Contradictory Truths - a leadership superpower

We started a short series last week on the chaos many businesses are experiencing and how it seems unlikely to ease anytime soon. Leaders need everyday superpowers in the face of such adversity. 

The ability to ‘hold’ more than one seemingly contradictory truth is a superpower. When we can only hold one truth, we sometimes lose sight of what we can control. We also add stress to the situation. 

For many leaders I work with, a current truth is “Our work is hard”. It’s definitely true. Challenges arrive thick and fast. Results matter and often carry consequences. Resources and bandwidth are stretched. Just as one hurdle is cleared, more appear. The list is longer than the hours available.

If "Our work is hard” is the only truth we hold, work is an exhausting grind. People feel there’s only so long they can hold onto the bar. 

More than one truth changes the game. 

How about “Our work is hard. Hard is good. We are great at hard”. 

Hard is good because it drives innovation, progress, and capability. It’s good because it matters — if it didn’t, it probably wouldn’t be hard. And if we are great at hard, then we embrace the important challenges we face, rather than feeling defeated by them. All three can be true at once, even if they feel contradictory. 

Here are some other examples:

So much is out of our control. There are always things we can control that make a genuine difference.

There’s so much rapid change. We adapt just as fast. We relish the pressure.

We care deeply about the results. We hold the results lightly.

We have high expectations. We know when it’s good enough.

This thinking helps leaders and their teams find energy and nuance under pressure. It changes the conversation. If you’d like to apply it to your team, follow these steps:

1.  Identify the complaints you most regularly hear, say, or think. 

2. Identify some contradictory and parallel truths. Discuss them — work out why they are also true.

3. Make sure they are genuine to you/your team; otherwise, it will be short-lived. 

P.S. If they don’t feel genuine to start with, it’s valuable to run a 2-week experiment where you pretend it’s genuinely true. Sometimes you’ll find it really is, sometimes the perspective you gain will work out the kinks and find something more authentic for your situation.

Let me know how you go!

What's Next

I’ve been working with several leadership teams for longer programs (1 - 2 years). Lately, many are making the same observation — The level of chaos they are currently experiencing is incredibly high, and a massive source of stress.

The uncertainty caused is rarely internal to the organisation. It’s the unpredictable and unexpected curveballs like:

• Trump is starting a war

• Fuel prices

• AI implications

• Reforms that fundamentally shift business models

Some are waiting (hoping) for an imagined future period of time where the uncertainty resolves, and there is a period of relative rest/stability.

My crystal ball has got a massive crack in it, so the reliability of my predictions of the future is low — but I reckon a better mindset is to assume the chaos will continue at the same pace, scope, and variety. 

Why is it better? A massive source of stress is when expectations don’t line up with reality, especially when the reality is worse than we expected or hoped for.

If you want to make it even more robust, consider this:

There’s little point in trying to predict the nature of future chaos/uncertainty unless you have some specific expertise or information. There’s a lot of value in broad forecasts (eg, what happens if fuel shortages become a daily reality vs what happens if fuel stays much the same for the foreseeable future vs what happens if things return to normal sooner than expected).

There’s little value in trying to foresee details in domains where we don't have sufficient expertise or information. It is tempting to come up with a prediction as a way of generating certainty, but it actually makes the stress worse if it’s inaccurate (and for most situations, that’s a pretty predictable outcome).

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll talk about what leaders can do to add certainty within their organisations and the superpower of paradoxical thinking.

A Kinder Voice

I’ve written over the years about treating people around you with kindness. It’s a good and powerful way to act. Recently, I’ve been reminded anew about how we treat ourselves — the self-talking-voices-in-our-head that throw self-directed harsh judgement in ways we would never talk to another person. Mine have been noisy of late, and it's been a theme of a few coaching sessions, too. 

What are the loudest voices for you? Mine tend to fall into 4 groups, and I reckon they must be common as they are referred to by lots of people, from ancient philosophers to modern psychologists:

• The Tyrant - holds us to impossible or unreasonable standards. This voice has lots of should, must, right, and wrong. Our efforts, no matter how they go, are never quite good enough.

• The Judge - constantly looks over our shoulder and tells us we are not good enough.

• The Critic - looks at our efforts/outputs and picks holes in every little thing.

• The Cynic - whispers to us that we are likely to fail and keeps reminding us of past situations where we were not our best or something didn’t go well. 

These voices have a place, but when they get really noisy, they can hold us back and hurt us. Over the years, I've found the best way to treat them is with kindness and a little humour. Notice the voice. Notice what it's saying. See if you can work out what it's trying to do — often it’s about safety or mitigating fear. Ask yourself what a kind and supportive friend would say to you, and listen to that more balanced opinion. 

And when the harsh voices pipe up again, have a little chuckle to yourself. Without that kind humour, the voices can easily pile on with criticism of the voices themselves — a fascinating loop indeed.

Getting Hammered

Have you ever had an emotional response to a set of circumstances that led to a bad decision, which made things worse? I reckon you have — you are human just like me.

Way back in my early 20’s, I was working on the farm. Ploughing a paddock of recently cleared bush. We’d made a mistake by burning it first to make it easier to plough. That left a field of fire hardened, super-sharp spikes everywhere. Tyre Killers!! On the worst day, I spend more time fixing flats than moving forward. I was frustrated beyond belief and getting angry about the situation.

Eventually, I blew my cool and belted a tyre as hard as I could with a big hammer. The recoil nearly broke my wrist, which blew up like a balloon and was sore for days. It was my first conscious insight that emotion rarely helps a decision, and often makes it worse. 

Emotion is important because it tells us a lot about the situation and ourselves. It has to be dealt with. Knowing if we are angry, scared, frustrated, timid, passionate, bored, etc., is useful. Feel the feels, and respect them. Deal with them, don’t bottle them up. And then do your best to keep the emotion out of whatever decision needs to be made.

What circumstances are you in at the moment? How do they make you feel? What impact could that emotion have on your next move?

The Reality Paradox

Simple but not easy. That saying rings so true for me when it comes to accepting challenging realities. Simple, smart, wise — definitely not easy. It can take me ages to arrive at acceptance. And it’s a powerful place to be. I reckon it's hard because it can feel like quitting, or losing hope, or dropping standards (Sometimes all of the above if the reality is challenging enough). Acceptance is none of those things. It simply gets us focused on the right pieces — the pieces where we can make a difference. 

The reality paradox is finding acceptance while holding onto your ability to act meaningfully. Without the paradox, it’s fatalism. We have no say and are pushed where the winds of chance will take us. With the paradox, we get to act on the parts of the experience that make a difference. Sometimes the field of action is small — perhaps only choosing how we will face this adversity. Sometimes it’s vast - deciding on something that changes everything. 

Either way, the faster we can find acceptance, the better. What’s that like for you? I understand the wisdom and it can still take a long time to arrive. And I reckon that's OK — especially if I can accept it with grace.

On Perfection

Last week's article ‘On being right’ drew quite a few responses from readers about how wise it is not to go in hard, and also how challenging it can be to do that in practice. Several people highlighted the parallels with wanting perfect outcomes. 

There’s a pragmatic balancing act when it comes to solving problems. We can easily get bogged down in way too much detail, seeking the perfect outcome. Perfection very often stops us from moving at a sensible pace and sometimes bogs us down completely. 

Getting something done at an acceptably good standard, getting it out and moving on is usually a lot better than fussing over tiny details that will not contribute much in the way of results, but will increase the amount of work to be done. There are few exceptions to this. Notable ones are high-consequence decisions that are difficult or impossible to reverse, or high risk situations where controls need to be very carefully implemented - Those scenarios are pretty rare.

Good enough and done will almost always beat perfect, but still polishing. Get after it.

On being right

‘What we are doing carries substantial risks. I’ve got the data to prove it. I’ve been trying to get the decision makers to see it, but the conversations are going nowhere.’

This was the essence of 3 recent coaching conversations with leaders who have significant influence, but they are not the decision makers. All three had been working hard to prove their point and galvanise a decision or action. It’s not going well for any of them. 

Going in hard seldom works - even if you are right and can prove it. It’s inherently adversarial and tends to get various parties digging in on their perspective. When we try to influence like that, we can argue until well after the cows come home. 

Going in hard forgets:

• There may be other factors I can’t see from my position.

• Other parties may have investment (time, money, resources, ideas) in the way things are. If they feel personally attacked, they are likely to dig in.

• Even if I have the problem right, I may not have the solution right.

• Even if I have both the problem and the solution right, I’ll need others to fix it. I need agreement or at least alignment.

• If the perfect solution gets no buy-in, it’s no solution at all. A partial solution with solid buy-in will beat it hands down. 

• There may be an even bigger problem that is the cause of what I can see.

• What else might be missing?

Instead of going in hard, get curious about what constraints might be present for others. Are there ways to work with them to remove those obstacles? Explore for understanding, not for ‘right’. You’ll likely expand your influence.

Faster than before

Once a team gets clear about what's important, both culturally and transactionally, they can start to build speed. Clarity brings the possibility of mantras… pieces of language that are packed with shared meaning.  

For example Atlassian, a global company founded and headquartered in Australia, has several mantras. One of them is “Be the change you seek”. For them, it means:

• Take initiative rather than seeking/waiting for permission. 

• If there’s a problem, find a way to get involved in the fix.

• If there’s a gap in the market, fill it.

• If the product is not up to standard, change it. 

Smart leaders build mantras with the people around them. Then they find clear examples to reinforce their meaning. Mantras and clarity go hand in hand. Once you have them, you can remind people of what is important and set direction with a few words dense with shared meaning. It takes effort to get to that place, but on the other side of it is speed.

Do you have any mantras? If not, what might they be?

Get the Reps in

If you want to get good at something, repetition is critical:

• Skills - reps

• Strength - reps

• Handling pressure - reps

It’s the same for building culture in a team or organisation. Doing something occasional and expecting it to stick is like lifting a dumbbell once and expecting massive biceps.

It simply won’t work. Get clear on what the guiding principles for your team and work are, and then find ways to get the reps in:

• Discuss success stories and applications to other areas of the work

• Notice when things go less well, and harvest lessons learnt

• Get people to share examples of things that are important and do it often

• Refer to core principles in decisions of consequence

When teams filter everything through what matters to them, alignment and consistency can't help but follow. 

What’s important in your world?
How and where is it reinforced? 

If you can't remember the last time team culture or standards were shaped, or if it only happens once a year, then you are missing lots of low hanging fruit.

Refine “Good” and “Done”

If you want to go further and faster with a team, cohesion is critical. Cohesion is driven by clarity. 

A few days ago I was working with an excellent leadership team. They  invest heavily in finding clarity. Even so, there's uncertainty.  One leader said, “We don't have iron clad agreement on what ‘Done’ is or what ‘Good’ is. Great places to start if you want clarity.

When leaders and teams explore this, they refine clarity with each iteration of work. While the answers may seem simple, perhaps even obvious, getting clear creates alignment. Every  team member can orient their effort to team standards. Not just for the task in hand, but for how this particular team does its work.  A void here gets filled by silos. Sub teams focus on getting their work right, rather than looking at the whole picture. If the silos seem strong, but the whole seems weak, ‘Done’ and ‘Good’ is a great place to start.

Get clear - then repeat often. Not using exactly the same words and examples, but shining light on finer and finer detail. Then empower others in your team to do the same. Once a clear baseline is set,  a team can move very rapidly because they know exactly what they are attempting to achieve. There’ll be more and more reinforcement of a job well done both inherently from the task, and from satisfied team leaders. With consistency, it self perpetuates.

How clearly can you answer those questions?  What does good look like? And what does done look like?

Going Potty

A leader was telling me about challenges with their team not producing work to a high enough standard. Everyone's a bit frustrated. This seems to be a trend - expecting great results on the first effort.

There’s a leadership legend passed around about a pottery class where students were given the choice of submitting one perfect piece for assessment, or producing as many pots as they could and submit them all for assessment. The best quality pots came from the quantity group, not the quality group. Turns out this never happened in pots, but it did in a photography class. It was written about in a book called Art and Fear, where there were already too many photography examples, so they changed it to pots. The pottery story has since spread like wildfire, and keeps popping up refreshed. Why? Because the principle makes sense.

For many (maybe most) things, we need reps to get good. This is challenging, especially when there are significant consequences that go with getting something wrong - Pilots, Lawyers, Accountants, Soldiers and Surgeons spring to mind. Note - all these professions create opportunities for practice alongside someone who is already accomplished.

How and where could you/your team benefit from reps? How could you set that up for maximum experience/exposure with minimum risk?

Don’t expect awesome if there’s been no practice.

Can I trust them?

“Can I trust them?” is one of the most asked questions when I am coaching leaders about delegation. When we delegate stuff, often it remains our responsibility - If it doesn’t work out we may be the person who will be held responsible.

In many environments there is a regulatory responsibility too - if something you delegate goes wrong, your ‘licence to operate’ may be on the line. Potentially you’ll face regulatory penalties of some kind. This is true whether you are a board delegating to a CEO, or a frontline nurse manager, delegating to a team of nurses. It applies in many settings and at many levels.

So how can you trust someone to do what you have delegated properly - trust them enough to not be constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure it's OK? Especially if what they are doing is complex and/or complicated.

It takes time. How much time will depend on the person's prior experience, their confidence and their skill. It’s useful to have a system for handing skill sets on (We’ll talk about that next time). It’s also useful to consider what you will need to see from them to be satisfied that they know what they are doing.

Be transparent about how long you will be watching and what you are watching for. Explain the risks/consequences if it goes wrong and the incentives for getting it right. By doing so you are creating an environment where trust can develop and delegation will be successful.

Extreme Rehearsal

Once upon a time I used to run tours into caves. We’d abseil groups into caves via tight vertical holes in the limestone. I don’t believe in monsters, but if I did, those holes are where they would live. We’d explore underground before climbing back out.

The activity was low risk if well managed, but also very unforgiving of mistakes or accidents. We would rehearse rescue scenarios in extreme. The logic was if we could train for almost inconceivable rescue scenarios, then anything we actually encountered would be comparatively easy. It also meant people understood their equipment really well, and could adapt its use under pressure.

We never had to deploy those skills for real, but the practice was worthwhile all the same, even if it just made us very conscious of the challenging environment we were in.

I recently watched an Australian Story’s account of a dramatic rescue on the Franklin river in Tassie. It highlights some of the challenges rescue teams can face, and just how extreme the situation can become.

The rehearsals we did were the practical outworking of forecasting - taking the scenarios we could envisage and then working out how we would actually respond. It’s not as easy to do in a less tangible environment, however the practice is still good.

Whether it's a desktop exercise, a brainstorming session, or a physical rehearsal of some kind - like the annual fire drill, it’s well worth doing. How could you consider and practice for the extremes you might encounter in business or life?

Two forecasting fails

Fail One

Only envisaging one potential outcome. As a realist with an optimistic bias, I catch myself with this one more often than I would like. I only picture the successful outcome. The positivity sometimes serves me well, but it also makes for a bigger/slower adjustment if things don't go as anticipated. ‘Foreseeing’ only a good outcome can be like “she’ll be right” - it works well if it goes well. A better version is to forecast 3 versions. Ideal, Worst Case, Something in between. Considering each version gives a more robust ‘Plan A’ that will handle a broader range of possibilities.

Fail Two

Over-thinking it. Some people go down a rabbit hole of trying to envisage every possible outcome. The endless “what if” leads to second guessing your chosen path of action. There's lots of research highlighting the many negative aspects of too many options - over forecasting has the same effect. Forecasting is about considering what might be possible or at risk. It’s not about trying to accurately catalogue all eventualities.

Bonus Fail

Freaking ourselves out. Some leaders ask me what the most dire forecast is that we should consider. I reckon it depends on what you can handle as an individual or a team. If you can discuss a really dire, worst case scenario, and treat it as just a thought experiment, that’s useful. But if going there will cause sleepless nights and endless tilting at windmills (origins) (epic sounds), don’t go. That’s exactly the opposite of what the exercise intends. Go as far down the rabbit hole as is useful, but don’t get stuck down there with an overdue rabbit.

Cascading Priorities

Clinging to an overturned boat, surrounded by sharks, drifting along a remote piece of coast with 60 minutes to sunset. The timing was fortuitous. If we weren't at that spot and at that time, there's a high probability that the 3 people clinging to the boat would have perished overnight. The only reason we heard their broken mayday call was the radio antenna at the top of our yacht's mast gave better range and clarity. Several other boats nearby could not hear them at all. 

We were not able to rescue them directly, our boat was too slow and constrained by depth. For the next hour we relayed messages between the vessel in distress, rescue services and other boats. In the end it was a successful outcome with all 3 picked up safely. 

But we almost added ourselves to the problem. While I was distracted on the radio, I stopped relaying navigation info to my crew. They took a wrong turn into one of two channels available. Only one was deep and wide enough for our yacht to safely pass. Fortunately we sorted it out before we ran out of room to manoeuvre. 

There's a clear set of priorities in such a situation. 

1. Control the boat

2. Know where you are (navigate)

3. Communicate

They are in that order for a reason. Emergency communications are useless, if while making them you lose control or get lost. Both make the problem worse. I had put communication at the top of the list for a while and it almost led us into danger.

The priorities are there to aid decision making when there's a high workload and high consequence. If you follow them you remain aware of the full picture rather than getting fixated on one part.

The best leaders are able to describe a clear set of priorities for their team regardless of the context. Ideally, they’ll ensure people stay focussed on what's important regardless of circumstances. It's a great way to increase capacity under pressure.

What are your highest priorities? Is there a logical order? What's at risk if you lose sight of them?

Flip the Risk

What do you do when faced with a big decision? Do you consider the risks? How does perceived risk factor into deciding for or against?

During the past week I've worked with people contemplating large and small decisions. Some are strategic, some opportunistic, others reactive. Risk has been a core part of every conversation. Many of us seem to be pretty good at considering what could go wrong and reasons not to act. Sometimes that holds us back from deciding yes to something worthwhile.

Flipping risk is a useful way to level up the thinking. Asking ‘what's at risk if we don't?’ immediately shifts your thinking to the potential downside if you pass something up. This week, flipping risk has led to a company more assertively owning its space, a difficult but necessary HR decision, a bold adventure, creation of a new entity to explore a bold collaboration, a challenging but wise personal decision. In each case, the decision would have been ‘No’ before flipping the risk.

Flipping risk won't change every decision, but it will help you see it more clearly. There are a lot of great opportunities just waiting for a different perspective. What's at risk if you let them pass you by?

What’s the key?

Two leaders from the High Impact Mentor program spoke to me about AHA moments this month. 

Both of them saw something in a new way and it changed everything. Both were frustrated and dissatisfied in their work and were finding their focus with staff getting dragged into more and more unnecessary detail. They felt overwhelmed. They felt they were not getting the best from their staff. They wondered if leadership was for them. 

The key for both of them was shifting their mindset from trying to control the people around them, to getting better at influencing the people around them. The work load hasn’t changed, but both are feeling lighter. One of them looked physically less tired and more relaxed than he had just a few weeks earlier. When I asked him what had changed, he said, “ I just changed how I was looking at everything, and now everything has changed”.

Moments like these are why I do the work I do. When leaders raise their capacity, the capacity of everyone around them also rises..

If you or someone on your team could use a change like that, send me an email. I’d love to help.

Which direction and how?

Direction over detail is well and good if you know where you are going. Alice (in Wonderland) asked that cat which way she should go. She didn't care where she would end up. The cat reckoned in that case, direction didn't matter. Quite right!

I facilitated a conversation recently where big changes are afoot for an organisation with a long, proud and effective history. The conversation was about creating an ideal future within the inevitable changes.

The leaders and team did a great job of looking forward. They:

• Acknowledged and celebrated past success.

• Identified aspects of their organisation/work that they did not want to lose or compromise in the change.

• Articulated the likely limits to their future, including considering what is happening for their stakeholders.

• Laid out a high level plan for their future, which adds value and insulates from irrelevance.

• Framed their propositions thoughtfully, highlighting value to stakeholders rather than just making a wish list.

There’s a lot of detail to be added, but in less than 2 hours they have the bones of a solid future.

The risk in such a conversation is people getting stuck in the past rather than looking forward. They could have lamented the situation, complained, pushed back against inevitable shifts and fought over irrelevant detail. They did not. It was a great working example of Direction over Detail.

Direction over Detail

If you’ve navigated by topographic map in complex terrain, at some point you’ve stopped making forward progress while you try to work out exactly where you are. I’ve done it many times, and almost every group on our survival courses did it at least once. There’s two ways it happens:

1. We feel uncertain about where we are and attempt to regain certainty by pinpointing our exact location.

2. We feel certain about where we are (but are wrong), and bend our reading of the map to suit our perception.

Forward progress either slows or stops entirely, and the focus shifts to ever finer detail. I see the same thing happen to teams and leaders (and yep, I’ve done that version too). We burrow into detail to justify current effort, or make ourselves busy trying to perfect things that will never be perfect. Busyness goes up, progress goes down.

In the map scenario, direction is often the answer. On one challenging walk in the Pilbara, we spent ages going slow trying to justify our position and getting more exhausted and frustrated by it. If we had just walked East, we would hit a North/South water course that was unambiguous and unmissable. East was the way we were going and we were planning to follow that water course!

In teams and workplaces the answer is the same. Get clear on direction and favour progress in that direction over nailing the detail. The detail becomes clear as you make progress. It feels much more enjoyable too.

P.S. This is not a reason to avoid or gloss over detail when it is important. Listen to your specialist communications, risk, compliance and audit teams. Just be sure to keep moving.

Well Worn Path

This week I have spoken to 3 leaders who are creating something genuinely new. Innovative ways of addressing some of the deepest challenges of their sectors. It’s exciting work and I love spending time with people who are explorers at heart. They want to venture over the nearest hill, motivated by deep curiosity. The conversations reminded me of a piece I wrote in my first book “Thrive and Adapt” exploring situations when breaking a new trail is the best option.For those of us who like to explore (myself included) it’s helpful to avoid unnecessary expenditure of effort or resources. It maximises our exploratory range. Here’s that piece, lightly edited for context.

A decade ago, I was on a cross-country walking trip in the Pilbara with my Dad who was 76 at the time. There were no paths or markers to follow, no guidebook. We were reading a map of the area and taking the country as we found it. It was a great journey!

In situations like that, I’m always on the lookout for game trails –the paths taken by cattle or wildlife between one water hole and another. They are sometimes counter-intuitive. They don’t always follow the shortest route. Sometimes they head into hilly or rocky territory and seem to wander a little aimlessly. Over the years, experience has always shown that the animals know the easiest and best route between points. Their trails are sometimes ancient – even wearing into solid rock surfaces. From a walking point of view, finding a game trail is gold. The going is easier because the animals have smoothed the way. The large rocks and obstacles have been shifted off the track over the years and, at times, it’s as good as walking on a footpath. The alternatives are never as easy. Often, they involve struggling through dense bush or over rough and broken ground. Without a game trail, forward speed is slower and takes more effort. Despite the extra effort, sometimes I choose to walk off the game trails. The walking is harder but if there is something in the landscape worth exploring, the game trails won’t always get you there.

In business, it’s similar – finding and following a well-worn path frequently results in easier and faster forward-progress than ‘reinventing the wheel’. Business systems, mentors and proven systems are all examples of ‘game trails’ in the business world. It’s smart and sustainable to follow them whenever you can. But there’s also times when you may want to blaze a trail yourself, to define a new path, and be a pioneer. I use four filters to determine if trailblazing is the best approach.

1. No one has done this before – I need something in my business that is not currently available.

2. I can offer something new – there is a need in the marketplace which is currently unmet.

3. I can refine something existing – making it better or more applicable than the original.

4. I’m seeking to learn, understand or explore – sometimes the harder road yields great insights and personal progress.

If none of those conditions exist, go for the pre-existing ‘path’ that gives maximum sustainability and minimum effort for the return.