Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology, Revised Edition

Managing Paradoxically: Transcending Conflicts

Doing business in the emerging paradigm, then, implies a basic shift in perceptions, purpose, and profiles of the organization and the managers from those in the old paradigm. Some of the contrasting characteristics of a business organization and individual managers, under the old and the new paradigms, are shown in figure 19.6 and table 19.1.

To initiate and achieve such a shift, individual managers need to cultivate almost contradictory or apparently paradoxical qualities, such as:

• converging divergence
• constructive discontent
• flexible persistence

  

  Figure 19.6 Doing business in the new paradigm

• confident humility
• relaxed attention
• “mindless” perception

How can you bring about such a radical qualitative shift into a corporate culture? How can you cultivate such apparently paradoxical qualities in a manager? This is where the relevance and significance of the concepts of the self – our real identity – becomes clearer. As already discussed, you have the potential to experience different levels of consciousness, and therefore self-identities. With the practice of meditation and centering, you can remain “in touch” with your “deeper or observing self” – the self that is your “constant” secure pivot – and function through your ego, or operating or changing self. Isn't it interesting that we are described as “indivi-duals!” This also resolves ...