Leadership During a Pandemic: Managing Polarities.

The leadership of a fast-growing high-performance organization is a challenge even during the calmest of times. And here comes the pandemic, where leaders independently of their location, culture, and agenda had to reinvent their leadership styles, approaches, and company rules. 

Despite the extensive experience, a large set of leadership competencies and instruments, my clients still found it challenging to find the right approach to leadership, decision making, and relationships with themselves and their teams throughout the pandemic. Do I move forward quickly, or I weigh out my decisions? Do I focus on the now or build something for long-term success? What matters most: well being of my team or moving forward with our projects and tasks?

The leaders also needed to rethink how they work and recharge, set boundaries yet build trust within the working from home setup, and challenge their teams to step up yet nurture them. 

It might sound like a complex problem to tackle, yet there is a clear name for this way of thinking: Managing Polarities. 

Managing Polarities 

There is also a crucial distinction between compromise and polarity management. When you compromise — you agree to disagree, you accept less than you wished for. You give away something important.

Polarity is a paradox; chronic tension. It “is a dilemma that is ongoing, unsolvable, and contains seemingly opposing ideas” (? Creative Center of Leadership). It is when choosing only one side leads you to failure.

Polarities are everywhere; they come in pairs and require a “both/and” approach. Here are only a few poles that my clients have been dealing with these 10 months:

• Short Term vs. Long Term Decisions
• Stability vs. Change
• Speed vs. Quality of Decision Making
• Directive vs. Participative Leadership
• Activity vs. Rest
• Serving Own Needs vs. Addressing Needs of Others
• Support vs. Challenge (especially when it comes to employees)
• Building Connection vs. Setting Boundaries

and many more. 

The good news is — polarities are not problems. Both poles can exist in the same company, the same relationship, and within the same decision-making structure. When polarities are maximized, it creates a synergy, 1+1=3; you achieve more than you could have achieved only looking at one perspective.

How should an Innovation Leader handle Polarities? 

Here are some steps that I suggest to my clients to handle polarities. 

1. Look for TWO Poles

Depending on our personality structure, we usually prefer one pole vs. another and sometimes even don’t see the second pole. Let us take Activity vs. Rest as an example. A leader who prefers activity and achievement might neglect that achievement during a pandemic comes at a high emotional and mental cost and might neglect the other pole — “rest.” 

Same with Support vs. Challenge. If you are an empathetic leader that feels how hard these times are for your teams, you might neglect the “challenge” part of the story. Yet both are important for your team to act independently and effectively. 

If you know that you have a personal preference, a behavioral pattern, you might want to look for the opposing pole. 

2. Understand the Relation of the Polarity to your Goal

The imbalance of the poles and leader's inability to manage polarities are very quick to spot: burned-out employees, destroyed relationships with vendors, goals that are never achieved or achieved at a very high cost, a very comfortable present with nothing built for the future, etc. Or “starving” today to get to a “bright future.”

Look at your organization's goals and in your personal life and identify where you might benefit from managing polarities. 

We want to make fast decisions AND make sure they are of quality. We want to change the way our companies work AND maintain stability while creating the change. We want to achieve a bright future AND enjoy the moment. 

To manage polarities efficiently, we need to accept that BOTH poles matter. It is not Short term vs. Long Term, Support vs. Challenge… it is a big “AND.” 

3. Understand Each Side of the Story: Build a Polarity Map

Again, you might prefer one pole over the other. Here are two tools that the Center of Creative Leadership offers us to help access both the positive and the negative aspects of each pole to make a conscious and informed decision and form it into your strategy. The goal here is to maximize the positive aspects and minimize each pole's negative aspects to achieve the best possible outcome. Use them by yourself or take them with you to your next coaching session.

4. Plan What’s Next

After you have a clear map of the polarity, ask yourself the following questions: What decisions do you need to make? What do you need to communicate with your team? What tools, rules, and actions need to be put in place to balance the poles? What will you do now, and how and when will you assess whether you maximize each pole's positive aspects and minimize the negative? 

Answers to all these questions will help you to turn your strategy into bite-size experiments and tactics. You have your action plan. 

Going Forward

Pandemic didn’t create the poles; pandemic made the poles apparent and gave the power to those that knew that “AND” and “BOTH” serve the goals and create synergies. 

Next time you face a dilemma: one or another, this or that — look at them as a polarity management process, not as a painful compromise. 

Don’t hesitate to share your experience with polarities! Please comment and reach out