The Leadership Paradox
My last client newsletter (not published on this site by the way) explored how integrated leadership can create psychological safety and sustainable performance. But what happens when that integrated self faces conflicting demands?
Effective leadership might require us to hold contradictions, not resolve them. That’s why I’ve selected Paradoxical Leadership as the third in this series of articles on facets of leadership that seem particularly pertinent in 2025.
The Either/Or Trap
Harvard research argues that organisational success depends on simultaneously addressing conflicting demands, not choosing between them.¹ Be visionary yet pragmatic. Empower whilst maintaining accountability. Drive innovation whilst delivering results.
Conventional wisdom says to pick your lane or make the trade-off.
What if that’s wrong?
Their 2024 Global Leadership Development Study found that 70% of L&D professionals say mastering a wider range of leadership behaviours is important or very important.² The message: embrace paradoxes.
What Paradoxical Leadership Actually Means
Others define paradoxical leadership as integrating behaviours that are seemingly contradictory yet nevertheless interdependent.³ This isn’t compromise or situational adaptation (and many people who have been coached by me will know I’ve always been a fan of situational leadership thinking). It’s genuinely embodying both facets simultaneously.
Consider the executive who must be both directive and empowering. Not directive on Mondays and empowering on Fridays. Both. At once. With the same people.
Lego, for example, has posted eleven paradoxes on its walls for more than a generation, including “to take the lead and to recede into the background” and “to plan the working day carefully and be flexible.”³ These aren’t contradictions to be resolved but tensions to be navigated daily. I find them extremely thought-provoking. What’s more, Lego doubled its size over the last ten years while maintaining profit margins that many companies can only dream of so perhaps they’re onto something in how they lead their business?
Leaders today face situations with contradictory yet interdependent elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time.⁵ Our brains love either/or choices, so we deal with uncertainty by asserting certainty.
But what if a desire for clarity is itself the interference?
The Double-Edged Sword
Whilst embracing tensions can leverage performance and innovation, experiencing these tensions may also lead to frustration and defensiveness.⁴ Paradoxical leadership is itself paradoxical—it can stimulate both positive and negative outcomes.
Some are energised by tensions; others experience them as cognitive dissonance.⁵ For some leaders, paradox feels like freedom. For others, fragmentation.
So, if it doesn’t come naturally, can paradoxical leadership be learned or does it require a particular cognitive orientation?
Integration Within Paradox
When leaders hold paradoxes whilst remaining fundamentally consistent in who they are, teams respond positively. When contradictions feel arbitrary or self-serving, trust erodes rapidly.⁴ Your team might experience your paradoxical behaviour as adaptive sophistication—or as inconsistency, perhaps even bordering on hypocrisy in extremis. The determining factor: whether they can sense the underlying integration.
Your team needs to see you’re responding to genuinely contradictory demands whilst staying anchored in who you are.
Three Questions
Rather than offering prescriptions, I’m curious about your experience:
Recognition: Which contradictory demands do you currently face that you’ve been trying to resolve through either/or choices? What might shift if you accepted both demands as legitimate and persistent?
Orientation: Does engaging with paradox energise or exhaust you? Understanding your orientation toward tensions might be crucial for sustainable leadership.
Integration: When you hold apparently contradictory positions, can others still recognize your core values operating in both? Or do the contradictions feel arbitrary to those around you?
Where This Leaves Us
The either/or thinking that once served leaders well may now be insufficient for the complexity we face.
The leaders who thrive might not be those who resolve contradictions most elegantly, but those who can hold them most authentically - remaining integrated even whilst embracing what appears inconsistent.
Perhaps paradoxical leadership isn’t separate from integrated leadership. Perhaps it’s integrated leadership tested under pressure, where consistency of self must somehow accommodate genuinely contradictory demands.
How you navigate the tension - whether it fragments or integrates you - may well be a defining question for your leadership.
Merry Christmas!
References:
¹ Smith, W.K., Lewis, M.W., & Tushman, M.L. (2016). "'Both/And' Leadership." Harvard Business Review, 94(5), 62-70.
² Harvard Business Publishing. (2024). "2024 Global Leadership Development Study: Time to Transform." Harvard Business Impact.
³ Schad, J., Lewis, M.W., Raisch, S., & Smith, W.K. (2023). "Embracing the Paradoxes of Leadership." INSEAD Knowledge.
⁴ Batool, S., Raziq, M.M., & Sarwar, N. (2023). "The paradox of paradoxical leadership: A multi-level conceptualization." The Leadership Quarterly, 34(4).
⁵ Miron-Spektor, E., Ingram, A., Keller, J., Smith, W.K., & Lewis, M.W. (2018). "Microfoundations of Organizational Paradox: The Problem Is How We Think about the Problem." Academy of Management Journal, 61(1), 26-45.