that all team members feel psychologically safe to speak their minds. A dissenter, even when his/​her views and opinions are wrong, stimulate the team to think more and better about the issues, in turn making the team to make better decisions. In short, as Andrew Hill (2020c, p. 12) argued, it may be better “to hire the devil and not his advocate” (see Box 4.12).

BOX 4.12  DEVIL’S ADVOCATES VERSUS AUTHENTIC DISSENTERS When the Vatican was discussing the possible beatification of Mother Theresa in 2003, it invited two unexpected witnesses:  writers Aroup Chatterjee and Christopher Hitchens, both arch critics of the Catholic missionary. Their role was to consider the vulnerabilities of the case and help to make a better decision.

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As discussed elsewhere in this book (see Chapters 1 and 2), a provocative role has also been played historically by the character of the jester, a wise fool responsible for critical thinking. Volkswagen (VW), following the dieselgate scandal (Gaim et al., 2019; Rhodes, 2016), planned to hire a young climate activist to assist the company in moving to a new paradigm, defined by its switch out of diesel and into e-​cars. Herbert Diess, the company’s boss, noted that the company was looking for someone “really aggressive” (Miller & Campbell, 2020, p. 14). Some authors are critical, however, of this “role playing” type of dissent. Instead they defend the need to use “authentic dissenters” (Nemeth, 2018; Nemeth, Brown & Rogers, 2001). The problem is that a dissenter is annoying and generates negative reactions. As such, role players such as devil’s advocates may be fired, as in the case of British Airways’ Paul Birch; they may be co-​opted by the culture and start to converge, paying only lip service to the idea of dissent or exiting the scene to avoid the psychological costs of dissenting. Authentic dissenters may thus be more prepared to withstand the costs of the job as they are being genuine rather than playing a role. As Andrew Hill (2020c) put it, organizations should hire the devil rather than his advocate. They may also care less about the implications of their dissent, on the principle of a devil-​may-​care attitude. Overall, Nemeth (2018) sees that dissent is positive even when dissenters are wrong, as they contribute to opening discussion and enriching the process of decision making.

Virtual teams The evolution of digital technologies and the process of globalization push organizations and teams in the direction of virtual teams, groups of people whose articulation is supported by virtuality. The process of articulating teams creates challenges, namely coordination and trust. Traditionally these technologies were used in international contexts and in cases of knowledge workers.The effects of the Covid-​19 pandemic took the adoption of virtual teamworking to the next level. Even teams of people that communicated regularly face to face needed to start operating online in businesses, universities and other organizations. Rapid learning was required in which teams and organizations had to embrace the challenges of digitalization to a greater extent than many of them had previously done. For example, they needed to create a new context where swift trust can be built. Ground rules are critically important and in a time of rapid adoption of something new and untried, some tensions will be predictable. Malhotra, Majchrzak and Rosen (2007) have identified some principles that can be used to lead virtual teams effectively: establish clear rules; use asynchronous means (e.g., chat, discussion thread) for idea generation/​discussion and synchronous

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means (e.g., videoconference) for decision/​conflict resolution; monitor team progress against project plan; acknowledge individual contribution. Leaders need to maintain accountability in the absence of control, need to build trust in the absence of direct interactions, need to create cultures of help between people that work at a distance. Managing virtual teams can be considered an exercise in paradox in a way that is even more evident than in other cases. For instance, it is necessary for virtual teams to balance the need for structure and improvisation (Cunha & Cunha, 2001). It is also the ultimate test of passing from boss to leader: how to lead by creating leaders, or people who can lead themselves?

Teaming rather than teams Amy Edmondson argued that as organizations change, we move from participation in one team to be members of several teams and that teams themselves will become much more fluid and processual; therefore, we need to start thinking more about teaming rather than about teams (Edmondson, 2012). Traditional teams are groups with relatively stable and enduring participation, but this is changing. In project organizations, people move from one team to another fairly frequently. Thinking in terms of our doing teaming leads to thinking of it as a competence that will gain more relevance in the future. To protect organizations from the creation of insular groups and damaging conditions for organizational functioning, as discussed in Box 4.13, it is important to achieve this view of teams not as things but as processes. Teaming can thus bring fresh air to teams, opening people’s minds to different ideas and forms of collaboration.

BOX 4.13  YOUR TEAM? WHICH TEAM DO YOU MEAN? One of the authors facilitated the meeting of the management team of an international company. The new general manager aimed to create a deeper sense of collaboration. As the meeting evolved, a recurrent pattern emerged. Several of the dozen participants referred to “my team”. When someone used these words, the facilitator asked the same question: “which team?” Even though these people composed the company’s top management, they considered that their team was the one they led. Instead of thinking about ourselves as members of one team (OUR team, whatever our means), the logic of teaming suggests that we may think about teams not as self-​contained but as embedded units, teams within teams. The role of leaders would then consist in bridging these teams and creating synergies among them, as reflected in the notion of teaming. When the most senior people in the organization turn teams into fiefdoms, self-​organized and collaboratively managed, rival teams will potentially prevail.

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Conclusion Making viable and effective teams constitutes an ongoing exercise in paradox, the process of making and sustaining a delicate balance between opposing forces: individualism and collectivism, success and failure, similarity and difference, consensus and dissensus, cooperation and competition, harmony and conflict. We explained why successful teamwork may imply dynamic navigation between polar forces that may push teams into disaggregation (groups of individuals with no much in common) or pull them in the direction of uniformity (collectives dominated by groupthink).

Guide for further exploration The literature on teams and teamwork is abundant. We highlight The Paradoxes of Group Life (Smith & Berg, 1987) and Manfred Kets de Vries’ (2011) The Hedgehog Effect. These works explore the tensions inherent to groups. Both works present human groups as made and engaged with the tensions inherent to human collectives. Amy Edmondson’s Teaming (2012) projects the challenges facing the leadership of teams in a future characterized by more fluidity and virtual teamwork. The role of projects is also explored by Clegg et al. (2020). Finally, a classical work on teams and their leadership is J. Richard Hackman’s (2002) Leading Teams. A more academic approach about diversity in teams may be found in Joshi and Neely (2018).

Note 1 https://​www.marca.com/​en/​football/​barcelona/​2020/​03/​14/​5e6d2057e2704eb8878 b4568.html

5 PARADOXES AT ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL

Diverse and (in)compatible goals In the face of multiple stakeholder expectations, organizations are pressured to assume diverse and not necessarily compatible goals. These may include profits, social impacts, innovations, philanthropy and customer value which, while they may not be mutually exclusive, are certainly not mutually compatible. Innovation costs time and money that must come from the surplus value that produces profits. Social impact is worthy but from the shareholders’ point of view may dilute the value they expect to receive for investing their capital. Customer value is essential as a long-​term goal because without customers there will be no other value to disburse but its achievement can be complex. Customer value may demand the delivery not just of a product or service but also social impact, philanthropy and innovation. Once upon a time, leading a business firm was relatively easy: manage the bottom line and keep the customers satisfied with products on the one hand, profits on the other. Times have changed. In the most recent period in which we write, the climate change crisis and the corona virus crisis have severely disrupted the fragile assumptions of both economy and civil society on which past normalcy was based. Many businesses will fail because of the radically changing context of recession, possibly depression, flowing from the effects and reactions to the Covid-​19 crisis. When the shutters come down, focus becomes concentrated and no doubt it will be on whatever it takes to maintain profitability and survival. Seemingly emergent developments, such as the creation of new forms that assume a dual goal of profit and impact, including B-​Corps, may be sustained. The ecological crisis that the Anthropocene faces may recede even further in significance in the face of more immediate issues (Heikkurinen et al., 2019). Retreat from “green” issues will, in terms of strategic priorities, be a strongly negative move for Millennials, especially (Heo & Muralidharan, 2019). Nonetheless, most organizations will still

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have to deal, one way or another, with competing goals. For instance, how sensible and sustainable will it be to continue leading businesses into further supply chain entanglements or even maintaining those that they have beyond the short term in a post-​virus economy and society? To put things in perspective, the authors of this book all work in universities, some of which are extremely exposed in their supply chains, because they rely heavily on the fees that their Business Schools can raise from international full-​ fee students, something that seemed an unending supply chain of value. No more. When borders are closed, airlines grounded, face-​to-​face interaction minimized, not only does this value fail to materialize in many cases but, where it does, it occurs through a series of online interactions that are hardly going to satisfy the more serious customers. Such scenarios were largely unforeseen by most universities (that in many countries today are hybrid public/​private organizations in terms of their funding).Those institutions that in the past might have seemed global losers by servicing only a local and domestic market, such as Swedish universities, in which full-​fee international students are unknown, may well be reappraised as winners in terms of value shrinkage. Universities, much as any businesses, have to do opposite things, such as innovating and cultivating efficiency in the present and the foreseeable future, investing in the possibility of futures seemingly unimaginable in business as usual scenarios while competing in the present, offering customers good value at an adequate price and remaining solvent. Managing can be portrayed as an exercise in paradox: managers have to integrate a plurality of interests; they need to make decisions which are sometimes characterized by “worse-​before-​better” types of trade-​offs (Rahmandad & Ton, 2020), meaning that the positive effects of some decisions are visible only in the long run. As Keynes once remarked, in the long run we are all dead, hence the temptation to focus on the short run. The way multiple interests and objectives become articulated is critical as it is these that define leadership in the long run of specific histories. Even processes that tend to be described as exhilarating, such as creativity and innovation, are difficult and often frustrating (Van de Ven, Poole, Garud & Venkataraman, 1999; see Boxes 5.1 and 5.6). In some organizations the pervasiveness of paradox is more explicit than others. One reason international students were so attractive to university leaders was that they fuelled massive expenditures on real estate that was emblematic of the finest modern architecture, creating contexts designed to attract more students, especially international ones, to keep the cycle of growth spiralling upwards and onwards. After the lockdown of Corona virus Covid-​ 19, where almost all classes everywhere shifted online, in many cases with little preparation, the beautiful real estate of seminar rooms, collaborative spaces, lecture theatres became deserted. Will the future remain much more online than the past in the wake of the crisis? If so, what value attaches to the real estate of yesterday? Universities undoubtedly face paradoxes in present times. They are hardly the only institution to do so. In family firms, for instance, tensions between individual

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freedom and family loyalty, tradition and change, are especially visible, hence their qualification by Ingram, Lewis, Barton and Gartner (2016, p. 163) as “exceptionally paradoxical”. In a crisis these family firms may cohere more strongly than those not bound by blood and emotional ties despite having less capacity as non-​publicly listed organizations to ride out the crisis. The exceptionality of family business is a matter of degree more than one of substance as other organizations are equally rich in tensions between opposites. Companies strive to obtain a profit but they are pressed to care for stakeholders (Ramus,Vaccaro & Berrone, 2020). Music companies are torn between artistic and commercial demands (Cunha et al., 2019). Prisons are expected to exclude deviant members from civil society but to re-​educate them for future inclusion (Rubin, 2019). All organizations, whether universities, family businesses, public or private sector are hybrid, more complex than they are often represented as being (Smith & Cunha, 2020). In very few cases can we define them as systems with unitary goal orientations; in fact, they contain multiple goals. Frequently, multiple goals are publicly eschewed while privately spurned. The commitments of the oil majors to sustainability or of motor manufacturers, such as Volkswagen, to going green must be questionable (Gaim et al., 2019). In other cases, goal multiplicity is affirmed as desirable; for instance, some investors worry about whether they can make a substantial social impact while also obtaining strong financial returns (McGlashan, 2018). Business schools contain business aspects, as well as scholarship, given the hybridity that many experience (Moules, 2020). Often, organizations fail to articulate and to manage paradox, such as when universities become too business oriented at the expense of their educational mission (Starkey & Tiratsoo, 2007). When organizations focus too much on one pole at the expense of the other, they risk creating fatal imbalances. Boeing, for example, was accused of focusing on the financials at the expense of engineering, a partial explanation for the 737 Max tragedy (Hollinger, 2020). Boeing, studied by Pradies and her colleagues, was seen to be geared towards short termism, instigated by a “KPI culture” (Pradies et al., 2020).

BOX 5.1  KEY THINKERS: CAMERON, CLEGG, POOLE, QUINN AND VAN DE VEN Andrew Van de Ven and Marshall Scott Poole have treated paradox as a core feature of organization in several of their works. In a conceptual paper published in the Academy of Management Review (1995), they presented contradiction as a source of organizational change. In their words, dialectics constitute one of four organizational change engines. Organizations change, in this view, because of the contradictions that characterize them and their relations with the environment. Robert Quinn and Kim Cameron edited an important book, Paradox and Transformation (1988), and were among the pioneers of paradox theory,

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a topic also present in their competing values model, that highlighted the tensions between four organizational culture archetypes whose coexistence is not necessarily easy. They also introduced the notion of organizational effectiveness as paradox (Cameron, 1986). The paradoxical dimension of positive organizational scholarship was also elaborated (Cameron, 2008). The paradoxes of positive organizing were also explored by Stewart Clegg in Positive Organizational Behavior: A Reflective Approach, which explores positivity from a mainly paradoxical perspective (Cunha, Rego, Simpson & Clegg, 2020). Before the topic was fashionable, Clegg edited a volume (2002) in which some possible threads for a research agenda on paradox and organization were laid out.

Why are organizations paradoxical? Management has historically been seen as oriented to reducing uncertainty (Clegg, 1989; Tsoukas, 2005). Seeing the world of organizations through a paradox lens is to regard the struggle to reduce uncertainty as a ritual quest never to be fulfilled. A paradox view thus assumes that leaders have to embrace contradiction and uncertainty; if possible, they may take advantage of it. Some organizations, in fact, deliberately use paradox, implicitly or explicitly, as a tool to gain a competitive edge (see Table 5.1 about Toyota). Seeing paradox as a source of advantage means that organizations may profit from thinking in terms of integrating opposites instead of making contingent choices of the either-​or type, especially regarding controversial issues which can lead to defensive responses (Iivonen, 2018). This does not mean that organizations need to integrate every decision through a both-​and approach. It means that being alert to the possibility that what normally looks like a dilemma or a trade-​off may be amenable to a paradox approach. Thinking in terms of trade-​offs as dilemmas means that leaders are faced with choices between mutually exclusive elements. Tensions can intuitively appear to TABLE 5.1 The contradictions that drive Toyota’s success

Toyota does this

Yet…

Moves slowly Grows steadily Its operations are efficient

…it takes big leaps … it is paranoid … it uses employees’ time in seemingly wasteful ways … it splurges on key areas … it builds complex social networks … it gives employees freedom to push back

Is frugal Insists internal communications be simple Has a strict hierarchy Source: Takeuchi et al. (2008).

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be mutually exclusive, offering choice situations where one has to pick one pole or the other. When leaders and their delegates are confronted with dilemmatic choices such as to make or buy, this is the case. They must opt for one or the other, pondering the pros and cons of alternatives and choose the best alternative according to their criteria of choice. When the same type of decisions previously perceived as a trade-​off is reinterpreted as a paradox, new opportunities for action are presented. In other words, what was previously considered to be an opposition between contrasting elements can instead be considered a paradox, in which interdependent relationships between the poles exist, making the tension persistent and unsolvable. The work of Ton (2014) with retail companies, for example, shows that high salaries and rich jobs can be a source of competitive advantage, rather than disadvantage (see also Pfeffer, 2018). For example, an engaged workforce that is not overworked may have more space to think about operations and develop ideas that impact the business and the customer positively. Such a connection is not obvious and is difficult to imitate: a similar choice happened at Southwest Airlines where, instead of choosing between cost or quality, the company decided to compete on the basis of choice and quality. This type of balance, when obtained, is very powerful because it is difficult for competitors focused on one pole or the other to interpret and to imitate. Instead of seeing choice from an either-​or lens, some organizations managed to develop a both-​and approach to the world. Toyota is a case in point:  “Stable and paranoid, systematic and experimental, formal and frank: The success of Toyota, a pathbreaking six-​year study reveals, is due as much to its ability to embrace contradictions like these as to its manufacturing prowess” (Takeuchi, Osono & Shimizu, 2008, p.  96). The company developed a management philosophy, kaizen, normally translated as continuous improvement, that constitutes a paradoxical approach to organizing (Aoki, 2020). Toyota is a company that emphasizes the importance of learning and doing, acquiring new knowledge and performing, using what is already known (Aoki, 2020). These are obviously two contradictory organizational orientations as the search for the new may undercut the usefulness of the known. In Toyota’s culture, they are contradictory and interrelated. Employees are expected to engage simultaneously in efficient production while also searching for new ideas for improving the system. Taiichi Ohno, the chronicler of the Toyota Production System, presents this as a never-​ending process. In other words, it persists. The Toyota way, thus, presents the three defining attributes of paradox. And in this case, paradox is part of the everyday practice of management, not something exceptional (Clegg, Cunha & Cunha, 2002). The case of Toyota is indicative of how some organizations appropriate paradox and its management as part of their “way of doing things”, their formally organized culture. What types of approaches can leaders adopt to help their organizations embrace paradox? The literature has identified several possibilities.They can embrace philosophies that are inherently paradoxical, as in the case of kaizen (Takeuchi et al., 2008) or the good job strategies identified above (Ton, 2014). In this case, organizations managed to integrate opposites on an ongoing basis.

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In other cases, organizations separate different functions in space such that the two functions can continuously specialize without having to be compromised by the other function. For example, a company can conduct innovation activities in one location and regular manufacturing operations in another site. In other cases, it may use temporal separation: doing one thing now and another thing later. The organization can explore and then exploit, in cycles that allow it to take advantage of both processes without exhausting itself by doing both simultaneously. These strategies allow the organization to become ambidextrous (more about this in the next section). Ambidexterity thus offers an opportunity for balance (see Box 5.2). To balance a system dynamically, leaders need to cultivate the “both-​ anding” of oppositions. Consider how organizations learn how to articulate hierarchy and autonomy with the case of the US Navy SEALs: Good leaders know how to flex –​to use hierarchy to get things done but also to flatten the organization when they want workers to be creative. The Navy SEALs have an excellent approach: when they’re on the ground, there’s a clear chain of command. If their commander says “Get out now”, there’s no playing devil’s advocate –​no one argues.You listen and fall into rank. But once they go back to the base to debrief, Navy SEALs literally take their stripes off at the door. When they sit down, everybody’s equal and has a voice. This is important because one person on the team might have noticed something really critical that nobody else saw, which could inform their plans for the next assignment. So they flatten out; they share ideas. Then they go back outside, put on their stripes and uniforms, and literally fall into rank again. (Lindred Greer, in Klotz, 2019, p. 16)

BOX 5.2  GETTING THE BALANCE RIGHT: WHY BALANCE NEEDS TO BE UNBALANCED Balance means something terrifying to a small child learning to ride a two-​ wheel bicycle for the first time when a parent or guardian’s hand lets go of the cycle and the seemingly miraculous feat of moving whilst staying balanced on two slim wheels is achieved. Sometimes we take balance as synonym of a stable almost unchanging systems. That is not the case. Balance is about movement, flow, instability, as every cyclist knows. A  balancing system is always on the move (see Pictures 5.1 and 5.2). The lack of movement, tension and opposition means that the system is in some problematic space: a stalemate in which no part is strong enough to move the system forward, which leads to erosion or that is under totalitarian control, which causes implosion.

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PICTURE 5.1  Emil

Daems Balance in movement at the Tour de France, June

28, 1961. Source:  Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Access number:  2.24.01.05 (https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Emile_​Daems,_​Tour_​de_​France_​ 1961_​(cropped).jpg). This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-​Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license.

PICTURE 5.2  Rainer

Schwarz Balance in movement, Weelie, April 12, 2008.

Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Motor_​cycle_​stunt2_​amk. jpg. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-​Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

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Solinger et al.’s (2020) work on the management of moral systems is illustrative of how balance implies a capacity to engage a system in oscillations that do not take the system to the extreme. To achieve the creation of moral organizations, leaders need to be principled and pragmatically savvy, implying the integration of two opposing leadership functions: disrupting and sustaining moral boundaries. In cases where these two functions are not narratively integrated in a logical way it, will create confusion:  how can the same leaders protect and disrupt a set of values? Yet the two functions are critical for the actual creation of healthy organizational systems because an excess of principled action may create a rigidity that will impede the organization from co-​evolving with its environment, whereas an excess of pragmatism may be indicative of a lack of moral compass. On the one hand, organizations need their leaders to create what these authors have called reformist boundary work that is necessary to avoid moral stagnation and insularity. As the world changes so do people’s expectations and living conditions. Reformist boundary work allows leaders to update a system’s moral orientation and to incorporate new expectations, avoiding it becoming stagnant. These values need to be conserved and consolidated because the system will otherwise be too fluid and confusing. An excess of each type of work will threaten the system. Too much reformist work in response to social pressures and leaders can be perceived as too pragmatic and lacking spine; too little reformist work and leaders will be framed as conservative guardians of a particular moral status quo. Therefore, the construction of viable moral systems implies a healthy tension between conserving the system’s moral compass and challenging it because a system never stops changing, its process is never completed –​unless it is dead. It is a common trope in paradox theory that organizations are “rife with paradox”. In this chapter we discuss the organizational level paradoxes mentioned in Table 5.2. The paradoxes considered here are examples, but they do not exhaust the list of paradoxes confronting organizations. TABLE 5.2  Paradoxes in organizational leadership

Performing

Learning

Belonging

Organizing

Contradictions of getting things done at the level of the collective:

Organizational tensions between stability and change:

Organizational tensions between coherence and specialization

Organizational tensions between integration and differentiation:

• Meritocracy • Planning and improvising • Governance

• Ambidexterity • Forgetting to learn and learning to forget • Enabling environments

• Constructive dissent • Citizen leaders • Dispersed communities

• Freedom within framework • Competing  logics • Elastic hybridity

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Leading organization and the paradoxes of performing Organizations have to manage a number of paradoxes to sustain effective performance over time. In this section we explore three paradoxes associated with performance:  meritocracy, planning and improvising and governance. These processes, as we will discuss, are rich in tension. They correspond to three different domains of performing: • • •

Meritocracy: creating the motivation for people to excel in normal times. Planning and improvisation:  responding to the unexpected, which will be supremely important in “New Normal” environments. Governance: impeding organizational capture by sectional interests.

The paradox of meritocracy It seems normal that most people, outside of dyed-​in-​the-​wool defenders of privilege, see value in the idea of meritocracy (Civil & Himsworth, 2020;Young, 1959). Meritocracy is defined as a system in which power and privilege would be allocated by individual merit, not by social origins. Its formula was defined by Young (1958) as IQ + Effort = Merit. The philosophy of meritocracy has been widely embraced in many organizations in the capitalist world. The principle seems flawless: it is a matter of justice for organizations to recognize and appreciate the meritorious contributions of their members.Yet, the idea of meritocracy is inherently paradoxical, as it assumes conditions of antecedent equality (equal opportunity to demonstrate merit) to justify inequalities of position and rewards (Rawls, 1971). In a context of unequal distribution of wealth and education, those in a position of advantage tend to guard their privilege. Indeed, in companies that explicitly hold meritocracy as a core value, managers could and did assign greater rewards to male employees over female employees with identical performance, evaluations and duties. Several explanations may be presented (Castilla & Benard, 2010). First, when managers feel they work in meritocratic organizations, they develop a sense of moral credentials that give them “permission” to make biased decisions. Second, managers may consider that, in an organization that is proud of its meritocratic laurels, there are less risks that their biased decisions are interpreted as being biased. Third, when managers feel being objective (an assumption of a meritocratic culture), they are more confident that their beliefs are valid, and thus more likely to act on them –​even when those beliefs are biased and stereotyped. The BBC is a case in point (Tsang, 2019). The BBC may well have been patriarchally skewed in its reward of merit, but is regarded as a good working environment.1 But elsewhere meritocracy and good working environments do not mesh. The pursuit of meritocracy was vigorously championed by Jack Welch at GE. The meritocracy he promoted has been described as “obsessive, ruthless” (The Economist,

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2020, p.  55). It was meritocracy for winners. Meritocracies that are ruthless and obsessive may easily become dysfunctional Darwinian jungles in which you “eat what you kill”. If you killed nothing, you’d die starving. The system at GE was one in which, according to a senior aide to Jack Welch, “You were either a pig or a prince” (The Economist, 2020, p. 55). Note that meritocracy is based mainly on the merit of the results or outcomes. However, results are influenced by many factors, including some unrelated to the individual  –​such as the conditions and resources provided by the organization, and the opportunities and expectations from managers. If I  have great potential but my boss is biased against some of my attributes, it is very likely that he/​she behaves towards me in ways that make me less likely to show high performance. My boss assesses my performance according to my outcomes –​what is fair –​but my outcomes do not come just from my merit –​what is unfair and likely replicates previous bias. When meritocracy is based on behavioural indicators, as often happens in performance appraisal processes, the risks of biased evaluation decisions are still higher, as clearly shown in the literature (see, e.g., Brown, 2019). Consequently, “meritocratic discourse generally glorifies the winners in the economic system while stigmatizing the losers for their supposed lack of merit, virtue, and diligence” (Piketty, 2020, p. 710). In short, what the cases above indicates is that meritocracy has limits. Therefore, while leaders and organizations must make efforts to be meritocratic, they must also be aware of being biased in their meritocratic decisions. Seeing oneself as unbiased is a symptom of bias.

Planning and improvising Organizations have historically nurtured the importance of preparedness through planning. The importance of planning is undeniable. Good planning and careful execution are critical activities for organizational effectiveness.Yet planning should go together with improvisation. No matter how good plans are, reality necessarily involves an element of surprise and unexpectedness, as illustrated by the Covid-​ 19 pandemics that put the authors (and the world) in quarantine while they were writing this book (see Table 5.3 about paradoxes related to pandemic). No matter how much organizations craft their plans, the open-​endedness of the world will make sure that things will not unfold in line with the plan. As Mike Tyson once remarked, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. Organizations can be punched in many different ways, including global financial crises, defective products, pandemics and geopolitical factors. These major occurrences cannot be anticipated in their details, of course, but their occurrence is becoming more predictable. The World Health Organization tracked 1,438 epidemics between 2011 and 2018 (Hudecheck, Sirén, Grichnik & Wincent, 2020). Factors such as hyper-​urbanization and climate change make pandemics and other ecological disasters, such as massive bushfires, more likely.

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The implications for managers are dual. On the one hand, they signal the need for organizations to see their role in society as one of helping to tackle what have been called Grand Challenges (George, Howard-​Grenville, Joshi & Tihanyi, 2016; Howard-​Grenville, Buckle, Hoskins & George, 2014). These challenges need to be faced; they are not a problem for others to solve if organizations strive to flip responsibility elsewhere.Therefore, preparing for the unexpected means that organizations need to engage with planning and improvisation. Improvisations refers to the capacity to act deliberately with available resources in the absence of the relevance of a predetermined chart or plan (Cunha, Cunha & Kamoche, 1999). In emergencies, as well as in normal times, managers need to combine these twin paradoxical skills. In an emergency, organizations may have to become more experimental. Some of these experiments work and are retained: Twitter announced, even during the pandemic, that workers could work from home “forever” (Mance, 2020). Only prepared organizations, though, can improvise adequately as people cannot improvise with or about nothing (Kamoche & Cunha, 2001). Improvisation may thus constitute an important organizational competence, with strategic reach. Figure  5.1 proposes no more than a thought experiment and suggests that planning is important but that it works especially well in combination with improvisation. For the sake of illustration let us consider the case of the response to the Covid-​19 pandemic. The Taiwanese and South Korean health authorities were well prepared and responded swiftly to the crisis. Their response was rapid and

Good planning

Rigid planning

Reliable response

China

Taiwan & South Korea

Poor improvisation

Good improvisation Disorganized responses West, in general, in very different nuances

Fast reactors Macao

Insufficient planning

FIGURE 5.1  Planning

crisis.

and improvisation: a paradoxical combination for times of viral

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effective. In other cases, a highly structured system lacked responsive capacity. Zhou Xianwang, mayor of Wuhan, when asked why he had not disclosed the severity of the coronavirus outbreak, responded that “After I received information, I needed authorisation before making it public” (Shepherd & Wong, 2020, p. 4). He explained that his hands were tied. The authorities in the Chinese province of Wuhan could not respond because they needed to follow highly prescribed processes in a very well defined but rigid chain of command. As a result, the system collapsed with responses that were merely reactive, with agents trying to defend themselves from the possible accusation of spreading “bad rumours”. As the philosopher Slavoj Žižek (2020) observed, in a system distrustful of the people, such as the Chinese, the complaints of critical voices are necessarily treated as rumours. In the case of more competent improvisations taken swiftly, the crisis was impeded from exploding; this, apparently, was the case of Macao. Many other countries were simply not prepared to respond to a crisis of this magnitude and responded in an un-​coordinated fashion as seems to have occurred in most of the West, typifying the lack of coherence in individual nation state responses in the EU, and the initial denials by the American President that there was no problem because so few cases had been reported.

TABLE 5.3  Paradoxes related to pandemic

“The better we manage to contain this pandemic, the less we will learn from it”. “The thing is if shutdowns and social distancing work perfectly and are extremely effective it will seem in retrospect like they were totally unnecessary overreactions”. “The paradox is that the countries that were either most effective in containing the virus or were most fortunate to be not visited by it, will be the places where public opinion will be most eager to criticize the government for its lockdown policies”. “You won’t ever know if what you did personally helped. That’s the nature of public health. When the best way to save lives is to prevent a disease rather than treat it, success often looks like an overreaction”. “The first paradox of Covid-​19 is that it exposes the dark side of globalization –​but also acts as an agent of globalization”. “The second paradox of Covid-​19 is that it has accelerated the trend towards deglobalization that was triggered by the Great Recession of 2008–​9, while at the same time exposing the limits of renationalization”. “The third paradox of Covid-​19 is that fear of the virus in the early stages of the pandemic inspired a state of national unity that many societies had not experienced in years, but in the longer term it will deepen existing social and political divides”.

Keaveny (2020) James Hamblin in Kottke (2020) Krastev (2020)

Mari Armstrong-​ Hough in Kottke (2020) Krastev (2020) Krastev (2020)

Krastev (2020)

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Governance mechanisms Leaders are often presented as the saviours of organizations (Khurana, 2010). This is a dangerous narrative. It is indisputable that in some circumstances some heroic leaders can make the difference. These people (normally male but in some cases female, such as Anne Mulcahy) lend credibility to Carlyle’s Great Men Theory: He is the living light-​fountain, which is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness of the world; and this is not a kindled lamp only, but rather a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven; a flowing light-​fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. (Carlyle, 1840, p. 5) This quote, which we first found in Spoelstra and ten Bos (2011), offers the image of leadership as a thing of beauty, an epiphany with religious connotations. As an alternative perspective on leadership, instead of waiting for heroes from Heaven, organizations may create and institutionalize governance mechanisms and invest in leader development processes that assume that leadership is a competence to develop (at the collective level) rather than some natural ability that some people have and that other people don’t. Curiously, people who did heroic acts do not see themselves as heroic (Klein, 2020). Instead of heroic leaders the world needs solid institutions. That was a lesson that Ulysses taught us (see Box 5.3). Paradoxically, however, de-​heroizing leaders may also have a side effect: followers are less willing to engage in the leader’s vision and making efforts to materialize it –​and the consequence may be a lower team or organizational performance. As Grint (2010, p. 89) suggested, (…) [W]‌e need to reconsider the nature of leadership if we are to assess alternatives and a critical aspect is its relationship to the sacred. I  suggest that the sacred nature of leadership is not so much the elephant in the room but the room itself –​the space that allows leadership to work. (…) We need therefore to find ways of engaging with, rather than seeking to avoid, the sacred nature of leadership.

BOX 5.3  EXERCISE: ULYSSES AND THE SIRENS Leaders, including the best intentioned, can be sensitive to the opportunities offered by power, including the opportunities to do bad. Metaphorically, they can be victims of the siren’s songs, as in the case of Ulysses (Picture 5.3). Because he knew about the power of the siren’s songs, Ulysses took measures.

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PICTURE 5.3  Ulysses

and sirens, Herbert James Draper.

Source:  http://​DE.most-​famous-​paintings.com/​MostFamousPaintings.nsf/​A? Open&A=9GENRL (https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Herbert-​ James-Draper-​Ulysses-​and-​the-​Sirens.jpg). This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

He asked his ship’s crew to tie him to the mast and ordered them to cover their ears so that they would not listen to the sirens.

Questions for reflection • What are the organizational equivalents of the siren’s song? • How can leaders create control mechanisms to avoid personal and organizational derailing? • Why do organizations fail to adopt the governance mechanisms that protect them from predictable dangers? • Read about hubris (e.g., Sadler-​ Smith et  al., 2017; see also www. daedalustrust.com/​). Which are the sirens of hubris?

The creation of good mechanisms of governance, popularly known as checks and balances, with different bodies controlling different circuits of power, tying leaders to the mast, renders the organization less vulnerable to the fallibilities of individual leaders (see, e.g., Nissan Motor, 2019, about the governance problems in Nissan that contributed to Carlos Gholson’s fall). Human fallibilities exist in various

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nuances from corruption to vigilantism. A corrupted leadership/​followership is as dangerous as a vigilante leader, self-​appointed judge, jury and deliverer of justice, as a Philippines’ Duterte. Corrupted leaders tend to stimulate corrupted organizations in the same way that vigilante leaders tend to create a squad of minion vigilantes who take the law into their hands (DeCelles & Aquino, 2020). The construct of “discretion”, as it is known in the organizational literature, is, to some extent, necessary, but an excess of discretion results in potentially dangerous unilateral control by executives (Padilla, Hogan & Kaiser, 2007). The governance lens sees power, politics and ethics as inextricably linked, a system in which various forces dynamically are held accountable rather than having free reign (Brenkert, 2019). In this perspective, boards, some authors argue, can even worry about executives’ off-​the-​job behaviour (e.g., traffic tickets, millions of dollar parties), as some of these behaviours are signals of derailment that expose the organization to risk (Davidson, Dey & Smith, 2015). Leaders, it is suggested, have a tendency to create organizations consistent with their personalities and worldviews (Kets de Vries & Miller, 1986). Organization scholars (Marquis & Tilcsik, 2013; Stinchcombe, 1965), refer to this process as “imprinting”, borrowing the term from the work of Konrad Lorenz (1935). But they should protect themselves from allowing a powerful CEO to construct one organization in his (normally a male) image. For example, Jack Welch’s GE was a reflection of the “testosteronic personality” of its “capitalist carnivore” CEO (Thornhill, 2020, p. 9), a company oriented to winning, controlling its own destiny and implacable to low performers via the famous “rank and yank” management system. The highly competitive organization was shaped according to the vision of this man, with great performance results. Nonetheless, the focus impeded the organization in anticipating transformations that the digital revolution was introducing –​and Welch’s legacy is now interpreted as being not so bright as previously said (Financial Times, 2020b; Thornhill, 2020). Looking backwards rather than forwards, other organizations sought to employ the manager archetype that Welch created through the recruitment of former top GE executives, normally with negative results: the times they were a-​changing. Twitter’s co-​founder and boss Jack Dorsey, a “managerial herbivore” (Thornhill, 2020, p. 9), defended a different type of capitalism, with digital smarts and entrepreneurial approach. He also runs a fintech, Square, and was planning to spend some time in Africa scouting for opportunities in digital currencies and blockchain. Investors were not happy. He was described by Scott Galloway, a professor at the New York University Stern School and a Twitter investor, as expressing “lack of self-​ awareness, indifference, and yogababble that have hamstrung stakeholder value” (in Thornhill, 2020, p. 9). John Thornhill reflected on the two cases in the following ways: Whatever their differences in age, temperament, philosophy and style, the two Jacks do have one striking trait in common: a dangerous habit of conflating

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the individual with the institution. No founder, or manager, no matter how mercurial or domineering, should ever think themselves bigger than the company they serve.

Leading organizations and the paradoxes of learning Organizational learning became a central topic in organizational studies in the 1990s with the publications of books such as The Fifth Discipline (Senge, 2006) or The Dance of Change (Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, Roth, Smith & Guman, 1999). One of the most enduring influences of this period was a journal article by James March (1991), in which exploration and exploitation in organization learning were presented as two processes that were critically important for organizations (see Box 5.4). The problem is that the two exist in a state of mutual opposition and to learn implies the need to unlearn, “the loss, voluntary or otherwise, of organizational knowledge” (Martin de Holan & Phillips, 2004, p. 1606). In short, these two forces exist in a state of paradoxical tension or, as Bettis and Prahalad (1995, p. 10) explained, “strategic learning and unlearning of the kind involved in the dominant logic are inextricably intertwined”. To learn, therefore, means to be humble both in face of learning and unlearning (Li, 2021), i.e., respecting and appreciating both and their mutual relationship.

BOX 5.4  KEY THINKER: JAMES MARCH James March (1928–​2018) was one of the most influential scholars in the field of organization studies. A  professor at Stanford University, he wrote some highly influential books such as Organizations (with Herbert Simon) and A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (with Richard Cyert, 1963). His more recent works included the book On Leadership (March & Weil, 2009) as well as the Organization Science paper mentioned above. A  scholar highly sensitive to the contradictions and ambiguities of organizational life  –​he also published Ambiguities of Experience –​he coined two very important paradoxical pairs: exploration-​exploitation and the idea of the leader as poet-​plumber. He wrote beautifully about paradox: “Confidence has its doubts; love has its hates. Every virtue has its vice, and every vice its virtue” (March, 2006, p. 71). Amongst his works there are also two films based on War and Peace and Don Quixote. He was also a poet and explored poetry as a source of learning and inspiration for managers and translated Nordic sagas as a hobby  –​on his poetry see Chytry (2003).

Quixotic lessons One of the films he directed was based on the figure of Don Quixote (Picture 5.4), created by the great Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes. On the basis of Quixote, think about the following:

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PICTURE 5.4  Bronze

statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, at the Plaza de España in Madrid, Spain, April 28, 2010. Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Bronze_​statues_​of_​Don_​ Quixote_​and_​Sancho_​Panza.jpg. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-​Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. • Why and what can managers learn from Quixote? • What is the role of Sancho Panzas in contemporary organizations? • Why are Quixotic –​meaning crazy, unreacheable –​projects at the origin of great organizations?

Ambidexterity Ambidexterity is the ability to explore and to exploit in an integrated fashion. It is another case of the “ability to pursue two disparate things at the same time” (Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004, p. 210), or more specifically the capacity “to top perform differing and often competing, strategic acts at the same time” (Simsek et al., 2009, p. 865). Ambidextrous organizations have been described as possessing the attributes of rigorous cost cutting mentality and of free-​thinking entrepreneurship. They develop the capacity required to make difficult trade-​offs (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004).

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It should be pointed out that becoming ambidextrous means different things for different organizations. For a company defending a market niche, a balance between exploring and exploiting is certainly different from the balance necessary for an organization pursuing a prospector strategy that needs to accept more risk-​taking behaviours (Miles, Snow, Meyer & Coleman, 1978). Ambidexterity can be pursued by means of structural separation solution, by focusing different units more on exploration or exploitation: for instance, a research and development unit will pursue innovation, while an accounting department is likely to be focused on maximising efficiency through standardization. It can also require temporal separation, alternating longer periods of exploitation with shorter periods of exploration (Siggelkow & Levinthal, 2003). Ambidextrous organizations might also need to develop several competences at once, namely the capacity to think paradoxically (Smith & Tushman, 2005), to organize in a way that prevents one polar force to overcome the other, and the leadership of the process that assures that exploitation will not end up dominating (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009). Organizations, over time, tend to become inertial and inertia makes exploitation prevalent. Countering this tendency is a formidable challenge, one that requires competence in tackling paradoxes and oscillations overcome paradoxes –​over time, as paradoxes persist and cannot be solved. In this sense, managing is an act of stoicism, of enduring the articulation of tensions that will not go away. This implies a paradoxical mindset and the capacity to develop paradoxical practices that renegotiate or transcend boundaries of exploration and exploitation (Papachroni & Heracleous, 2020). It also requires the political skills necessary to articulate tensions without solving them. As departments and people often fight to prevail and obtain resources, management is a difficult political balancing, and ambidexterity an expression of political competence.

Forgetting to learn and learning to forget To learn, organizations need to unlearn or even forget the things they know. As organizations accumulate knowledge and use this to routinize processes, they are organizing their practices. Organization, in this understanding, is a net of routines (Weick & Westley, 2006). These routines, perfected over time, offer reliability, predictability and efficiency, all great organizational qualities. Yet these qualities come at a price: the increasing convergence of organizational solutions. To counter convergence and its effects, such as an architecture of simplicity, organizations need to unlearn. The practice of unlearning is easier said than done, especially in successful organizations, but it is important, especially if conducted voluntarily. Martin de Holan and Phillips (2004) called this “managed unlearning”. It consists in removing the practices and knowledge that are perceived to be barriers to organizational effectiveness. The authors quote Gregory Bateson who said that “You can’t live without an eraser” and concluded that “to forget is sublime” (Martin de Holan & Phillips, 2004, p. 1611).

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Organizations, especially those that have been successful and that develop strong procedural memory, may find unlearning especially difficult. As Weick (1996) observed, sometimes organizations need to drop their tools. Dropping one’s tools is never easy but it can be facilitated if the organization gains some affection for new organizational tools, such as tools in the past that were peripheral to organizational attention. The same happens with leaders. At least, it is important that they learn that, if they want to learn, they have to unlearn –​including unlearning the lessons taught by past successes. There are organizational erasers of several types, some of them already discussed. For example, cultivating a culture of psychological safety (see Chapter 4), accepting “why?” as a normal interrogation, appreciating “slow learners”, or people who do not learn the organization’s culture too fast (Sutton, 2002), doing project reviews, analysing cases of success or failure. There is one eraser that may be used to allow new learning so that the organization forgets previous lessons: cultivate peripheral vision, by stimulating people’s curiosity and sense of observation of details. The dispersed attention of organizational members may lead to discoveries that make the crucial difference, not only for detecting opportunities but also reading signs of environmental erosion (Schmitt, Barker, Raisch & Whetten, 2016). Consider the following description of how an organization unlearned the attributes of a product to learn about its new attributes (Day & Shoemaker, 2008, p. 43): When Dutch drugmaker Organon International Inc. was conducting clinical trials for a new antihistamine, the secretary in charge of registering the trial volunteers for their medical checkups noticed something: Some volunteers were unusually cheerful. An extraneous observation, perhaps, but one she felt was worth sharing with the managers running the trial. They dug deeper, only to discover that all of the giddy participants were in the group taking the drug. Ultimately, the drug proved unsuccessful as an allergy-​fighter. But by then the managers knew what they had on their hands: a highly effective treatment for depression. Marketed as Tolvon, the drug turned out to be very successful. As the authors discuss, this product never would have come into existence if this employee, a secretary not trained to pay attention, believed that her non-​expert observations would be well received. Managers, on their part, were receptive to inputs and took them as relevant. The example illustrates that learning can trigger unlearning, which may happen with small rather than big observations by people at the base (not the top) of the organization. Learning is potentially more effective if the organization mobilizes the attention of its members in general, and not only the experts in a given area. What these processes have in common is the fact that they interrupt habitual ways of thinking and mindless behaviours and promote active reflection on

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organizational issues. They interrupt “busyness” that often creates repetition rather than reflection (Bruch & Ghoshal, 2002). Over time, organizations that are more knowledgeable tend to develop higher belief diversity whereas less knowledgeable ones express lesser belief diversity (Miller & Martignoni, 2016).

Enabling environments Leaders stimulate organizational learning by supporting the constitution of enabling environments, as in the case discussed in Box 5.5. Enabling environments imply the creation of nested practices that are reinforced throughout an organization. They must come from the top of an organization’s hierarchy, as the top team defines the tone. But middle managers and team leaders in general have direct influence over an organization’s behaviour, as they can confirm or neutralize the values emanating from the top. The creation of learning environments implies understanding of rules as enablers of action. Adler and Borys (1996) made the crucial difference between enabling and coercive rules. In the coercive organization, as in traditional bureaucracies, rules are impediments, made to create constraints. They normally identify what people cannot do. They limit people’s actions. Over time, the proliferation of rules may result in these bureaucracies being described as Kafkaesque, i.e., corresponding to impenetrable structures that nobody really understands (Clegg, Cunha, Munro, Rego & Sousa, 2016). In these organizations, people do something not because they know why but because they have been instructed to do so and they will be blameless if they do so because they are following a rule, no matter how counter-​ productive or stupid it may be (Merton, 1952). In the case of enabling environments, rules are designed to help people do their work.They often tell people what to do and have an expansive role: they are designed to empower, not to disempower, as in the case of coercive rules. The way some organizations are adopting a simple rule approach illustrates how to replace bureaucratic by enabling rules (see exercise in Box 5.5).

BOX 5.5  EXERCISE: ENABLING RULES THROUGH EMPLOYEE HANDBOOKS Organizations need rules and guidelines but, in some organizations, rules become so pervasive that the major purpose seems to be rule following. The labyrinthine Kafkaesque bureaucracy is an example of an organizational format so densely ruled that it becomes nonsensical. To counter the proliferation of rules, some organizations move beyond traditional understandings and create handbooks for their employees that define the rules. Two cases in point are Valve (Handbook for New Employees2) and OutSystems (The Small Book of the Few Big Rules3). Download these two documents and reflect on the following:

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• What is the purpose of this type of documents? • What are the advantages of “few rules rather than many”? • Explore the concept of semi-​structuring (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997). What are the advantages of semi-​structuring work?

Kafkaesque organizations can be considered a mistake, a negative side effect of attempts at ordering an inherently paradoxical reality according to unambiguous categories, combined with a rigid system of domination that leaves insufficient agency to actors (Berti & Simpson, 2019). However, often organizations purposefully discourage their members’ capacity for critical reflection, cultivating “functional stupidity” (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012, 2016). This form of learnt stupidity manifests in the inability or unwillingness to question claims and commonly accepted wisdom (lack of reflexivity), focusing on means and efficiency without questioning the objectives (lack of substantial reasoning) and failing to inquire the reasons driving directives or actions (lack of justification). While focusing on the task and obedience to directives increases efficiency and reduces uncertainty in the short term, it exposes an organization to long-​term risks, leaving strategies and practices unquestioned, curbing radical innovation and failing to question authority (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012). The creation of enabling environments, one that keeps functional stupidity at bay, is a concerted effort. The top must enact the right values and offer an example; however, these explicit values will be insufficient if middle managers do not embrace them, as we observed in an empirical study in the pharma industry (Cunha et al., 2019). The creation of enabling organizational environments is nested with corresponding team environments, namely through the provision of psychological safety (see Chapter 4).

BOX 5.6  EXERCISE: LOSING BALANCE BY KEEPING BALANCE Companies such as Kodak, Nokia and Research in Motion became famous for their incapacity to innovate appropriately as around them change was occurring. Seeing change coming is a difficult if not impossible exercise, mainly if one is being successful. A most impressive example is the case of J. F. C. Fuller. In 1917, at the age of 39 as an Officer of the British Army in World War I, he defended a plan that would revolutionize the path of the war: a combined attack of air force and tanks. Instead of embracing the plan, in the 1920s, Field Marshall Sir Archibald Montgomery-​Massingberd responded to the mechanization of Germany’s army with a number of strategic measures, including a tenfold increase in horse food. Among other measures, tank officers would also have the right for a horse.

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Finally, by 1940, Fuller’s plan had been adopted and used –​by the Germans, as Tim Harford4 (2018) points out. It became known as the blitzkrieg.

Questions for reflection • How may the notion of “dominant logic” (Prahalad & Bettis, 1986; see glossary) help to understand these cases? • Which is the dominant logic of your organization? Write ten words that represent well the functioning logic of your organization.

Leading organizations and the paradoxes of belonging Organizations struggle with paradoxes of belonging. The tensions raised by becoming a member of an organization are so intense that some organizations spend vast resources, including time and money, in “onboarding” their new members.

Constructive dissent Organizations are sometimes imagined as homogeneous communities of people in which identification with the leader is widely shared. Such a cohesive group is the dream of the narcissistic leader, constantly expecting loyalty to their person rather than service to the organization. Healthy organizations, in contrast, are necessarily polyphonic: a well-​functioning social system supports participation and plurality. It stimulates different voices to be present and channel conflicts towards growth (Petriglieri, 2020b). A dimension of constructive dissent is worth cultivating and stamping it out is foolish. Leaders are important builders of constructive dissent through boosting psychological safety (Chapter 4). In this way, they may build healthy cohesion through facilitating constructive conflict, boost a healthy consensus in the decision made and implemented through fostering dissensus in the divergent phase of a decision-​ making process. In short, a healthy convergence in the later stage of a decision-​ making process is more likely through fostering a healthy divergence in the first stage of that process (Nemeth, 2018).

Citizen leaders Many organizations socialized people as employees. The employee, an expert in obedience (Jacques, 1995), was a person trained to do what she/​he was told. Technologies of power, such as scientific management (Taylor, 1911), were designed to make this happen. This paradigm is no longer adequate to a more educated workforce with different expectations. Organizations moved from the command and control paradigm, based on hard power, to an empowerment/​self-​management paradigm, in which soft power prevails. People, often called members or collaborators

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(sometimes as a consequence of mere instrumental and manipulation efforts, one must recognize), are no longer employees but citizens who supposedly bring their whole selves to the organization, assuming a more proactive attitude. The proactive attitude can become a provocative one when the organization preaches values that it does not practice. In this paradigm, organizations must stay true to their values and practice what they preach, or otherwise risk creating a cynical attitude in their community of employees and customers. For managers, this creates the need to articulate expectations that are not necessarily easy to match.

Dispersed community As organizations go global, new technologies allow teleworking, and as events such as the Covid-​19 pandemic force organizations to disperse, leaders need to create a sense of community, even when members of the organization are not physically present in the same space. The case of Microsoft is revelatory about how leaders may build a sense of community even when large numbers of people are involved, 144,000 in this case (Hougaard, Carter & Hogan, 2019): •

•

•

Everyday a small sample of employees receive a survey called Daily Pulse, which consists of approximately 20 questions, such as “In what ways do you think Microsoft is different today than it was a year ago?”. Every month the company holds a town hall meeting, where priorities, progress and culture are discussed.The meeting is broadcast live. Nadella, the CEO, provides a monthly business update. A series of videos illustrate how some individuals and teams are embracing a growth mindset.

These events foster a sense of connection that creates proximity between people that are physically distant. Given differences across geographies, this implies the creation of organizational cultures that to some extent constitute paradoxical accomplishments, as Peters and Waterman (1982) anticipated (see Chapter  1). Cultures that are too strong, in the sense of being highly shared and intensely enacted, can ossify the organization. By relying so much on a set of values and corresponding practices, the organization may stifle innovation and discourage unlearning. On the contrary, if a culture is so loose as to be laisser-​faire, it does not serve any meaningful purpose because the creativity that might ensue will be lost in the general disorganization. All in all, culture is always a paradoxical construction, an encompassing environment in which, to use Fleming’s (2013) analysis, one’s very personhood to some extent is a reflection of the organization. In this sense, leaders shape culture via two opposite movements: protecting the formally mandated culture in order to provide a sense of continuity and allowing the culture to be refreshed from incursions, challenges and insurrections from below and outside in order to offer a possibility of renewal (Courpasson, Dany & Clegg, 2012). Strategic cultural design should aim to obtain a measure of formal rule

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breaking as well as a measure of informal rule conformance. Informal rules constitute, above all, substitutes for more formal coordination mechanisms and often serve to control in non-​intrusive ways. If formal rules are too tight, they will end up promoting phenomena such as conformity, conservatism and a perverse logic of obedience to authority (Milgram, 1969). In the organizational context this is the type of factor that provokes fear and impedes learning (Edmondson, 2018). On the contrary, cultures that are too loose split the organization into different cultural fiefdoms that have difficulty communicating with each other.This is reflected in the different “thought worlds” (Dougherty, 1992) that emerge when people are siloed in areas of functional specialization that do not, often cannot, communicate with other areas because they are so deeply embedded in an argot and assumptions that are uniquely their own language: IT often suffers from this tendency. Even financial institutions and automakers may be affected by siloing (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2009; Foroohar, 2014; Tett,  2014). Organizations should strive to strike a balance between respect for the formal cultural rules and norms, as well as use informal deviations as indicators of the possible need to revisit these rules, as indicating when rule breaking is conducive to the benefit of the organization (Mainemelis, 2010). Cases of positive deviance should be analysed with particular care, as they indicate that to do what they have to do, organization members have to circumvent the formal system. In the same sense that skills are not set in stone, cultural norms should also be seen as paradoxical sets of loose-​tight principles.

Leading organizations and the paradoxes of organizing Organizing is a paradoxical journey –​to organize means to reduce uncertainty, to create routines, to introduce reliability. Yet managers need to do so and in parallel, their opposite: to accept ambiguity, to renew and move beyond routines and to be agile. These processes are paradoxical and necessary.

Freedom within a framework Managing, as organizations embrace less hierarchical designs, becomes the definition of the things to rule and the ones to liberate. Creating organizations that are both loose and tight, as discussed earlier, implies the management of soft dimensions such as culture but also harder elements such as structure –​in tandem with culture. Gulati (2018) illustrated the process as creating a structure that is not stifling. A first recommendation to avoid stifling structures consists in avoiding over-​leading. In many circumstances, the best leaders can do consists in letting people do their jobs with autonomy (Spisak et al., 2011). A structure that is not stifling involves a coordination dimension with clear rules. Rules are necessary to facilitate operational autonomy (Bunderson & Boumgarden, 2010), which means that organizations need to define the quantity and quality of the rules they want. Different organizations in different sectors will require different

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types of rules, but the point here is to find a solution that best fits the organization. Structures that empower can be as different as those of paradoxical Tayloristic Toyota (Takeuchi et al., 2008) and agile almost chaotic Valve (Bernstein, Gino & Staats, 2014). Organizations are thus moving in the direction of the designs that embrace paradox and ambiguity, instead of reproducing the structures of the past, which procured to remove it. This type of structures is more than a formal coordination device. It constitutes a holos that requires alignment and embedded competencies with paradox management.

Competing logics Organizational logics refer to sets of material practices and symbolic systems including assumptions, values and beliefs that provide meaning to daily activity, organizing time and space, reproducing everyday working lives and experiences. These logics are frequently institutional, embedded in practices such as professional and disciplinary norms (Meyer, 2010). If every specific organization is necessarily a hybrid, coexisting institutional logics are especially salient in some organizations, namely hospitals and universities and those bounded by highly professionalized knowledge such as accounting or science. In these organizations, leaders set managers to operate under two distinct sets of rules. In the case of hospitals, the logics of care and of efficiency are critical. They both matter, and even if care prevails as the virtue embedded in Hippocratic oath, the sustainability of the system turns attention to the secondary logic of efficiency equally critical. Trouble can arise when one or the other logic encroaches on the institutionalized normativity of the other (Major, Conceição & Clegg, 2018). For example, in countries running tight national budgets, it is not possible to ignore the costs of the system. A study some of the authors of this book conducted showed how lack of fiscal balance reverberated throughout the Portuguese national health system, creating an impact on level after level, exposing the paradoxical dimensions of everyday action, demanding professionals to complete their missions under severe cost control (Cunha, Neves, Clegg, Costa & Rego, 2019). This is one example of how leaders will more and more be required to integrate different logics. As organizations recognize their ultimately hybrid nature, they have to develop paradoxical ways of thinking to respond to challenges. Given changes in societal expectations (see Box 5.7, on the Business Roundtable manifesto), it does not seem likely that Friedman’s advice can be assumed as the right way to do business. Managers of business firms, social enterprises, the public sector will thus all have to develop competences in the tackling of trade-​offs (Kaplan, 2019).

Elastic hybridity An increasing number of organizations proactively seek to combine multiple logics; examples include public-​private partnerships, social enterprises, community banks,

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cooperatives and mutuals and also universities.Typically, these organizations attempt to combine financial sustainability with the need to achieve some form of positive social impact (addressing social issues, addressing climate change, reducing inequality, educating, advancing knowledge etc.). Sometimes one of these logics is compatible and can be “blended” together, or a logic can become dominant, but in other situations multiple incompatible logics compete for attention and priority, making difficult to combine them (Besharov & Smith, 2014). In these cases leaders must find ways to dynamically balance competing demands, by including elements of structured flexibility, achieved through the interaction of stable organizational features and adaptive enactment processes. Formal structures, leadership expertise and external stakeholder relationships associated either with the business or with the social mission act as “guardrails”, defining limits for improvisation and experimentation with practices driven by a creative mix of logics (Smith & Besharov, 2019). This “elastic” flexibility helps dealing with hybridity by “bending without breaking” (i.e., completely foregoing one logic to pursue the other). This also requires empowering staff to personally and dynamically engage competing logic, by employing concepts, words, artefacts or images that simultaneously support multiple meanings that can then be used by individuals to accommodate contrasting logics (Gümüsay, Smets & Morris, 2020).

How to manage the paradoxes of organization? In this section we discuss possible ways to lead an organization through paradox. First, we consider the need to switch habitual interpretations and consider why solutions may be reframed as problems. Next, we consider the need to embrace the tensions resulting from the transition from hierarchical to agile/​less hierarchical (Lee & Edmondson, 2017). Finally, we consider the role of supporting actors.

Solutions becoming problems Because organizational policies are defined at the top level of the organization by the elites that lead it, what and how what is decided at this level tends to cascade to more micro levels as well. CEO personality, for example, has been found to impact organizational culture (O’Reilly III, Caldwell, Chatman & Doerr, 2014). In the opposite direction, deeply entrenched, hegemonic organizational narratives, such as that which Ely and Padavic called the work/​family narrative, contribute to perpetuating a situation that nobody admitted supporting and that may be hard to change. In the case studied by Ely and Padavic, this narrative assumed that long work hours were an imperative in a professional services firm; however, in order to give its female employees time to take care of their families, the organization created flexible measures that allowed women to accommodate their time to their personal schedules. Women who used the measures, however, were considered insufficiently

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devoted to work and did not progress. The authors explain that the problem lies above all in the long work hours culture that makes everybody suffer but that imposes more constraints over women. In a culture in which you make your pay from 9 to 5 and earn your bonus and promotion from 5 to 9, males that are either disencumbered or disencumber their selves of family responsibilities will prosper and establish the norm. In summary, in order to create gender balance, the organization was accentuating gender imbalance which was defended as inevitable on meritorious grounds. The organization thus accepted the dilemma as something that could not be overcome. As these authors show, sometimes it is possible that, in a Watzlawickian formulation, the problem is not the problem but the way we think about the problem (Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch, 1974).

From hierarchies to agile designs Leading through paradox may be a demanding endeavour in which cross-​level influences are reciprocal. The articulation is important, especially so in moments of transition. Organizations are striving to develop digitally savvy leaders (see Table 5.4). Ready et al. (2020) consider that digital transformation is eroding some leadership behaviours while stimulating the need for emerging behaviours. New organizations are becoming less hierarchical (Lee & Edmondson, 2017) in order to become nimbler. In these organizations the nature of leadership is changing: It’s not about one person or even those only at the top. In today’s world, everyone has to be a leader –​we have to think of ourselves as members of a leadership community. It’s not just something we talk about. It’s who we are. (In Ready et al., 2020, p. 11) Agile leadership will imply some intrinsically paradoxical qualities. It will thrive on the combination of digitization and humanization, purpose and profit, analytics and intuition (Ready et  al., 2020). As organizations affirm their commitment to society and to a variety of stakeholders, they will also confront leaders with the need to manage contradictions. Managing has always, of course, been rich in

TABLE 5.4  Leadership: from hierarchy to agility

Hierarchical leadership

Agile leadership

Individual role Hierarchy driven Micromanagement Efficiency Power

Shared process Purpose and customer driven Freedom within a framework Speed Authority

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trade-​offs, yet as organizations broaden their core constituencies, they create more opportunities for colliding goals that cannot be simply ignored. Nonetheless, as different stakeholders bring different interests, gaining skill at articulating trade-​ offs will be more important than has been the case historically. Initiatives such as PepsiCo’s Performance with Purpose exemplify the case. Purpose is a political process as much as a lofty goal. If used without genuine commitment it will not receive the energy necessary for the “long and arduous process” that it constitutes (Nooyi & Govindarjan, 2020, p.  103). Purpose can be no more than a form of window-​dressing –​or, worse, a way of “governing the soul” (Bailey, Madden, Alfes, Shantz & Soane, 2017).

BOX 5.7  THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE MANIFESTO AND ITS TRADE-​OFFS 1 Read the Business Roundtable’s Statement on the Purpose of the Corporation.5 The BRT manifesto, prepared by a group of 181 influential US CEOs, proposes the following: While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders. We commit to: Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. It also includes supporting them through training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world. We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect. Dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers. We are dedicated to serving as good partners to the other companies, large and small, that help us meet our mission. Supporting the communities in which we work. We respect the people in our communities and protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses. Generating long-​term value for shareholders, who provide the capital that allows companies to invest, grow and innovate. We are committed to transparency and effective engagement with shareholders. The document adopts a strategic stance that is known as one of stakeholder capitalism.

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Questions for reflection • Why is the management of trade-​offs rendered more important by the type of capitalism defended by the Business Roundtable? • What are the implications for the practice of managers? • How would you recommend that leaders respond to the challenge and what might be the managerial implications of doing so?

2 The Covid-​19 pandemic broke out just a few months after the launch of the manifesto. Goodman (2020a) wrote in the New  York Times that “key signatories are furloughing employees, paying dividends to shareholders and provoking complaints from workers that they aren’t adequately protected from danger”. Later, based on Ward, Bulafari, Tulay and Murphy (2020) who “tested the corporate purpose”, Goodman (2020b) wrote that the BRT’s “signatories have done no better than other companies in protecting jobs, labor rights and workplace safety during the pandemic, while failing to distinguish themselves in pursuit of racial and gender equality, according to the study”. Not every company responded in the same way. Apple continued to pay employees and contract workers (such as janitors) even as stores remained closed, and Pepsi “bolstered sick pay while continuing to compensate workers who must stay home to tend to children”. Goodman (2020a) concluded that “some signatories are responding to the downturn in ways that appear to undercut the spirit of their pledge”. A spokesperson from the BRT observed that excruciating choices need to be made when the business is bleeding. What does this say about trade-​off management?

It is not only outside stakeholder interests that leaders will have to learn to manage. Organizations compete as employer brands to offer environments in which people may find happiness and balance. Such branding may be critical to attract, develop and retain human talent. Traditional leadership is less and less attractive to young generations educated in more informal and egalitarian environments than those offered by traditional organizations.

Supporting actors To articulate and manage the paradoxes of organization, leaders may urge managers also to engage the people that Pradies et al. (2020) called supporting actors. These actors can help make sense of organizational challenges and invite the organization to think differently. The role can be played by a number of people, namely consultants or academics. Their role is to offer different interpretations of the

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organization and of its practices. Supporting actors, internal or external, may be particularly important to help make latent tensions visible (Tuckermann, 2019) and thus more manageable. Managers may tend to solve contradictions by resorting to either-​or types of solutions that permit the reduction of dissonance and uncertainty and project an image of decisiveness that looks very “managerial”. Leaders should beware of these performances because, in the long run, they may be ineffective while projecting a good image in the short run. Organizations and their leaders may thus consider the constitution of supporting actors as participants in the leadership process by un-​earthing assumptions, challenging the status quo, and helping to make tensions and contradictions visible, not as signals of managerial incompetence but as indicators of paradoxical thinking.

Conclusion Seeing organizational leadership as paradox means that instead of ignoring the coordination difficulties that inevitably result from organizing, managers may create more robust organizations by assuming their inherent contradictions. By accepting contradictions, organizations may widen the spectrum of possibilities (Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss & Figge, 2016). Instead of repressing the emotions raised by tension, managers can embrace tensions, accepting that the push-​pulls between forces such as stability-​ flexibility, efficiency-​ effectiveness, control-​ freedom are unavoidable. Assuming and leading through contradictions, paradox may thus be an indicator of awareness rather than an expression of leader fragility.

Guide for further exploration Readers interested in the paradoxes facing organizations can enjoy James March’s books such as On Leadership (March & Weil, 2009) as well as the films he directed, Passion and Discipline: Don Quixote’s Lessons for Leadership and Heroes and History:  Lessons for Leadership from Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (2014). Edmondson’s (2018) The Fearless Organization is an important book on how leading implies directing without creating fear. Michele Gelfand’s Rule Makers, Rule Breakers (2018) is a fascinating account of the need to find balance between structure and freedom. No! The Power of Disagreement in a World that Wants to Get Along, authored by Charlan Nemeth (2018), is helpful to understand the importance of dissensus in decision making.

Notes 1 https://​www.vercida.com/​uk/​articles/​top-​10-​bbc 2 https://​cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/​apps/​valve/​Valve_​NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf

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3 https://​www.outsystems.com/​-​/​media/​A49C3F1FB3BC4280904093BB45B151DC. ashx 4 http://​timharford.com/​2019/​12/​cautionary-​tales-​ep-​6-​how-​britain-​invented-​then-​ ignored-​blitzkrieg/​ 5 https:// ​ o pportunity.businessroundtable.org/​ w p-​ c ontent/ ​ u ploads/ ​ 2 019/ ​ 0 8/ ​ B RT-​ Statement-​on-​the-​Purpose-​of-​a-​Corporation-​with-​Signatures.pdf

6 RECURRING PARADOXES AND TEN LINES OF ACTION

Wise leadership –​a complicated and paradoxical endeavour We have structured our discussion into levels of analysis, a conceptually convenient device that is also misleading because domains or levels of analysis are based on arbitrary distinctions. In reality, the social world is ontologically flat; its stratification is an analytical contrivance. Consider the following observation about everyday living: I can be loyal at one and the same time to several identities –​to my family, my village, my profession, my country, and also to my planet and the whole human species. It is true that sometimes different loyalties might collide, and then it is not easy to decide what to do. But who said life was easy? Life is difficult. Deal with it. Sometimes we put work before family, sometimes family before work. Similarly, sometimes we need to put the national interest first, but there are occasions when we need to privilege the global interests of humankind. (Harari, 2018, p. 80) Paradoxes range across levels through time and space. Some of the richest lessons on paradox are ancient and valid. In the book that Aristotle dedicated to his son Nichomanus, Nicomachean Ethics, intended to guide him in the direction of an ethical and meaningful life, he described the five intellectual virtues that individuals can have to a major or lesser degree: technical knowledge, scientific knowledge, philosophical wisdom, intuitive reasoning and practical wisdom. To these, Kodish (2006, p.  460) added two other concepts “inextricably linked” to these five intellectual virtues, namely teleology and action. Manifesting these virtues as good leadership requires fundamentally opposite competences being balanced

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in process:  hardly surprising then, if the balance at one time may be counterfactual at another. Sticking rigorously to one path, irrespective of situations and circumstances, would not be wise. Managing is about successful balancing (Brady, 1986), which refers to a variety of concept-​pairs such as those described in Chapter 1. Seeing these intellectual virtues in relation, in balance, across times and situations, invites recognition that wise leadership is complicated and paradoxical. As ten Bos (2007) illustrates, too much reason can be dangerous and, as the Stoics suggested, the path to happiness is strewn with stupidity more often than wisdom. Battling stupidity risks making us stupid, far more so than for those that remain serene under its spell. Stupidity, a lack of good sense or judgement, in a position of power in dominant social relations such as the presidency of a company or a state, cannot be engaged with that which it lacks, except in other than a foolish pursuit. Notions of truth, facts and values are easily rebutted by those leaders that are too blind to see them, who are able to fool most of their followers most of the time, when they are as equally immune to reason. Leadership is a polyhedral process with many sides, involving multiple competences cutting across levels of analysis in social totalities rich in tension and contradiction, as pointed out by Benson (1977), a key figure in paradox theory (see Box 6.1). Leadership competences are often contradictory; hence, leaders will embody duality, whether they like it or not. They must strive for wisdom even when it demands more intelligence than they or their followers can summon; they must make themselves stupid sometimes in order to persuade those less wise than themselves of a course of proposed action. Leaders must realize that being in a position that bestows leadership does not necessarily instil wisdom and that wise counsel can come from the peripheries and margins of their usual attention. Note, for example, how Shane Snow (2018) described Benjamin Franklin, an American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States: Benjamin Franklin knew he was smart –​smarter than most of his peers –​but he was also intelligent enough to understand that he couldn’t be right about everything. That’s why he said that whenever he was about to make an argument, he would open with something along the lines of, “I could be wrong, but…” Saying this put people at ease and helped them to take disagreements less personally. But it also helped him to psychologically prime himself to be open to new ideas.

BOX 6.1  KEY THINKER: J. KENNETH BENSON J. Kenneth Benson who has spent his career at the University of Missouri in the Department of Sociology is a key and overlooked figure in the field of organization studies. He is also a fine musician. He can lay claim to be a foundational

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figure in Critical Management Studies. The key contribution that he made was to bring dialectical thinking in the analysis of organizations. In his words, Dialectical theory, because it is essentially a processual perspective, focuses on the dimension currently missing in much organizational thought. It offers an explanation of the processes involved in the production, the reproduction, and the destruction of particular organizational forms. It opens analysis to the processes through which actors carve out and stabilize a sphere of rationality and those through which such rationalized spheres dissolve. Thus, dialectical theory can explain the empirical grounding of conventional organization theories because it deals with the social processes which conventional theories ignore. (Benson, 1977, p. 2) For Benson, any dialectical process entails four principles. These are social construction, totality, contradiction and praxis. People are engaged in constructing and reproducing a social world that then stands over them as a material facticity. Any part of this social world needs to be seen in the context of a totality of social arrangements as complex, interrelated wholes composed of partially autonomous parts unsusceptible to orderly organization and control. Hence, contradictions, ruptures, inconsistencies and incompatibilities comprise the fabric for the social construction of organizations. Contradictions emerge where coordination between component elements breaks down. Consequent attempts at control often have paradoxical effects, escalating disorder further, creating crises, mobilizing consciousness and originating change. Dialectical analysis de-​reifies the solidity of established patterns and structures; it deconstructs it, opening up other possibilities. Hence organizations are neither stable social systems, nor do they equilibrate; they are fluid, always in processes of becoming, ripe with power relations, changing patterns of authority and interests, mobilizations of bias systemically embedded and constantly subject to potential challenge and negotiation as contradictions throw up opportunities for change. Powerful as these ideas were, they were largely ignored by the organization and management theory that followed, secure in the established tracks of stable assumptions about systems, their variables and the pursuit of efficiency.

Leading, more than being a technical task, involves embodied competences of various sorts, some very practical, others very transcendental. Some competence is embodied in the performance of the body exerting that leadership, which Žižek (1991) refers to as the empirical human body; however, he also refers to what he terms the “sublime body”. The sublime body is a body “made of a special, immaterial stuff ” (Žižek, 1991, p. 255), the body that “radiates” leadership. As Spoelstra

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and ten Bos have pointed out (2011, p. 193), only followers see this body intuitively:  it cannot be apprehended through language. While the empirical body necessarily signifies the real biological human being playing the role of leader, this body in itself is insufficient to lead: the sublime body is also necessary. Philosopher José Gil (2020, p. 4) explained that, with regard to the Covid-​19 crisis, “the energy of fear is absorbed by the leader and transformed into adherence”.This may help to explain why (often charismatic, although not necessarily wise or virtuous) leaders often emerge in moments of severe crisis. In exceptional moments, leaders have more space to make tough decisions without contestation or opposition. They are the sparks that ignite susceptible followers in times of uncertainty and fear (Klein & House, 1995).When analysed in retrospect, with the “energy of fear” gone, the process, when successful, is reinterpreted as great leadership of the type that does not exist in normal times, rich in contestation, opposition and plurality. Gil specifically referred to the Portuguese case, where a political truce was established in parliamentary life during the pandemic; however, the case may possibly be generalizable to other contexts as well. The distinction between the two bodies helps to explain what Pfeffer (1977) called the symbolic effects of leaders, which explains, for example, their sacrifice as organizational scapegoats (see also Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). One instance of this in practice would be the decision to award Nobel Peace prize to Barack Obama before he had the opportunity to exercise much in the way of leadership in his Presidential role. Obama mentioned his surprise at the honour; however, the award was based on attribution of the “sublime body” to the leader as is clear from the citation:1 Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened. Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population. The distinction between the sublime and the empirical body explains why the British Queen is not supposed to be touched by her subjects and why some leaders try to prevent others from learning too much about the health of their bodies. Perhaps the best example of this was US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who

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steered America through the Great Depression and World War II. During his time in office he was unable to walk unaided and relied on a wheelchair for mobility. The White House sought to suppress photographs of the president in a wheelchair while the Secret Service destroyed pictures taken by journalists defying the request. Many other leaders in history have concealed their health problems from the followers (Owen, 2008). Of course, this happens with all of us to some extent; women seen crying or wearing attire labelled as too sexy (Rafaeli, Dutton, Harquail & Mackie-​Lewis, 1997) may project an unprofessional image, and boys, as we all know, don’t cry. In the case of leaders these facets only gain an extra importance. Some paradoxes of leadership are recurring, meaning that they emerge and re-​ emerge over time. As we have discussed, we expect our leaders to be biological and sublime, approachable and with a gravitas, technically competent and strategically aware, empathetic and tough. As Cronin and Genovese (2012, p. 3) argued in The Paradoxes of American Presidents, “we want a decent, caring, and compassionate president, yet we also admire a cunning, guileful, and, on occasions that warrant it, even a ruthless, manipulative president” (see also Table 6.1). TABLE 6.1  Some paradoxes of the American Presidency

Americans want this…

… yet, they also want the opposite

Americans want a powerful, decisive Americans are suspicious of strong popular President who solves the nation’s centralized leadership and the abuse of problems power Americans yearn for a democratic Americans want a leader who is “common person” uncommon, charismatic, heroic, visionary and with “star” qualities Americans want a decent, just, caring and Americans admire a “cunning, guileful, compassionate President and, on occasions that warrant it, even a ruthless, manipulative President”. Americans admire the “above politics” “Presidency is perhaps the most political non-​partisan or bipartisan leadership office in the American political system” approach. Americans want a President who provides Americans want a President who responds a creative, visionary, innovative and pragmatically to the will of public opinion programmatic leadership majorities Americans want a self-​confident, resolute Americans are “suspicious of leaders who and presidential leadership view themselves as infallible and above criticism”. What and who it takes to become … may not be what and who are needed President… to govern Americans want a President who affirms They want a President who departs form the existing order and major traditions the older order and creates a new one of society Source: Cronin and Genovese (2012, pp. 3–​4).

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In this final chapter, we discuss two concluding themes: the paradoxes that recur over time, such as those discussed in this intro, before making a final set of paradoxical lines of action.

Why do some paradoxes recur? Handling the “ongoing puzzle” In Chapter 2 we learned that “everyone is a work in progress” (Carole Dweck, interviewed by Hill, 2019, p.  3), leaders, perhaps more so than most, as it is on them that the burden of performativity weighs most heavily when failing routines or events turn cataclysmic in their consequences. Weick (1995, p. 20) discussed an equivalent idea when he noted that sensemakers (including leaders engaging in sensemaking) are “an ongoing puzzle undergoing continual redefinition”. Leaders’ mental capacities will be confronted with challenges, professional and otherwise, that force them into situations that test the performative range of their embrainment, forcing them to transform their ideational sense of self when faced with things that do not make sense to previous routines of thinking. For instance, the Covid-​19 virus changed the facts of political leadership so much in some countries that lifelong neo-​liberals committed to neo-​socialism in spending and subvention when faced with a situation whose facts changed their minds. Becoming and being strategic as a leader implies developing new skills that involve adjustment as circuits of power are transformed around one in a potential distancing from past operational grounds (Mantere & Whittington, 2020). Leaders may neither realize nor relish that when the facts of political life change (and all of a leader’s life can be political, even that life that strives to be private) so must they; they have to be practical dialecticians, embroiled in the processes that Benson (1977) describes. As Linda Hill (2003) explained, becoming a manager implies the development of a new identity. If becoming a manager means a degree of distantiation from not being a manager, managers becoming leaders of an entire organization, be it a business, political, not-​for-​profit or public sector body, implies skillsets whose acquisition contains tension: learning involves one in unlearning; unlearning often involves rejecting that which previously allowed an organization to flourish under past strategies of leadership. The process, even if necessary, can cause tension and psychological discomfort because learning implies unnatural behaviours whose cultivation creates generative but complex tensions (Vince & Broussine, 1996). These tensions are dynamic and can shift:  virtuous circles can become vicious, given paradox dynamism enunciated by Smith and Lewis (2011), in their highly influential model (see Box 6.2).

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BOX 6.2  KEY THINKERS: MARIANNE LEWIS AND WENDY SMITH By Wendy Smith, University of Delaware

1 Marianne Lewis contribution Her 2000 Academy of Management Review (AMR) –​ Exploring Paradox (Lewis, 2000), was a big contribution to the field and really helped lay the groundwork for scholarship on organizational paradox to move into the centre of org theory conversations. She articulated the absurdity, as well as the prevalence of paradox in that paper, and helped us see both the cyclicality of paradoxes, our defences and our ability to sustain paradox, reinforcing both the inherently shifting nature of paradoxical tensions as well as the role of social construction in response. This paper won the AMR best paper of the year. Her other foundational work was her 1999 paper on metatriangulation, challenging academia to use ideas of paradox to inform our theorizing. My sense is that the 2018 Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) paper flowed from this work, in which we moved from the organizational level to the individual level towards articulating microfoundations of paradox and introducing a paradox mindset scale to help unpack individual experiences of paradox.

2 I started out thinking about how senior teams navigate a specific paradox of exploration and exploitation, which informed the theory paper I wrote with Mike Tushman in 2005 (Smith & Tushman, 2005) around the need for paradoxical thinking, as well as the empirical paper in 2014 in AMJ (Smith, 2014) on how senior leaders at IBM manage this innovation paradox. I then turned to exploring the question of how leaders navigate the paradox of sustainability (social/​financial tensions) in the Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ) paper in 2019 (Smith & Besharov, 2019). If there is anything I feel proud of, it has been the work to make paradox accessible to a broader audience; one of the goals of the 2011 paper (Smith & Lewis, 2011) was to build on Marianne’s 2000 paper, recognize and integrate the array of existing paradox scholarship and build on it to articulate some principles towards a theory of paradox that would invite a broader community of scholars into the conversation. The same is true for the Oxford Handbook (Smith et  al., 2017). That said, I  think a lot of the work was in organizing connections, conversations and community to help people engage with and access ideas of paradox –​through conferences (EGOS, AOM), online communities, small one-​day seminars, website/​listserves and so on.

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The process of learning also forces people to evolve with experience and to discover facets of themselves of which they were not aware. The crisis associated with the epidemiology of the spread of Covid-​19 in the United Kingdom is a case in point. Prior to the recognition that a disastrous epidemic was rife, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s behaviour in public was largely performatively cued to buffoonery and playing to the gallery of right-​wing populism fuelled by Brexit. In December 2019, he was still being routinely referred to as a political buffoon, a clown, in The Guardian (Chakraborrty, 2019). By March 2020 his daily press briefings were flanked by two scientific experts to whom he deferred all questions of detail in a reversal of the populist, anti-​expert rhetoric of the 2016 referendum that propelled Johnson to Downing Street … utterly at odds with the “Boris” he meticulously constructed over three decades. He used to rely on gags and bluster; now he depends on Sir Patrick Vallance and Prof Chris Whitty. (Freedland, 2020) The empirical body remained the same; the sublime body was undergoing a transformation as dramatic as that of Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde before the television cameras’ focus and the millions of watchful gazes that saw these images reproduced. As with many leaders before him and similar to other leaders at the time of crisis, the Prime Minister was striving to deal with performatively unlearning almost everything that had stood him in good stead previously. Subsequently, stricken by the virus, the response to which he was fronting, he disappeared from sight as the government’s response became ever more criticized. Perhaps inadvertently, absence from the scenes of political embarrassment as the human carnage mounted meant that responsibility for its unfolding could be temporarily, at least, avoided as a paradox was unfolding before the watchful audience’s eyes. Sometimes, being a leader means being indisposed is a useful contingency: the paradoxes between promise and performance can be elided and the responsibilities directed elsewhere. Leadership in the Prime Minister’s absence seemed, haplessly, to be exposing more people to danger as a result of strategies boldly proclaimed and promises that could not be met. In the Prime Minister’s absence, a series of Cabinet Ministers fronted the daily press conferences on the management of the virus, flanked by medical experts, outlining policy developments that were critically judged to be too little, too late, too optimistic and also veering into the fictional with regard to some of the truth claims. In the interim, when the Prime Minister returned to the locked down and largely virtual Parliament, he faced a new leader of the opposition, a learned barrister, Sir Kier Starmer, who was able to pierce Prime Ministerial humbug and polly waffle with laser like forensic skills. He was attacked on the one hand for not containing the pandemic in the face of a mounting death toll that became the highest in Europe; on the other hand, the libertarians in his party and without, many of whom were the most ardent Brexiteer fantasists, increasingly railed against the restrictions in place on the freedom of people to infect themselves and others.

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In the battle over the political supremacy of economy or society, business over health, the Prime Minister found himself in the middle, striving to satisfy both objectives but failing on both counts (Geoghegan & Fitzgerald, 2020). As an object lesson in organizational miscommunication and communication failure, his shift to placing the responsibility for survival on to the alertness of the individual was a signal triumph (William, 2020).

Four recurring paradoxes Analytically, we suggest that there are four paradoxes that recurrently shape and reshape themselves that leaders have to deal with (see Figure 6.1). First, there is the paradox of excellence: for many of us, as we gain competence in one domain, we will be challenged to express it at a different domain. In the process of transitioning, any person may at points fulfil the Peter Principle (see Box 6.4). Leading and assuming more responsibilities thus consists in becoming competent in performing so that one can finally achieve positions in which one is less competent, because past achievements have not prepared one for an ambition pursued too far. Smart leaders do not strive to sequester all claims to excellence but buttress themselves with independent expertise to which they can defer as they learn to become competent in new and unanticipated scenarios. Second, as leaders gain positional power, they will be confronted with the paradox of power, as Keltner (2016) called it. As they accumulate and concentrate relations of power on their person, leaders will pay less attention to others as the space for advice and reflection becomes crowded out. In cases where this happens, leaders Paradox of power

Authenticity paradox

Zoom in

Paradox of

Zoom out

excellence

FIGURE 6.1  Recurring

paradoxes.

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will become increasingly distant. They expose themselves, perhaps inadvertently, to the curse of hubris (Berger, Osterloh, Rost & Ehrmann, 2020; Sadler-​Smith et al., 2017; Tourish, 2020), the disease of the powerful. Hubristic leaders entrap themselves in a spiral of arrogance that may make them fail. Third, there is the paradox of proximity and distance or the need to zoom in and zoom out. Leading –​a team, a nation, our selves –​implies being embedded in the world but also gaining a distance from this embeddedness. Only with a degree of distance can one be reflexive about one’s performativity and that of others and identify the unique needs of one’s organization. Some successful organizations adopt practices that run against fashionable trends (Ferdows, Lewis & Machuca, 2004) that their competitors follow in mimetic isomorphism. Reflexivity about, rather than reflection of the world in which one is embedded, is an oscillatory disposition that prevents leaders from becoming dedicated followers of management fads and fashions (Klincewicz, 2017) or aloof macro-​leaders convinced of their own destiny and greatness. Finally, there is the paradox of authenticity. Throughout our lives we need to be able to reflect on our evolving selves and control the performativity that this entails (Ibarra, 2015a, 2015b). As we have discussed, authenticity is not the same as being transparent (see Box 6.3). Nor is it one-​dimensional: we all perform different roles that imply that we manage our multiple selves (Ramarajan, 2014). Being authentic does not mean being over-​emotional. Leaders need to know how to be authentic without being uncontrolled, the essence of emotional intelligence: regulating our emotions and behaviours such that they do not cause unwanted effects –​in ourselves and others. Leaders, on occasion, do have to be performatively fake (Ibarra, 2015b), but even in the midst of doing so they need to keep in mind that they are playing a role:  that of a leader. This role comes with expectations and with obligations, including the obligation of leading oneself, reflectively. But being authentic can be a dangerous practice: in the age of algorithmic control (Kellogg, Valentine & Christin, 2020), being authentic and true to oneself can lead to consequential organizational scrutiny. Authenticity, in summary, is a double edge sword: it cuts both ways, i.e., one may be damaged by being either authentic or inauthentic.

BOX 6.3  IS “BE YOURSELF” BAD ADVICE? 1 Adam Grant (2016, p. SR6) wrote that “Unless you’re Oprah, ‘Be yourself’ is terrible advice”. He challenged the readers with the following story: A decade ago, the author A.  J. Jacobs spent a few weeks trying to be totally authentic. He announced to an editor that he would try to sleep with her if he were single and informed his nanny that he would like to go on a date with her if his wife left him. He informed a friend’s

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5-​year-​old daughter that the beetle in her hands was not napping but dead. He told his in-​laws that their conversation was boring. You can imagine how his experiment worked out. Ironically, Grant gave the following advice:  “If I  can be authentic for a moment:  Nobody wants to see your true self. We all have thoughts and feelings that we believe are fundamental to our lives, but that are better left unspoken”. He illustrated his arguments with sharing his own experience: As an introvert, I  started my career terrified of public speaking so my authentic self wouldn’t have been giving a TED talk in the first place. But being passionate about sharing knowledge, I spent the next decade learning to do what Dr. Little, the psychologist, calls acting out of character. I decided to be the person I claimed to be, one who is comfortable in the spotlight. It worked. Next time people say, “just be yourself”, stop them in their tracks. No one wants to hear everything that’s in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.

2 In a later article, Grant (2020) argued that being authentic (i.e., expressing our inner thoughts and feelings on the outside) may work for those who are perceived as competent and haven’t to prove themselves –​but not for individuals who haven’t proven themselves, for whom divulging their flaws make them seem incompetent and insecure. He concluded: Authenticity without boundaries is careless. When we broadcast our limitations, we need to be careful to avoid casting doubt on our strengths. This appears to be especially important for nondominant groups. Sadly, experiments show that when leaders make self-​ deprecating jokes, they’re judged as more capable if they’re men and less capable if they’re women. Men’s competence is typically taken more for granted, while –​ unfairly –​women have to work harder to prove themselves at work.

3 Grant (2020) also argued that, for leaders, one reason why conveying authenticity may be problematic is that authenticity may represent narcissism and self-​absorption. The leader is more focused on conveying his/​her true self than on empathizing with others. As he argued (p. B6), “authenticity without empathy is selfish” and “authenticity is not just about expressing our own thoughts and feelings –​it’s about conveying our respect for others”. This is consistent with an empirical research carried out by Rego, Cunha and Giustiniano

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(2020): leaders who are relationally transparent with their followers but also not humble are perceived as disrespectful, and this makes followers less likely to be transparent towards the leader. In short, being authentic towards others may make others less authentic towards us.

These paradoxes overall have parallels with the different stages of a managerial career: there are intrapersonal skills (regulating oneself), interpersonal skills (building rich relationships), leadership skills (building and guiding a collective) and business skills (conducting organizational activities). These may form a hierarchy of skills where the intrapersonal are the hardest to develop and the business skills are the least difficult to cultivate (Kaiser & Kaplan, 2006).We now analyse these four recurring paradoxes that permeate the levels of analysis that were discussed in the book.

Paradox of excellence –​or the tension between evolving or getting stuck The first foundational pillar of competence is technical knowledge, the capacity to do things. Sometimes presented as skill or art, this consists in knowing how to do what to do. The issue is that the things that leaders need to know what to do change over time. A career starts with doing more or less identifiable things, often based upon specific technical competences such as accounting or engineering. As careers progress, those practices that occupy leaders’ time become more immaterial, such as defining a strategy, moving “the human heart” (Bennis & O’Toole, 2000), or business model innovation (Sawhney, Wolcott & Arroniz, 2006). It is for this reason that, as leaders progress, their work becomes more intangible, implying new competences that have to be acquired. Fortunately, if we do not assume that our “qualities are set in stone” (Hill, 2019, p. 3), this might not be a problem. From a growth perspective we can learn new competences and managers must learn new competences to keep up with a changing world (see Box 6.4).

BOX 6.4  THE PETER PRINCIPLE In theory Elaborated by Peter and Hull (1969), the Peter principle states that people will be promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. As a corollary, if people are not promoted once they become incompetent, then organizations should be filled with incompetents. Even though the logic is a clear mix of realism and irony, it is possible to refashion the meaning of the principle. A manager that one of us knows and admires, founder and CEO of a “unicorn” company, once informally advised:

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I am constantly hitting Peter moments. The idea is that as the organization grows, his skills are put to test. And every time the company reaches a new stage, new competences are needed which creates new feelings of incompetence. Of course, one does not get more incompetent as one makes progress. The problem is that new competences must be acquired and new levels of proficiency in new activities are necessary. Therefore, successive Peter moments may be an indicator of progress rather than one of incompetence. On the contrary, feeling competent for long periods of time may mean that one is not progressing.

… and in practice Having heard him speak about “successive Peter moments” we have invited Paulo Rosado, founder and CEO of OutSystems, a tech company, to explain what he meant. Here is his explanation (obtained in March 23, 2020): In the case of fast-​growing companies, we frequently have to do a job that we have never done before and in which we feel incompetent. What you have to ask yourself at this point is not if you are at the Peter level –​because you normally are. The question is if you are learning fast enough, so that you never become disastrously incompetent.

Questions for reflection • How you would recommend facilitating fast learning in a person newly appointed to a leadership position, without prior experience of the job in question? • What happens to leaders who, being afraid to be promoted to the next level of incompetence, prefer to stay where they are now? Is this the best way to learn? Aren’t there risks of becoming incompetent in the position where one occupies now?

Scientific and technical knowledge refers to the knowledge of theory. Knowledge of theory matters as an antidote against false explanations of phenomena that attribute them to the grace or ill favour of deities, or the movements of celestial bodies at the moment of birth. Yet knowledge of theory can be misleading when applied in the absence of other forms. The late Clayton Christensen, who coined the notion of “disruptive innovation”, told the Financial Times’ Andrew Hill that his theory had been used “largely for good, but sometimes for idiocy” (Hill, 2020). With his idea of disruption, Christensen sought to find an answer to the question “why do great firms fail?”. As The Economist (2020, p. 60) observed, Mr Christensen’s insight was that it is not stupidity that prevents great firms from foreseeing disruption but rather their supreme rationality. They do “the right thing”, focusing on better products for their best and most profitable

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clients, often to the point of over-​engineering (how many Mach and Fusion blades does a chin need?). The same is potentially valid for every theory. When a theory or an idea is used in an inadequate way, it can lead to negative outcomes. Consider the case of creativity: scholars and managers alike have praised the importance of creativity. It has been hailed as the secret of societies and organizations, as a form of creative capital. Yet creativity is more complex and nuanced than a simple tool for organizational improvement. Josefsson and Blomberg (2020) explored the dark side of creativity, and Castaner (2016) noted that the definitional bias in the direction of novel and useful solutions distorts the true nature of the process. Creativity, in this perspective, can lead to negative outcomes when solutions may be novel but useless or even destructive. For example, the concept of purposeful tech underlines the fact that new organizational solutions may have second or third order consequences that are not anticipated and that may prove highly destructive. The different forms of intelligence are important.“Sages” with no practical sense may fall victim to their intellectual inclinations –​this is why wisdom is labelled as “practical wisdom”. Sometimes literally, as when Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, fell into a well while contemplating the heavenly bodies. As ten Bos (2007) points out, one possible moral of that story is that sagacity can be stupid. It also shows that too much intelligence can be single-​mindedly blinkered in not paying attention to any phenomenon other than those of analytic interest. It is generally assumed that stupidity disappears when wisdom shows up. To think this shows the “paradoxical relationship that stupidity entertains with wisdom” (ten Bos, 2007, p. 142).

Paradoxes of power –​or the tension between humility and hubris As they progress leaders will be offered enhanced opportunities for accruing positional power. Power offers perks such as more attention and deference from others as well as enhanced rewards. As a result, power changes the way people think, as empirical research suggests. For example, the powerful feel more uninhibited and think less about others; power, in other words, affects cognition (Guinote, 2007b). If this process is predictable, then organizations and leaders should cultivate humility and create governance systems rich in checks and balances. Cultivating humility means making efforts to get a better understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses, to value and recognize the others’ contributions and qualities, and be teachable, i.e., willing to learn with others and from not just successful experiences but also failures (Owens et  al., 2013). Participating in a 360º feedback program, listening actively, encouraging others to speak up and above all developing awareness of one’s mortality –​they are all paths to develop humility. Being humble does not mean having low self-​esteem or low self-​confidence. A leader may be both humble and self-​confident (Collins, 2001). Humility is the

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“sauce” that makes self-​confidence healthy and palatable. Without humility, self-​ confidence turns into hubris. To project confidence without being conquered by hubris, leaders may create organizational spaces rich in opportunities for speaking up. Leadership thus means maintaining a balance between confidence and doubt, being decisive and considering the opinions of the other. An excess of confidence will potentially discourage others from sharing their ideas, whereas an excess of humility may project an image of weakness. Leading humbly may involve a combination of action and reflection. Air Asia’s Tony Fernandes noted that “a fine line separates boldness and folly. Paradoxically, boldness can also mean taking a step back and engaging in deep reflection, ignoring the clamour to ‘do something now’ that is often the refrain in a commercial enterprise” (in Financial Times, 2013, p. 20). We next discuss the importance of taking a step back.

Paradoxes of proximity and distance –​or the tension between the parts and the whole Paradox scholars tend to emphatically defend that managers need “consciously and deliberately [to] move between individual and collective practices in order to enhance product-​market fit” (Knight et  al., 2020, p.  47). We call the conscious and deliberate movement between micro and macro the paradox of proximity and distance, which refers to the need to zoom in and out or to express level shifting competences, the “ability to move fluidly among levels of analysis” (Watkins, 2012, p.  68). Such movement is critical to allow leaders to discipline the mind to be both more abstract and more concrete, as Chia and Nayak (2016) explain. Being referred to as a micromanager is not normally a compliment but neither is being the “strategizer” that lives in an abstract stratosphere populated only by models and assumptions rather than other realities. The fact is that leadership implies both. Here is how the Financial Times’ Andrew Hill (2018, p.  10) described Jack Ma and Elon Musk, two well-​known visionaries qua micromanagers: That micromanaging and delegating are on the same spectrum is not so surprising. Even Ma, the arch-​delegator, is capable of getting close to the problem when required, particularly if he feels that Alibaba is neglecting customers. “He’s like a hawk (…) He swoops down on things that might violate trust”. Similarly, it is hard to say that Musk, whose goals include the colonisation of Mars, lacks a long-​range vision. He concludes that neither extreme is ideal. (…) Achieving that balance between seeing the big picture and worrying about the detail is hard, but is the essence of good leadership. Full stop. (Hill, 2018, p. 10)

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The implication is that leaders need to cultivate their competences to see problems as close and distant (Carlsen, Clegg & Gjersvik, 2012; Nicolini, 2009). Zooming out allows them to gain a critical distance, to see movement and patterns of change, to scrutinize the organizational periphery (Cunha & Chia, 2007). It affords time for reflection.Yvon Chouinard, the celebrated founder of Patagonia, practices what he calls a “MBA theory of management” which stands for “managing by absence” (in Hill, 2020b, p. 12), meaning that he sometimes disappears from the organization. Zooming in gives leaders a first-​hand experience of the organization not as a distant entity but as a concrete and unfolding reality. Both forms of knowledge are critical. Leaders, in other words, need to cultivate representational and imaginative functions. A hands-​on attitude helps them to form a better representation of their organizations, which is crucial for managing the business, and the imaginative function is important to lead change. The recognition of the importance of the imaginative function is not new. Consider the advice of Juan Alfonso de Polanco (1517–​1576), secretary to the First Three Leaders of the Jesuit Order (also known in English as the Society of Jesus), to missionaries on how to prepare the reports to be sent to Rome. Here is Quattrone’s description (2015, p. 431): He asked them to reflect on the mission as a whole “as though from a very high place” so to observe how “the entire enterprise unfolds, how ground is being gained or lost … which things should be adopted, continued, abandoned, or changed”. The aim was to help each person to understand the why, the ultimate goal, rather than only proximal goals. The competence of zooming in and out is not an exclusive quality of top executives. As Garvin (2013) pointed out, managers need to communicate a vision for their teams and this vision will help them to situate their teams in the organization. In the case of the Toyota-​devised “Five Whys” technique (see, e.g., Staats & Upton, 2011), the method helps managers to make sense of purpose and to think deeply about why they do the things they do, to discover opportunities for change and to nurture psychological safety, among other factors. These competences are critical for managers because if they do not manage them, nobody else will do it for them. Some managers have an acute understanding of this reality. Nuno Teles, CEO of the Diageo Beer Company, explained in an interview that, every year he serves as a bartender once or twice, in order to be as close as possible to customers: You learn a lot. There is no market research as efficient as being close to customers, interact with them, a real feel of what they want. (In Santos, 2020, p. 53) Some leaders are so close to reality that they act as micromanagers. Others are so distant from reality that they act as aloof macro-​leaders. Both approaches are

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problematic. Leaders need to zoom in to understand their real organization and they need to zoom out to make sense of the world and its complex connections (see Box 6.5). They need to manage, in other words, with proximity and distance. An excess of proximity leads to micromanagement, whereas an excess of distance creates an “imperial” style, in which decisions are made without input and discussion. These decisions are regarded as being above criticism and the CEO is the company’s “rock star” (Lawler, 2009), a celebrity CEO (van Krieken, 2018).

BOX 6.5  EXERCISE: SEEING THE TREES, IGNORING THE FOREST –​HOW THE MAO ZEDONG’S WAR ON BIRDS BOOMERANGED 1 The Four Pests Campaign was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China between the years of 1958 and 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows, also known as Smash Sparrows Campaign, was intended to improve agricultural results, but it resulted instead in a grave state of ecological imbalance. It ended up being one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine. In 1960, Mao Zedong ended the campaign against sparrows. The case can be viewed as a result of focusing on the trees while ignoring the forest (to further explore the case consider, for example, Dikötter, 2010). Because sparrows do not exist in isolation, eliminating them will increase the numbers of the animals eaten by the birds, namely insects that will reduce the crops. The implication is clear: it is important for leaders to be able to see the system instead of only its constituent parts. Parts are important but they may lead to partial solutions.

Questions for reflection • What do leaders fail to see in the forest, instead of focusing on the trees? • Can you find equivalent cases in business organizations or NGOs?

2 There are numerous examples of failing to see the big picture in the life of organizations. As exemplified by Padavic, Ely and Reid (2020), organizations may be so focused in one problem/​part that they ignore other, potentially more complex problems. For example, why do policies introduced to help women progress end up creating difficulties for women to progress? Before you read Padavic et al. (2020), what could there be the forest and the trees? It is thus critical that leaders focus on the trees but also the forest. In terms of paradox theory, looking at one “tree” may lead to a focus on one pole that

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it will provide a poor approach to a complex reality (Schad & Bansal, 2018). Paradox entails sophisticated forms of knowledge that need to be nurtured as a form of wisdom.

Distance is necessary to make sense of evolving trends and to see the big picture, the forest. In the New Normal world of organizations (Ahlstrom, Arregle, Hitt, Qian, Ma & Faems, 2020), some changes in the spheres of the economy, demographics, politics and technology are relatively predictable, namely that there are trends and pendulum movements that need some distance to be interpreted and acted upon: the flatness of globalization was followed by populist nationalism on the part of those who did not feel that they were experiencing its benefits. The institutionalization of globalization thus led to anti-​globalization movements. Likewise, the parallel emphasis on shareholder capitalism led to critiques of capitalism being a system for the few not the many.These movements cannot be predicted, as reality is open ended; nonetheless, leaders can be engaged in reflection, thinking analytically about the present and the future. The organizational contexts of busyness (Bruch & Ghoshal, 2002) prevent this exercise but this is a critical leadership skill.

Paradoxes of authenticity –​or the tension between integration and differentiation Finally, there are paradoxes of integration and differentiation.These manifest at multiple layers. As individuals, we need to be similar and different; teams have identities that sometimes prevent them from collaborating with other teams; organizations need to differentiate their knowledge but then have to integrate what they have differentiated (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967) or otherwise they risk becoming victim of their silo mentality (Tett, 2015). The leadership literature has recently witnessed the popularity of the notion of authenticity, although the phenomenon is pervaded with equivocal complexities and strange cases (Boxes 6.6 and 6.7). The idea is that leaders need to be authentic to be persuasive. Authenticity can be defined as the characteristic of putting self above role (Lemoine, Hartnell & Leroy, 2019). Being authentic is certainly advantageous for the leader because it reduces the need to act performatively in an assumed role. The leader can be the same person Sunday and Monday.

BOX 6.6  EXERCISE: TRUMP ON AUTHENTICITY 1 Authentic Trump The case of Donald Trump has attracted significant interest from leadership scholars (e.g., Badley, 2020). Trump has been hailed as an obvious case of

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authenticity: he does not follow the rules of politically correct language in the age of political correctness; he does not necessarily follow established rules, he is unashamedly rich (at least, he argues so, evidence showing a different version of “reality”; see Buettner, Craig & McIntire, 2020). Referring to the case of Trump, Kennedy and Kolb (2016) suggest that authenticity is not in the leader him/​herself but in the alchemy between leader and followers. The case also indicates that what some may interpret as genuineness and authenticity is, for others, just arrogance.

Questions for reflection • What are the indicators you look at to evaluate a person’s authenticity? • Is authenticity good in and of himself? • Can authenticity be trained? Can a leader learn to be authentic?

2 An authentic “lying demagogue”? Read Hahl, Kim and Sivan (2018) about the “The authentic appeal of the lying demagogue”. One author (Sivan) of that paper commented the findings of that research as follows (in Eastwood, 2018): The key to our theory is that when a candidate asserts an obvious untruth especially as part of a general attack on establishment norms, his anti-​establishment listeners will pick up on his underlying message that the establishment is illegitimate and, therefore, that candidate will have an ‘authentic’ appeal despite the falsehoods and norm-​breaking.

Questions for reflection • How can a “lying demagogue” be considered as being authentic? • Where authenticity is located: in the leader, the followers, or the relationship between leader and followers?

Being authentic is not the same as being transparent. Transparency in leadership is not a positive prospect for several reasons. On the one hand, transparent leaders may lack texture and gravitas. They lack the element of mystery, of the sacredly symbolic, that is often associated with leadership. On the other hand, social life implies knowing and respecting rules and roles as explained by Goffman (1959): we constantly perform our selves to others. If people took the idea of authenticity at face value, the rules of civilization would vanish. As Pfeffer (2016a) explained, leadership may even imply the capacity to use falsehoods to reach for the greater good, as the case of Abraham Lincoln so aptly describes (see Box 2.9).

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Being an authentic leader is therefore a balancing act. Leaders need to be authentic and themselves, but they need to learn to act to be themselves, to be versatile in handling the oppositions that come with leadership as these oppositions are integral to leadership (Kaiser & Kaplan, 2006). The acting skills of leadership, just like acting skills in general, can be learned (Ibarra, 2015a) and should be learned as intrapersonal skills may constitute the “bedrock of performance” (2006, p. 470). This is difficult, however, because it involves deep work, rather than more shallow work such as that involved in learning technical competences. Leaders, in this sense, need to develop the act skills they need to appropriately play their own roles.

BOX 6.7  WHEN ARISTOTLE MEETS TRUMP How can Trump’s authentic narcissism be interpreted? In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explains negative political leadership, using the terms eirôn and aleízon (Gooch, 1987; Pfeffer, 2016a; Wohlgezogen & Rai, 2017). The first term, eirôn, describes those politicians that never tell the whole truth; who use irony to signify difference between the underlying and apparent meaning of something. In contemporary parlance, one might say that they were economical with the truth; it is a skill that you can see much practiced by the character of Sir Humphrey Appleby in almost any episode of the old TV series, Yes, Prime Minister (available online). The alazôn is the opposite of the eirôn. The alazôn is an impostor, one who poses and performs without any irony as something that they clearly are not, one filled with braggadocio, swagger and hubris, overcome by the verbosity of their own hyper-​inflated rhetoric about their self. Alazôn refers to the leader or politician that says whatever lie, insult or distortion seems to fit the occasion in terms of self-​interest. Mr. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, offers an example: when he lies, he lies authentically because belief is vested in the performance. Of course, frequency of rehearsal makes performance easier; according to the Washington Post, in his first three years in office he made 16,241 false or misleading statements (Kessler, Rizzo & Kelley, 2020). A study carried out by researchers at Cornell University (Evanenga, Lynas, Adams & Smolenyak, 2020), who analysed 38  million articles about the pandemic in English-​language media around the world, concluded that Trump was the largest driver of the Covid-​19 misinformation “infodemic”  –​i.e., falsehoods involving the pandemic. According to Sarah Evanega, the director of the Cornell Alliance for Science and the study’s lead author, “The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid. (…) That’s concerning in that there are real-​world dire health implications” (Stolberg & Weiland, 2020, p.  A9). Nonetheless, when these untruths accord with the sentiments, dispositions, indeed, the ideologies, of his supporters, they see him as genuine in these moments.

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To these two types, Aristotle contraposed a third: the parrhesiastes, the one who tells truth to power who speaks frankly, irrespective of the authority and status of the office or person to whom the frankness is addressed. Likewise, particularly at critical times, leaders need to tell the truth, not practice either alazôn or eirôn. In democratic contexts, be they at work or in politics, the leader who speaks truth to the demos, the people, is speaking truth to power, practicing parrhesis, aware that legitimacy comes ultimately not from status or position but from the assent of the multitude. As argued by Weber (1978), for whom domination was the central thread of his work on organizations, to turn any form of domination into legitimate authority requires assent from the relevant constituency. Legitimate authority, in critical moments, thus requires speaking truth to the people on whose consent it is ultimately founded. Courageously telling the truth can be a dangerous act, one that the parrehesiast is still able to perform, no matter how painful and displeasing this truth might be (Weiskopf, 2014).

On managing recurring paradoxes: ten paradoxical lines of action If some paradoxes recur, what can managers do is to tackle them in such a way that they cultivate their paradoxical wisdom on an ongoing basis. In this section we explore ten general ideas for cultivating a paradoxical approach to organizing (synthesis on Table 6.2). While these more prescriptive indications will not necessarily be a source of paradoxical advantage, they potentially present organizations in a more complex and nuanced way than strictly dualistic approaches.

Be curious about contradiction As Mary Parker Follett once remarked, “the first rule for obtaining integration is to put your cards on the table, face the real issue, uncover the conflict” (in Graham, 1995, p.  75). To be appreciated and tackled, paradoxes first need to be made rendered explicit and “visible”. Having a paradox-​friendly mindset, fostering curiosity with regard to contradiction and accepting conflict will uncover proactive opportunities to seek oppositions that may be hidden (without freezing or paralysing while facing them), to ask questions (what is the reverse way?), to know what is not known, to increase complexity and to appreciate contradictory evidence. Being open means being able to engage in a dialectical exercise: defining the dominant understanding (thesis) and the alternative perspective (antithesis). Paradoxical wisdom means that the more we know, the more we want to know because we know what we don´t know. Creating comfort with complexity is necessary to manage paradox through integration (Baxter, 2004; Lewis, Andriopoulos & Smith, 2014; Tse,  2013).

Recurring paradoxes, ten lines of action  187 TABLE 6.2 Ten ideas for cultivating paradoxical wisdom

Action

Explanation

Be curious about contradictions

Open-​mindedness and curiosity lead to proactively seeking oppositions, to know what is not known, to increase complexity and to appreciate contradictory evidence. Extreme confidence and extreme caution are representative of a “close-​mind”. Paradoxical wisdom implies an attitude of humility towards the world. Reflection creates the opportunity to embrace paradoxes, increasing chances of learning and change by allowing the organization to engage with the context.

Synthesize confidence and caution Promote time for reflection and to deeply engage with context Develop a multi–​ perspectival mindset Embrace opposition Use experience to support improvisation Interrogate the meaning of goodness Assume that the solution may be the problem Cultivate jestership and embrace criticism Black swan scenarios

Diversity of inputs stimulates variety in output and multiplies the chance of breakthroughs when a shared understanding is possible. Combining lenses may create comfort with paradox. The dialectical process implies an exercise of finding connections between the tensions and integrating them, emerging into something that was not considered beforehand. To build on experience and apperception will enhance the ability to respond quickly to unpredictable situations, to improvise, acquiring knowledge and experience while action occurs. The disposition to interrogate the paradoxical consequences of our actions should be deeply embedded in the organization’s culture. Asking what is good, as a way of being, may nurture an attitude of wisdom. Organization studies tends to focus on solutions to problems. It is important to consider through that today’s solutions may become tomorrow’s problems. Cultivated dissent may be used to counter established routines and to invite the organization to get out of its comfort zone. This may develop a sense of comfort with discomfort. Imagining disruptive factors may prepare organizations to attend to tensions before they become salient. The exercise may also remind organizations that paradoxes, as forces in tension, are unstable and have a dialectic potential to transform themselves into something different and unexpected.

Synthesize confidence and caution As pointed out by Weick (1993), extreme confidence and extreme caution are representative of a “closed-​mind” which influences the capacity of good judgements and increases the possibility of adoption of “either/​or” solutions. Overconfidence may destroy learning opportunities because there is nothing to be learned. Over-​caution may inhibit the embrace of paradox for fear that it will deepen the Pandora’s Box of uncertainty and complexity. The attributes of organizational wisdom identified by Weick (1993), as well as those explored by Sternberg (2004), define foolishness

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as knowing everything and assuming that, being so powerful, everything can be done. Paradoxical wisdom implies an attitude of humility, in the spirit of prudence towards the world (van Dierendonck & Patterson, 2015), being eager to learn and to unlearn, and open to learn from experience as well as from failure.

Promote time for reflection and to engage deeply with context When there is no time or space for reflection, it is more likely that an easier way is selected and that fruitful crossroads opened by contradiction are ignored, which may lead to vicious circles. As reflection diminishes, opportunities to embrace paradoxes also decrease, minimizing chances of learning through exploration. Reflection allows rich articulation of past, present and future, learning and forgetting. As stated by Chen (2013), organizations should combine hindsight, insight and foresight (see Figure 6.2). When dealing with paradox, issues articulating past, present and future may arise: how did we manage similar challenges in the past? Why is the current situation as it is? What would be the implications when implementing this path? Promoting moments of reflection is a way to create organizational awareness that is central for the organization to engage with the context and to appreciate the whole. Otherwise, decision makers will not be able to fully understand the interactions between the environment and the organization, or the implications for stakeholders (Rowley & Gibbs, 2008).

Develop a synthetizing multi-​perspectival mindset Multiple perspectives must be taken into consideration by managers, since diversity of inputs stimulate variety in output, thus allowing a more effective decision-​making

Hindsight Looking back, taking past experience into account

Insight Perception and perspicacity to deal with current complex problems and situations

Foresight Looking forward, imaging, planning and conceiving implications

Dealing wisely with paradox

FIGURE 6.2  Dealing

with paradox through hindsighting × insighting × foresighting.

Recurring paradoxes, ten lines of action  189

process and multiplying the chance of breakthroughs. Breakthroughs occur not because of multiple perspectives, but because they may result in a shared understanding, in unique syntheses of perspectives (Harvey, 2014). Synthesizing perspectives may make it easier to overcome cognitive and perceptual limitations, since complexity makes it hard for only one person to consider all the variables and process the knowledge needed to evaluate certain circumstances. Personal lenses necessarily colour the way one sees reality. Therefore, combining lenses may create comfort with paradox.

Embrace opposition Synthesis occurs by building on similarities between perspectives (Harvey, 2014). The dialectical process implies that the opposites are no longer viewed as independent, and interrelated connections may be identified. This is an exercise that finds connections between the tensions, integrating knowledge and ignorance, resulting in something new, not considered beforehand. Harvey (2014) confirmed that extraordinary creativity is built over the integration of perspectives into a shared understanding.This creative synthesis positively impacts group members because of the connections between new ideas and previous ideas. The notion of stimulating divergence between perspectives loses ground for integration of ideas building on similarity and diversity.

Use experience to support improvisation Paradoxical wisdom is acquired through experiencing reality and being humble in face of its possibility and its implacability. Rich approaches to paradox potentially have positive effects on wisdom, as paradoxes counter established truths and disturb crystallized assumptions. Paradoxical wisdom prompts a constant flux between looking backward and looking forward, knowing how the organization crafted solutions to deal with paradox in the past, but also being open to consider new possibilities for the present. It requires apperception, i.e., the ability to relate new experiences to previous ones, facilitating understanding and resolution (Grint, 2007). Since organizations are dynamic, to build on experience and apperception will enhance the ability to respond quickly to unpredictable situations, to improvise, to acquire knowledge and experience while action unfolds (Clegg et al., 2002; Silva et al., 2014; Nonaka & Toyama, 2007).

Interrogate the meaning of goodness People are not “moved to act” on the basis of rationality only. Communicating a vision and moving others to action requires the ability to create emotional rapport. Building a shared vision requires working together towards a common purpose, engaging people in a process of alignment of their ethical models, detaching themselves from their personal goals and balancing the interests of multiple stakeholders

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(Rowley & Gibbs, 2008). Decision making towards action should include constant interrogation about the implications of action for stakeholders, including future generations. Evaluating the implications of one’s actions should not represent an occasional exercise, often after some negative occurrence. The disposition to interrogate the paradoxical consequences of our actions should instead be deeply embedded in the organization’s culture, fostering the enactment of wisdom as a process, a pursuit that constantly raises formidable obstacles. Asking what is good, as a way of being (Nonaka & Toyama, 2007), may nurture an attitude of wisdom.

Assume that the solution may be the problem As Ely and Padavic (2020, p. 62) discussed with regard to the problem of women retention and progression in a professional services firm, “in its attempt to solve the problem of women’s stalled advancement, the firm was perpetuating it”. It is important that managers do not excessively trust their solutions as, with the passage of time, solutions may become problems. Solutions become problematic when they are used automatically because they have worked well in the past (Greiner, 1972; Miller, 1993). Past success says nothing about future success, but may create habituation that breeds mindless behaviour (Langer, 2014). It is thus important to keep a critical attitude regarding solutions and organizational recipes. Every time a solution becomes habitual, it may be transforming itself into a problem.

Cultivate jestership and embrace criticism In medieval courts, the use of the figure of the jester was common (Picture 6.1).The jester played the role of the sage fool, someone with the mission of entertaining the king while telling the truth. Organizations have episodically hired a corporate jester, as British Airways did when it hired Paul Birch (Chapter 4, Box 4.12) or when the Cirque du Soleil recruited Madame Zazou, a clown with the mission of shaking the habitual (Gregersen, 2017).The jester tells one version of the truth that, while being authorized, counters the tendency of organizational members to align and conform with the status quo. Jestership may be a way to prevent groupthink (Esser, 1998). The jester takes the organization’s elites out of their comfort zone. The comfort zone is the areas of managing and organizing with which the organization’s elites learnt to be rigorously competent in practicing technical skills in which they are well-​honed. Rigour, continuously practiced in the absence of novelty and curiosity, can generate rigour mortis, which Chia and Nayak (2016) called the “intellectual stiffness” that produces inert and lifeless ideas that fail to energize action. To nurture jestership and defamiliarize the familiar, organizations do not have to hire clowns, and organizational members may have to use humour to deal with them (Jarzabkowski & Lê, 2017). Nonetheless, they need irritants and irritations to aid them in cultivating an attitude of irony and criticism, as well as inviting people to express authentic dissenting or to play the role of the devil’s advocate, and for the organization elites to become more collectively reflective. When

Recurring paradoxes, ten lines of action  191

PICTURE 6.1  Portrait

of the Ferrara Court Jester Gonella (c. 1442); Jean Fouquet,

Tempera on wood). Source:  https://​commons.wikimedia.org/​wiki/​File:Jean_​Fouquet_​-​_​Portrait_​of_​the_​ Ferrara_​Court_​Jester_​Gonella.png. This work is in the public domain.

Timberland’s CEO (Swartz, 2010) stood up to 65,000 angry activists, he embraced criticism when it would have been easier to be defensive. Acceptance of reflexivity is important not only with regard to external critics but also those that are internal. When organizations invite their employees to bring their whole selves to work, they should not be surprised if people take the message seriously and defend their views.

Consider disruption of the status quo –​and reflect on black swan scenarios A propensity of paradox for imagining conditions of dynamic equilibrium has been pointed out (Hargrave, 2021). To mitigate that propensity and imagine how organizations may oscillate between opposite forces, organization can consider scenario management exercises incorporating disruptive and hard-​ to-​ imagine factors, sometimes called “black swans”. The Covid-​19 pandemic has shown that equilibrium is always precarious and that imagining the unimaginable may help to cope tensions with a higher degree of preparation.

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These ten ideas are nothing more than a sample of possibilities for cultivating a paradoxical sensitivity. Taking paradox as inevitable means that cultivating paradoxical wisdom may be required to navigate the career transitions of management.

New normal, new paradoxes As societies, technologies and the natural world all change, pressed by new technologies, hyper-​ urbanization and other characteristics of our times, managers confront what Ahlstrom et  al. (2020) called a New Normal. The New Normal brings new paradoxical possibilities. We highlight three possibilities in critical domains: digital transformation, crisis management associated with climate change and grand challenges.

New technologies Raisch and Krakowski (2021) exemplify how new technological possibilities create new tensions that need to be tackled in new ways, for example, the automation-​ augmentation paradox. Automation refers to the attribution of tasks to machines, whereas augmentation means close human-​machine collaboration to perform a task. The authors explain that these two processes, instead of being viewed as competing, are better represented as complementary. A paradoxical view means, for example, that organizations and even societies may rehumanize work through both automation and augmentation. Instead of thinking in dualisms such as utopian and dystopian views of the organizational futures, paradox scholars may help to explore integrative possibilities. Organizations may, for example, simultaneously combine selective deskilling to offload some tasks to machines, namely those tasks for which machines have superior execution. In addition, they need to focus on strategic requalification, namely investing resources in training and skilling for tasks that require sophisticated human skills of judgement. The process will imply, however, preparation of humans, in some cases, their reskilling, such as the acquisition of new competences that will allow them to interact with machines in a more productive, augmented way.

Climate change Climate change, in combination with other phenomena, such as hyper-​urbanization, is testing the limits of our social systems’ resilience.The bushfires that have devastated places such as California, Portugal, Greece and Australia in recent years are cases in point. The damage was not just to millions of hectares of vegetation; there were also severe secondary effects such as prolonged pollution and smog in urban centres, exacerbated by the drought conditions that precipitated the bushfires and the subsequent dust storms that these conditions also produced.

Recurring paradoxes, ten lines of action  193

Most recently, other unnatural disasters resulting from human interaction with nature, such as the Covid-​19 pandemic, have provoked major turmoil. The virus crossed over from an animal host, bats, into human circulation through the consumption of animal foodstuffs distributed in relatively unregulated “wet” markets in China. One implication for leaders and paradox scholars lies in the need to articulate preparation and improvisation in the face of such events. These two processes will need to be developed in tandem. Improvisation is still a recent field of organizational research (see Hadida, Tarvainen & Rose, 2015; Cunha, Miner & Antonacopolou, 2016, for summaries), but organizations will need to learn more about how to deploy improvisational competencies in the face of floods, fires, pandemics, cyber-​ attacks and other phenomena with important implications. The response of Taiwan to the coronavirus that produced the Covid-​19 in 2019–​2020 illustrates a paradoxical response: a combination of planning and continued control, contingency plans and real time improvisations. Given the potential incidence of these crises in globalized risk societies, crisis management should become a normal competence, a paradoxical synthesis of the normal and the extraordinary.

Grand challenges UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 16)2 refer to peace, justice and strong institutions.While we focused mainly on business organizations, the logic of paradox is also critical to defend the institutions of democracy.The rise of populism and the polarization of politics are threats to the quality of institutions. As we were writing these pages, leaders throughout the world were polarizing politics in the pursuit of partisan advantage. Polarization and the creation of rival or enemy groups makes messages clear and stirs emotions, but is a major handicap to serious and deliberative democracy. If institutions are the shadow of an individual, individuals make them or break these institutions. Populist leaders have an interest in weakening institutions, not in making them stronger. They divide to conquer. For this division to be countered, leaders can benefit from thinking paradoxically: in democratic systems, leaders must be both against and for their rivals, as the system thrives on pluralism and polyphony. The lack of pluralism and the rise of intolerance indicate that the notion of paradox needs to be protected for democracy to be preserved. Events can help, even tragic ones such as Covid-​19: in its wake, the abandonment of austerity regimes and the acceptance of the need for the state to act as a Keynesian interventionist state has become apparent event to those politicians least inclined to think that the state can do anything better than the fetish they call the market. These examples are merely illustrations. The new world of the fourth industrial revolution may be a world of opportunity but for the opportunities to materialize it is important to cultivate a paradoxical view of the world, one in which competition coexists with collaboration and difference with harmony.

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A final paradoxical word Paul Klee once explained that “Art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible”. To paraphrase him (1961, p. 76, in Chia & Nayak, 2016), paradox does not reproduce the visible but makes visible. With this book we have used paradox to make visible some of the paradoxical facets of the rich leadership literature. We have discussed why leaders need to be both principled and pragmatically savvy (Solinger et al., 2020), disciplined and imaginative (Schoemaker, 1997), pragmatic and artistic (Chia & Nayak, 2016). We do not see paradox as panacea. In fact, many organizations are paradoxically absurd (Berti, 2021): they embrace “best practices” that do not work, disempower people while making claims about empowerment and ask people to bring their whole selves to work but respond negatively when they in fact do so. We finish with a note borrowed from Chia and Nayak (2016) that captures the philosophy of this book’s message:  deep cultural programming helps us register good gestalts characterized by properties such as order, simplicity, clarity, coherence. Yet, this tendency towards a good gestalt is something that a good artist must resist –​ advice, we add, that is also valid for the art of management. And, with the art of T. S. Eliot, it may well be wise to explore in order to return to the very beginning to see our assumptions anew.

Notes 1 https://​www.nobelprize.org/​prizes/​peace/​2009/​press-​release/​ 2 https://​www.un.org/​sustainabledevelopment/​sustainable-​development-​goals/​

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures, bold numbers indicate tables, on the corresponding pages. accountability 120, 121 actors: defined xii; leaders as 4; see also authenticity Adler, P.S. 154 agile leadership 161–​163 Aguirre (Herzog) (movie) 68 alazôn 185 Alvesson, M. 56 ambidexterity 140, 151–​152 American Presidents, paradoxes of 170, 170; see also Trump, D. Ardern, J, 82, 100 Aristotle 33–​34, 166, 185–​186 Armstrong-​Hough, M. 146 Art of Japanese Management,The (Pascale and Athos) 33 Athos, A.G. 33 augmentation-​automation paradox 192 authentic dissenters 132 authenticity 51–​52; communication of 90; recurring paradox of 174, 175–​177, 183–​186 authoritarian control 93 authority: legitimacy and 22; personalization of leadership 51–​52; power and 22 autism-​friendly workplaces 116 automation-​augmentation paradox 192 autonomy 74

Babin, L. 16 balance 32–​33; intellectual virtues 167; losing by keeping 155–​156; as unbalanced 140–​141, 141 Banalieva, E.R. 38 Barra, M. 36 Bartunek, J.M. 18 Bateson, G. 152 Bavelas, J.B. xi–​xii BBC 143 Beatles, The 117–​118, 118 Bell, D. 38 belonging paradoxes: dyadic relationships, paradoxes of 96–​100; organizing paradox(es) 156–​158; overview 6–​7; self and 68–​70; team level paradoxes 122–​126; as type of paradox 38–​39 Ben & Jerry’s 105 Bennis, W. x Benson, J.K. 167–​168 Berg, D. 110, 111 Berti, M. 85 big picture, failing to see 182–​183 Blake, R. 52–​53 Blanchard, K.H. 54 Blom, M. 56 Blomberg, A. 179 Bloom, N. xi Bloom, P. 26 Boeing 137

226 Index

Borys, B. 154 bribery paradox 38 Bundy, J. 99 Burns, J.M. 15, 23 Business Roundtable manifesto 162–​163 Butler, J. 96 Byman, D. 20–​21 Cambridge University Boat Club 113 Cameron, K. 137–​138 Canute, King 66–​67 capacity to articulate tensions 22–​23 Carlyle, T. 20–​21, 147 Cascario, T. 92 Castaner, X. 179 Catmull, E. 29 causality 17 caution and confidence, synthesizing 187, 187–​188 chameleonic leadership 54–​55 change: leaders as agents of 23; paradox(es) and 43; resistance to 26 *Chen, C. 188 Chia, R. 180, 190, 195 children, care of as national priority 71–​72 Chouinard,Y. 181 Christensen, C. 178–​179 Churchill, W. 20 circles, defined xii citizen leaders 156–​157 Clegg, A. 120 Clegg, S. 138 climate change 192–​193 Cloutier, C. 29 coaching/​coaches 69–​70; dyadic relationships, paradoxes of 95; reverse 95–​96 cohesiveness in teams 115–​116 co-​leadership 103–​105 collaboration 81–​82, 88 collective versus individual goals 116–​118 Collins, J. 55 Collinson, D. 85 communication: of authenticity 90; leadership and 81; one’s self, being 48–​49; power and 30–​31; relationships involved in 89, 89–​90 community, dispersed 157–​158 compassion and collaboration 81–​82 competency: learning new as leaders 177; meta-​competence, paradoxical leadership as 3–​4; that can be learned, leadership as 18–​19 competing logics 32–​33, 159

confidence and caution, synthesizing 187, 187–​188 Conlon, D.E. 114 consensus and dissent in teams 115–​116, 123–​124 consistency, seeing as sacred cow 43–​44 constructive dissent 156 context: deep engagement with 187, 188; importance of 54–​55; leadership as process and 27 contingency view of organizations 21 contradictions 37; creation of by leaders 49–​50; curiosity about 186, 187; defined xii Cornelissen, J. 18 court jesters 124, 187, 190–​191, 191 Covid-​19: businesses, impact on 135–​136; communication of number of Chinese victims 31; impact of 11; Johnson, B. 173–​174; leadership and 11–​12; paradoxes related to 146; paradoxical thinking and 193–​194; planning and improvising 145, 145–​146; response of businesses 163; Trump as driver of misinformation 185; Trump Presidency and 82–​83; virtual teams 132 creativity 179 credits, gaining and losing 30 crises, leadership in 169 critical reflection, discouragement of 155 criticism, embracing 187, 190–​191, 191 Cronin, T. 170 culture, strong/​loose 157–​158 Cunha, M.P. 105, 177 Dalal, F. 108, 129 Day, G.S. 153 Daymond, J. 32 Delong, S. 63 Delong, T.J. 63 democracy, paradoxical thinking as defending 194 dependence versus independence 59–​61 de Rond, M. 45, 113, 122 Detert, J.R. x Deutsche Bank 104 devil’s advocates 131–​132 dialectical theory 168; dialectic, defined xii Dickens, C. 12 difference: and equality 90–​91; and similarity 68–​69 differentiation and integration 183–​186 diffuse power 30–​31 dilemmas defined xii

Index  227

disempowerment 105–​106 dispersed community 157–​158 disruption of the status quo 187, 191–​192 disruptive innovation 178–​179 dissent: and consensus in teams 115–​116, 123–​124; constructive 156 dissenters 131–​132 distance and proximity 122–​123; recurring paradox of 174, 175, 180–​183 divergent objectives in organizations 31–​32 diversity: cognitive 120–​121; faultlines in teams as resistance to 126 Dorsey, J. 149 Dracula,Vlad 24–​25 dualism xiii, 34 duality xii, 34; of leadership and management x–​xii Dweck, C. 79, 171 dyadic relationships, paradoxes of: belonging paradoxes 96–​100; coaching 95; co-​leadership 103–​105; compassion and collaboration 81–​82; contradictory obligations 102–​103, 105; dis/​ empowering 105–​106; empathy 98–​100; equality and difference 90–​91; gender relations 96–​98; helping behaviours 101–​102; high quality connections 86; interactions, importance of 84–​85, 87; of leaders to followers 83–​84; learning paradoxes 93–​96; management of 106–​107; multiplying versus diminishing talent 93–​95, 94; organizational importance 83, 89; organizing paradox(es) 102–​106; overview 6, 90; performing, paradoxes of 90–​93; power, paradox of 96–​98; reasons for paradoxes 84–​87; reciprocity 102; reverse coaching 95–​96; star performers 91–​92; tensions and conflict 85–​88; tough love 92–​93; truth and lies 82–​83 earned respect 84–​85 Ebbers, B. 47–​48 Eddleston, K.A. 38 Edmondson, A. 111, 119, 133 eirôn 185 elastic hybridity 159–​160 Elias, N. 108 Ely, R. 160–​161, 182, 190 embeddedness of leaders 28 embodied competences 168–​169 Emerson, R.W. 22 empathy 98–​100 employee handbooks 154–​155

empowerment 105–​106 enabling environments 154–​156 Engels, F. 12 enmity as trade-​off 74 Enrich, D. 104 environments, enabling 154–​156 equality and difference 90–​91 equilibrium 32–​33 erasers, organizational 153 ethics, leadership and 19–​20 Evanega, S. 185 events, leadership 27 excellence: paradox of 63; recurring paradox of excellence 174, 174, 177–​179 Extreme Ownership: how the U.S. Navy SEALS lead and win (Willink and Babin) 16 failure, learning from 119–​120 family firms, crisis and 136–​137 faultlines in teams 126–​127 “Fisherman, The” (Yeats) 68 “Five Whys” technique 181 Fleming, P. 157 Folke, O. 97, 98 Follett, M.P. 36, 186 followship: defined xiii; ethics, leadership and 20 founders, vulnerability of 28 Four Pests Campaign (China) 182 Franklin, B. 167 Freedland, J. 173 freedom within a framework 158–​159 Fuller, J.F.C. 155–​156 Gelfand, M. 18 gender relations 96–​98, 160–​161 Genovese, M. 170 Ghosn, C. 32, 56 Gil, J. 169 Giustiniano, L. 177 goals: diverse and (in)compatible 135–​138; self-​ 58–​59; setting 38; team versus individual 116–​118 Goffman, E. 184 Goldsmith, M. 51 Goleman, D. 70 Gomes, P.J. 58–​59 Gonsalves, L. 3 Goodman, P.S. 163 goodness, interrogating the meaning of 187, 189–​190 Goodwin, D.K. 76–​77 Google 50

228 Index

governance mechanisms 147–​150 Graf-​Vlachy L. 99 Grant, A. 65, 76, 175–​177 Grant, D. 17 great leaders xi–​xii Great Men Theory 147 Greer, L. 140 Grint, K. 147 grit 67–​68 groupthink 115, 118–​119, 121, 131–​132 growth mindset 79 Gu, Q. 93 Gulati, R. 158 Hahl, O. 184 Hahn, T. 39 Hamblin, J. 146 handbooks, employee 154–​155 Harari,Y.N. 166 harassment, sexual 96–​98 Harvey, M. 189 hedgehog effect 122–​123 helping behaviours 101–​102 Henning, E. 104 heroes, leaders as 26, 147–​150, 148 Hersey, P. 54 Hill, A. 178–​179, 180 Hill, L. 171 Hollander, E.P. 30 Holmes, E. 68, 115 Homberg, F. 21 Horta-​Osório, A. 72–​73 Hsieh, T. 109–​110 hubris and humility 179–​180 humbition 67 humility 63–​67, 179–​180 hybridity, elastic 159–​160 Ibarra, H. 48, 70, 71 identity 38–​39; development of competences 49; multiple identities, conflicts between 49; one’s self, being 48–​49; team 130 implicit theories of leadership 28–​30 improvisation: climate change related events 193; experience, using to support 187, 189; planning and 144–​146, 145, 146 inconsistency, consistent 44 independence versus interdependence 59–​61 individual versus team goals 116–​118 In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman) 16–​18 integration and differentiation 183–​186 intellectual virtues 166–​167

intelligence, forms of 179 interdependence versus independence 59–​61 intuition versus rationality 61–​63 Ivester, D. 104 Jackson, D.D. xi–​xii Jansen, P.G. 18 Janus-​like leadership 52–​54, 53 jesters 124, 187, 190–​191, 191 Johnson, B. 173–​174 Johnson, D.E. 54 Johnson, L. 74 Johnson, M.D. 65 Josefsson, I. 179 Joullié, J.E. 22 Kaiser, R.B. 11, 77, 78 Kaplan, R.E. 11, 77, 78 Kauffman, C. 84 Keaveny, P. 146 Keenoy, T. 17 Kennedy, F. 184 Kets de Vries, M.F.R. 51, 57, 71, 92, 110, 123 Kim, M. 184 Kim,Y.H. 88 Klee, P. 194 Kniffin, K.M. x Knight, E. 32, 39 Knopfler, M. 74 Kodish, S. 166 Koestler, A. 84 Kolb, D.G. 184 König, A. 99 Krakowski, S.* 192 Kramer, R.M. 15 Krastev, I. 146 Kuper, S. 38 Langley, A. 29 leadership: actors, leaders as 4; authority and 22; capacity to articulate tensions 22–​23; change, leaders as agents of 23; as competency that can be learned 18–​19, 19; as complex and paradoxical 166–​171; as contingency based 15; contradictions 37; Covid-​19 11–​12; credits, gaining and losing 30; in crises 169; defined xiii; duality with management x–​xii; as embedded 28; follower focused 21; great leaders xi–​xii; heroes, leaders as 26; as human process 3; implicit theories of 28–​30; leader-​focused 20–​21; learning 70–​71; and management, distinction

Index  229

between x; Manichean view of 15; meta-​ competence, paradoxical leadership as 3–​4; as morality tale 14; multivocalities, attunement to 4; as ongoing puzzle 171–​174; oppositional fields, excelling in 33, 33–​34; overview of paradoxes in 6–​7; and paradox 33, 33–​34; paradoxical 42–​43; as paradoxical practice 1–​3; as pluralistic 30–​33; positive, as paradoxical 14–​15; as process 7, 23–​30; as relational-​ paradoxical process 3; as relational process 15, 28; results and ethics 19–​20; situation focused 21; as temporal process 28–​30; wise 166–​171, 170 learning paradoxes: dyadic relationships, paradoxes of 93–​96; excellence, paradox of 63; organizing paradox(es) 150–​151, 151; overview 6–​7; self and 63–​68, 64, 66; team level paradoxes 118–​122, 121; as type of paradox 39; unlearning 150, 152–​154, 171–​174 legitimacy, authority and 22 Leigh, D. 110 Leroy, H.L. x level 5 leadership 55–​56 Lewin, K. 53 Lewis, M.W. 33, 38, 172 Lilly 119–​120 Lincoln, A. 75–​77 Lippitt, R. 53 listening and talking 69–​70 Little, L.M. 99 Li Wenliang 4 LMX (leader-​member exchange) theory 87, 91 Lobo, M.S. 92 logics: competing 32–​33, 159; exposure of teams to different 122; multiple, combination of 159–​160 Lok, J. 45 loose-​tight tension 69 losing and winning 124–​126 love/​care and direction/​control 92–​93 Ma, J. 180 Machiavelli, N. 14–​15 Maitlis, S. 101 Majchrzak, A. 132–​133 Malhotra, A. 132–​133 management: duality with leadership x–​xii; and leadership, distinction between x; of paradoxes 72–​77, 106–​107, 131–​133, 160–​164; of recurring paradoxes 186–​192, 187, 188, 191

Manichean view of leadership 15 March, J. xi, 2, 150–​151 Martin de Holan, P. 152 Marx, K. 12 maternity leave 71–​72 McAdams, D. 49 McCabe, D. 40–​41 McNair, J. 74 mentoring 95 meritocracy 143–​144 meta-​competence, paradoxical leadership as 3–​4 meta-​theory, paradox as 8–​9 Microsoft 157 mindsets 79; paradoxical 41–​42, 186; synthesizing multi-​perspectival 187, 188–​189 Mintzberg, H. xii Mirvis, P. 105 mistakes, learning from 119–​120 Mitchell, T.R. 65 Monteiro, M. 98–​99 moral organizations, creation of 142 Mouton, J. 52–​53 Muilenburg, D. 32 Mulcahy, A. 4, 60–​61, 92 multi-​perspectival mindset 187, 188–​189 multiplying versus diminishing talent 93–​95, 94 multivocalities, attunement to 4 Murnighan, J.K. 114 Murton, T. 119–​120 Musk, E. 180 Nadella, S. 79, 98 naïve paradoxicality 35 narcissism 64, 64–​65 Nayak, A. 180, 190, 195 negative political leadership 185–​186 neurodiversity-​friendly workplaces 116 New Normal, paradoxes of 192–​194 Neymar 111–​112 Nicholson, N. 20 Nissan 56 Nordberg, D. 21 North Star 128–​129 Obama, B. 169 objectives, divergent, in organizations 31–​32 ongoing puzzle, leadership as 171–​174 opening up of teams 121 opposition, embracing 187, 189 oppositional fields, leadership and 33, 33–​34 orchestras, organizations as 31

230 Index

organizations: competing logics in 32–​33; contradictions 37; divergent objectives in 31–​32; less hierarchical design of 127–​129; as orchestras 31; as paradoxical 17; as plural systems 7; renewal, tensions in 39; resistance to change 26; situational view of 21; strong and weak process views of 29; surprise and 8; tensions of design 39; as wonderland 40–​41, 41 organizing paradox(es): ambidexterity 151–​152; balance as unbalanced 140–​141, 141; belonging paradoxes 156–​158; citizen leaders 156–​157; competing logics 159; constructive dissent 156; culture, strong/​loose 157–​158; dispersed community 157–​158; diverse and (in)compatible goals 135–​138; dyadic relationships, paradoxes of 102–​106; elastic hybridity 159–​160; enabling environments 154–​156; erasers, organizational 153; freedom within a framework 158–​159; governance mechanisms 147–​150; from hierarchies to agile design 161–​163; learning paradoxes 150–​151, 151; management of 160–​164; meritocracy 143–​144; overview 6–​7, 142; performing, paradoxes of 143–​150, 145, 146, 148; planning and improvising 144–​146, 145, 146; reasons for paradoxes 138–​142; self and 70–​72; solutions becoming problems 160–​161; supporting actors 163–​164; team level paradoxes 126–​131; as type of paradox 39; unlearning 152–​154 Oswick, C. 17 O’Toole, J. x owed respect 84–​85 Owens, B.P. 65 Padavic, I. 160–​161, 182, 190 pandemics, paradoxical thinking and 193–​194; see also Covid-​19 paradox(es): authenticity, recurring paradox of 174, 175–​177, 183–​186; belonging 38–​39; bribery paradox 38; as challenges 11–​13; change and 43; classification of 37, 38–​39; as condition to be lived with 33, 44; confidence and caution, synthesizing 187, 187–​188; consistency, seeing as sacred cow 43–​44; context, deep engagement with 187, 188; contradictions 37; creation of y leaders 49–​50; criticism, embracing 187, 190–​191, 191; curiosity about

contradiction 186, 187; defined xiii; detection of as difficult 40–​41, 41; different ways of handling 43; disruption of the status quo 187, 191–​192; dualities rather dualisms 34–​36; duality of leadership and management xi–​xii; excellence, recurring paradox of 174, 174, 177–​179; goodness, interrogating the meaning of 187, 189–​190; humility and hubris 179–​180; improvisation, using experience to support 187, 189; integration and differentiation 183–​ 186; jestership, cultivation of 190–​191; leadership, paradoxical 42–​43; leadership and 33, 33–​34; leadership as paradoxical practice 1–​3; learning 39; as lens 45–​46; levels of 6–​7; management of recurring paradoxes 186–​192, 187, 188, 191; meta-​ competence, paradoxical leadership as 3–​4; meta-​theory, paradox as 8–​9; as meta-​theory 36; mindset, paradoxical 41–​42; navigation of, difficulties with 39–​41; as nested 39; New Normal 192–​194; as normal 43; opposite but mutually defining forces 34–​36; opposition, embracing 187, 189; organizing 39; overview 6–​7; performing 38, 57–​63; persistence 37–​38; positive, representing as 44–​45; power, recurring paradox of 174, 174–​175, 179–​180; power relations 15–​16; pragmatic 85–​86, 88; precautions when handling 43–​45; proximity, recurring paradox of 174, 175, 180–​183; reality as paradox 5; recipe, representing as 45; recurring paradoxes, reasons for 171–​177; reflection, promoting time for 187, 188, 188; relational-​paradoxical process, leadership as 3; risk and xi; solution, assumption of as problem 187, 190; strange, representing as 44; synthesizing multi-​perspectival mindset 187, 188–​189; types of 6–​7; women, paradoxical thinking and 36 Parasite (Bong Jon Ho) (movie) 110 Paroutis, S. 32 parrhesiastes 186 Pascale, R. 33 passion and perseverance 67–​68 paternity leave 71–​72 Penrose triangle illusion 2 Pentland, A.S. 130 performance in teams 114–​115 performing, paradoxes of: dyadic relationships, paradoxes of 90–​93;

Index  231

organizing paradox(es) 143–​150, 145, 146, 148; overview 6–​7; self-​leadership, paradoxes of 57–​63; team level paradoxes 114–​118, 118; as type of paradox 38 perpetual vase 10 perseverance and passion 67–​68 persons defined xiii Peter Principle 174, 177–​178 Peters, T.J. 16–​18 Petridis, A. 110 Petriglieri, G. xi, 1, 23, 101 Pfeffer, J. 14, 19, 23, 36, 73–​75, 91, 169, 184 Phillips, K. 121 Phillips, N. 152 Pinker, D. 27 planning and improvising 144–​146, 145, 146 Ployhart, R.E. 18 pluralistic, leadership as 30–​33 plurality defined xiii Polanco, J. A. de 181 Polaris 128–​129 political polarization 38–​39, 194 Pollack, K.M. 20–​21 Poole, M.S. 137 populism 194 porosity of the team 120–​121 power: authority and 22; communications and 30–​31; diffuse 30–​31; one’s self, being 48–​49; paradox of 96–​98; paradox to power relations 15–​16; power-​over 15–​16; power-​to 15–​18; recurring paradox of 174, 174–​175, 179–​180 pragmatic paradoxes 85–​86, 88 premortems 124 priorities, defining 71–​72 process, leadership as 7, 23–​30 project leadership 70–​71 proximate goals 58 proximity and distance 122–​123; recurring paradox of 174, 175, 180–​183 psychological safety 119–​120, 121 Putnam, L. 35 Quattrone, P. 181 Quinn, R.E. 17, 137–​138 Rackin, D. 40 Raisch, S. 192 rationality versus intuition 61–​63 Ready, D.A. 161 reality as paradox 5 reciprocity 102, 174

recurring paradoxes: authenticity, paradox of 175–​177, 183–​186; confidence and caution, synthesizing 187, 187–​188; context, deep engagement with 187, 188; criticism, embracing 187, 190–​191, 191; curiosity about contradiction 186, 187; disruption of the status quo 187, 191–​192; excellence, paradox of 174, 174, 177–​179; goodness, interrogating the meaning of 187, 189–​190; humility and hubris 179–​180; improvisation, using experience to support 187, 189; integration and differentiation 183–​186; jestership, cultivation of 190–​191; management of 186–​192, 187, 188, 191; opposition, embracing 187, 189; power, paradox of 174, 174–​175, 179–​180; proximity, paradox of 174, 175, 180–​183; reasons for 171–​177, 174; reflection, promoting time for 187, 188, 188; solution, assumption of as problem 187, 190; stages of managerial career and 177; synthesizing multi-​perspectival mindset 187, 188–​189 red teams 124 reflection, promoting time for 187, 188, 188 reflexivity 78–​79 reformist boundary work 142 Rego, A. 177 Reid, E.M. 182 relational process, leadership as 15, 23–​27, 28 resoluteness 64 respect: mutual 102; owed and earned 84–​85 reverse coaching 95–​96 Rhodes, C. 26 rivalry as trade-​off 74 Robson, B. 93–​94, 94 Rogers, K. 84 romanticized leaders 23 Roosevelt, F.D. 169–​170 Rosado, Paulo 178 Rosen, B. 132–​133 rules: enabling and coercive 154–​155; formal/​informal 157–​158; freedom within a framework 158–​159 Sadun, R. xi Schoemaker, P.J. 153 self-​contradictions 49–​50 self-​goals 58–​59

232 Index

self-​leadership, paradoxes of: authenticity 51–​52; belonging paradoxes 68–​70; challenges confronting leaders 47–​48; chameleonic leadership 54–​55; creation of paradoxes 49–​50; defining priorities 71–​72; diverging expectations 47; grit 67–​68; humility 63–​67; independence versus interdependence 59–​61; intuition versus rationality 61–​63; Janus-​like leadership 52–​54, 53; leading oneself as paradoxical 56–​57; learning paradoxes 63–​68, 64, 66; level 5; leadership 55–​56; listening and talking 69–​70; management of 72–​77; mindsets 79; motives, clarity over 51; narcissism 64, 64–​65; natural propensities 77–​79; one’s self, being 48–​49; organizing paradoxes 70–​72; overview 6, 57; performing, paradoxes of 57, 57–​63; personalization of leadership 51–​52; project leadership 70–​71; reflexivity 78–​79; self-​awareness, lack of 78; self-​goals 58–​59; similarity and difference 68–​69; strengths, development of 77; tight-​loose tension 69; trade-​offs 73; weakness as strength 72–​73; work in progress, view of self as 78, 171 sexual harassment 96–​98 Silva, T. 117, 125 similarity and difference 68–​69 Simpson, A.V. 85 situational leadership model 54–​55 situation focused leadership 21 Sivan, E.W.Z. 184 Smith, K. 110, 111 Smith, W.K. 33, 38, 44, 172 Snow, S. 167 social competence 92 Solinger, O.N. 18, 69, 142 Solomon, R.C. 106 solutions: assumption of as problems 187, 190; becoming problems 160–​161 Southwest Airlines 139 Spillane, R. 22 Spisak, B.R. 7, 20, 130 Spoelstra, S. 168–​169 star performers 91–​92, 111–​113 Stewart, G.L. 60 Strasburg, J. 104 strengths, development of 77 strong process views of organizations 29 stupidity 167, 179 styles of leadership, learning 70–​71 sublime bodies 169

supporting actors 163–​164 surprise 8 Sutton, R. 82 symbolic effects of leaders 169 synthesizing multi-​perspectival mindset 187, 188–​189 Sytech, M. 88 talking and listening 69–​70 team level paradoxes: accountability 120, 121; advantages as disadvantages 109–​110; autism-​friendly workplaces 116; belonging paradoxes 122–​126; cognitive diversity 120–​121; cohesiveness 115–​116; consensus and dissent 123–​124; definition of team 108; dissenters 131–​132; exposure to different logics 122; faultlines in teams 126–​127; goals, team versus individual 116–​118; groupthink 115, 118–​119, 121, 131–​132; hedgehog effect 122–​123; identity, team 130; learning paradoxes 118–​122, 121; less hierarchical organizations 127–​129; management of 131–​133; opening up teams 121; organizational paradoxes 109; organizing paradox(es) 126–​131; overview 6; performance 114–​115; performing, paradoxes of 114–​118, 118; porosity of the team 120–​121; proximity and distance 122–​123; psychological safety 119–​120, 121; reasons for paradoxes 110–​114; similarities and differences in teams 108–​109; star members, problems due to 111–​113; teaming rather than teams 133; team spirit 117;Vegas rule for teams 130–​131; virtual teams 132–​133; winning and losing 124–​126; X-​teams 129–​130 technologies, new 192 Teles, N. 181 temporal process, leadership as 28–​30 ten Bos, R. 167, 168–​169, 179 tension(s): capacity to articulate 22–​23; defined xiii; different ways of handling 43; dyadic relationships, paradoxes of 85–​86; of organizational design 39; organizational renewal, tensions in 39; rules, use of to reduce tensions 87–​88; tight-​loose tension 69 tight-​loose tension 69 time: leadership and 28–​30; as trade-​off 74 Ton, Z. 139 tough love 92–​93 Toyota 138, 139

Index  233

trade-​offs: anticipation of 75; autonomy 74; defined xiii; rivalry and enmity 74; self-​ leadership, paradoxes of 73–​74; time 74; visibility 74 transparency in leadership 184 Trump, D. 82–​83, 183–​184, 185 Tsoukas, H. 27 Uchida, M. 56 ultimate goals 58 Ulysses and the sirens 147–​148, 148 universities, impact of Covid-​19 on 136 unlearning 150, 152–​154, 171–​174 Uribe, J. 88 US Navy Seals 140 Van de Ven, A. 137 Van Reenen, J. xi van Vugt, M. 20 Vegas rule for teams 130–​131 Verbeke, A. 38 virtual teams 132–​133 virtues, intellectual 166–​167 visibility 74 Von Bergen, J.M. 92 Voronov, M. 9

Waterman, R.H. 16–​18 Watzlawick, P. xi–​xii, 1, 23, 81, 83, 88, 106 Waytz, A. 99 weakness as strength 72–​73 weak process views of organizations 29 Weber, K. 9 Weber, M. 11, 186 Weick, K.E. 17, 29, 84, 120, 153, 171, 187 Welch, J. 78–​79, 124, 143–​144, 149 White, R.K. 53 Wilkinson, N. 113 Willink, T.D. 16 winning and losing 124–​126 wisdom 179 wise leadership 166–​171, 170 women: long work hours, expectation of 160–​161; paradoxical thinking and 36; sexual harassment of 96–​98 wonderland, organizations as 40–​41, 41 work in progress, view of self as 78, 171 X-​teams 129–​130 Zeitoun, H. 21 Žižek, S. 168 Zuckerberg, M. 32 Zupan, M. 75–​77