The Unfinished Leader: Balancing Contradictory Answers to Unsolvable Problems

11

Quelling Conflict

Resilience is based on the ability to embrace the extremes—while not becoming an extremist.

—Gary Hamel¹

Among our clients are leaders of the most elite businesses in the world, but they sometimes call us in over the most elemental of problems: People fighting over a decision. Often a top-executive team has begun a dialogue to solve a divisive and paradoxical problem—only to regress to shouting at each other. Insults fly, trust drops. We can often guess the root cause when we get the phone call: They have unwittingly let the contradictions of paradox spark a personal feud.

An example: We received a phone call from a CEO who had hired an executive as a change agent. The new man was charged with guiding a hidebound culture ...