Cathy Carroll's Blog, page 2

How to Reconcile Two Opposing Right Answers (a.k.a. Size Doesn’t Matter)

“I did it!” said Bekka, her face beaming. “I’ve finally earned the respect of my leadership team. Hallelujah!”

 

Six months ago, Bekka stepped into her mother’s shoes to lead an association her mother founded.  The mission is to support the education and personal development of professionals who serve the elderly.

 

Her passion for this work is raw.  When her grandfather’s health declined sixteen years ago, the professionals her mom hired to assist him didn’t display the personal maturity to care for him appropriately.  What saddened her the most was how disrespectful and short-tempered they were when they spoke with him.    

 

After witnessing this behavior up close, Bekka’s mother founded an association that helps professionals develop the interpersonal skills and capacities to remain patient, caring and calm in the face of challenging client behavior. 

When Bekka replaced her mother as Executive Director, she hired a coach to support her transition into this new role. Her primary goal was to earn professional credibility with the leadership team. “Although I’ve been in healthcare for over a decade, I’m new to eldercare. Plus, I’m younger than everyone else on staff,” she said, frowning. 

 

She felt the greatest unease during strategic planning meetings.  “I really want to expand our impact by tripling in size,” said Bekka, her knee jiggling in frustration. “But I’m getting pushback from many of the staff. They want us to remain small because our small size fosters the intimacy needed for the deeper, more vulnerable self-development work that members value and expect,” she added.

 

“I get their point,” she continued, “but if we stay this small, we’ll never have the transformational impact on the industry that we could have.  We need to grow.”  The question that kept them spinning was: How big should we be?

 

When Bekka brought this to our coaching session, I asked, “What’s the real problem you are trying to solve?”  Her answer was clear: “Mission.  We want to fulfill our mission as best we can,” Bekka said.

 

Then I asked, “What’s the relationship between your size and your mission?”  After a long silence, Bekka responded slowly. “It’s a good question because we are assuming intimacy and size are inversely related…that if we grow, we will lose the intimacy that is foundational to our impact.” After another long silence, she looked up and asked, “Is this a false binary? Let’s map this as a polarity.” 

Bekka learned about polarity thinking when she worked in healthcare[1], an industry that, like family businesses, is riddled with polarities.

 

Once she mapped the polarity, she realized, “Ah!  It’s a false binary as I suspected!  Our size doesn’t matter.  We need both intimacy and growth in membership to expand the impact of our mission.” Her smile grew big.  “Should we be big or small is the wrong question.  The right question is how can we both grow and maintain the intimacy that makes our work transformational for members?”

 

How to Reconcile Two Opposing Right Answers

At their next strategic planning session, Bekka had a plan.  She acknowledged that it’s “right” to stay small to foster intimacy, and it’s “right” to grow large to expand the impact.  Then she showed them how to reconcile two opposing right answers.

 

“Instead of building a strategy focused only on membership growth,” she said, “let’s brainstorm how to maintain intimacy no matter how large we grow.”  Immediately the team’s creative juices started flowing. They replaced the “how big should we be” question with “how can we maximize impact by both growing membership and curating an atmosphere of safety and vulnerability?” By the end of the meeting, they had a robust plan in place.  It felt like a dam opened up to release a flood of creativity. 

 

On our next coaching call, Bekka’s eyes sparkled with pride. “The team really appreciated the polarity framework because it changed everything.  It help get us out of a futile argument about size, and focused our energy in a whole new way,” she said.  “And I could feel that I had earned the respect of the team.  That’s what I’m most proud of.”    

 

I can’t wait to see the impact they have on eldercare as a result.

 

 

To learn more about polarity thinking and how to apply it in family businesses, join my mailing list. That should tide you over until Hug of War: Leading a Family Business With both Love and Logic is released in July 2024!

PS: I’m still beta testing the family business polarity assessment so leaders can see how well they are leveraging the most common tensions in family business leadership.  To access the assessment, join my mailing list and check the box next to “Please send me the complementary family business assessment.” 

[1] To learn more about polarities in healthcare, read POLARITY Intelligence: The Missing Logic in Leadership, by Tracy Christopherson and Michelle Troseth.

How to Work With Your Parents When You’re the Boss

My 15-year-old nephew dropped a wisdom bomb on me last week:  Treat ‘em like a celebrity, they’ll treat you like a fan. 

 

This came two weeks after he caught his first-ever girlfriend cheating, and this mantra was the latest brick in the wall he was laying around his heart.  His love had been pure.  Fully surrendered, he had been imagining their lives together when a social media post outed her.  Cue heartbreak.

 

I find it fascinating to witness the human condition unfolding in action.

So, what does this have to do with family business leadership, you ask? 

 

Treat ‘Em Like a Parent, They’ll Treat Ya Like a Child

Jessica came to coaching with this:  She and her father were constantly fighting at work, and her brother recommended she push her dad out.  After some discussion, she set her coaching goal to be “how to work with your parents when you’re the boss.”

 

After graduating at the top of her medical school class, Jessica joined her mother’s dermatology practice with the expectation that she would buy the business from her mother when she turned 40. The succession went great, but the work relationship with her father quickly soured.

 

A 68-year-old retired CPA, her father had always kept the books for his wife’s practice, and after the transition to Jessica, he stayed on to help at the front office as well.  He was a great asset to the business, but Jessica was frustrated because he refused to take her direction on much of anything.  For example, when she asked for a price update from the pharmacy, he’d tell her she didn’t need it.  But she knew she did.  He would do things his way, regardless of what she requested, and it was her business!

 

Early in our coaching conversations, Jessica shared that she often broke into tears when speaking with her father.  Dumbfounded, her father would ask “What are you crying for?”  It got so difficult for Jessica that she determined that she had three options.  1) Sell the practice back to her mother; 2) Sell the practice to a private equity rollup; or 3) Figure out how to work together.  She really wanted to make #3 work but didn’t know how.

 

It was the tears that caught my curiosity.  While exploring the trigger for the tears, Jessica realized that she was treating her father like a father, not like a professional peer. She would approach him with a whiny voice and pleading eyes, “I know you don’t approve of my decision to hire a coach. Can you just print the check for me anyway?”  In response, her father would get huffy. She’d get angry. Then she’d cry because she was the owner of this business dang it, and she couldn’t get her father to do his job without a fight.

 

“How would you make a request of any other employee in the office,” I asked?  That question evoked a shift in her perspective. She reflected for a few moments, then turned to me, her eyes wide, realizing that she was speaking to her father as if she were a kid, not an adult.  Her childhood communication pattern had crept into her workplace communication with him.  She didn’t address him as the confident, 40-year-old professional that she is.  She spoke like a whiny kid.

 

For the next week, Jessica practiced being intentional with her communication with him.  She planned how she’d communicate if she were speaking with another dermatologist in the office, then she’d bring the same tone, the same words, the same energy to communicate with her father.  Friendly, clear, confident.  She’d begin with, “I have a request.”

 

To her genuine surprise and eventual delight, the relationship with her father did an instant 180.  She stopped crying, and he responded positively to her requests. All this time, she had been trying to change her father, but what she really needed to do was to change herself.  She learned that when you treat ‘em like an adult, they treat ya like one back.

How to Work With Your Parents When You’re the Boss  

Leadership in a family business can be a complex dynamic because there are always two opposing norms in play.  Whereas the Business Mindset is driven by reason, the Family Mindset is driven by emotion, and the Family Mindset has a long history. When you work with family members, it’s awfully easy to fall into the communication norms from childhood. 

 

To work with her parents without devolving into tears, Jessica changed her mindset from “I’m a kid asking my dad for help” to “I’m an adult making a request of an adult.” The reframe was easier than she expected, and when she acted like a peer to her father, her father responded as a peer. 

 

Well guess what? The inverse is just as true:  Treat ‘em like a child, they’ll treat ya like a parent.  It may feel unnatural to change the communication norms you’ve known all your life.  Try it anyway and let me know how it goes.

 

 

I’m still beta testing the family business polarity assessment so leaders can see how well they are leveraging the most common tensions in family business leadership.  To access the assessment, join my mailing list and check the box next to “Please send me the complementary family business assessment.” 

 

To learn more about polarity thinking and how to apply it in family businesses, join my mailing list. That should tide you over until Hug of War: How to Lead a Family Business With both Love and Logic is released in July 2024!

There’s No Growth in the Comfort Zone, and No Comfort in the Growth Zone

I’m growing.  It’s uncomfortable.  Advice welcome.

 

Publishing a book is a much bigger mountain than I expected when I started.  Actually, it’s three mountains - writing, publishing and promoting – and it’s the promotion that’s got me twisted; forcing me to acknowledge a blind spot and develop new skills.  Argh.

 

The polarity I’m wrestling with is humble :: bold.  I like humility.  I think of myself as humble.  I think humility is great!  I think everyone should be humble!  Just like me!  (Ok I’ll be quiet now.  That felt too bold.)

 

When you look up “bold” in Wikipedia, there’s a picture of my sister.  She covers bold for the both of us.  Thanks to her, I don’t need to be bold.  She fills a room with her presence.  She drives a car that draws attention.  She wears big cowboy hat while walking down the streets of Chicago.  She kills it too.  It’s just not me.  I like being unseen.

 

The book writing process fits perfectly well with my humble preference.  It’s intellectual, creative, quiet, solitary.  Writing feels safe.  I can delete anything I want.

 

The publishing process is more tactical, structured, deadline-driven.  And safe.  Deliciously safe.  My publisher and I work in collaboration, partnering to execute the necessary tasks.

 

It’s the promotion process that requires boldness.  It’s almost impossible for a book to sell itself.  Even the famous authors must promote their books.  And promotion necessitates boldness. 

 

For example, now I blog, which feels very bold. Every time I hit “publish,” I feel a little sick.  I can’t take it back.  People might disagree.  It might ruffle feathers.  I might be wrong.  . Like there -- I just used an emoji and I know people who judge “people who use emojis.”  Blogging invites judgment from others. 

 

Here’s the polarity map I created to help me explore my relationship with humble and bold:

The Identity X-Ray

No surprise, I mapped perfectly with what I call the Identity X-ray diagnostic.  I learned this from Kelly Lewis and Brian Emerson, authors of Navigating Polarities published in 2019.  Here’s how it works:

 

Benefits of humble:  How I want to be seen and what I want to be known for.  Well yes, I want to be seen as someone who is grounded; pleasant to be around. Duh.

Overuses of humble:  How others might view me; potential blind spots.  Dang it.  I run the risk of being a pushover or boring because people will assume I have little to say.

Benefits of bold:  Missing qualities that impede my effectiveness or untapped skills. Oho!  If I don’t stand for what I believe in, people will miss out on learning about polarity thinking. What a missed opportunity that would be.

Overuses of bold:  Things I don’t want to be known for, and things I dislike in other people.  I surely don’t want to be known for having a big ego, and I really want to be accepted, not judged. (Don’t we all?)

 

It’s that last bullet – the overuse of bold – that makes me cling to humility.  As with all polarities, strong pole preferences come from an aversion to the overuses of the opposite pole.  I don’t want people to think I’m too big for my britches, and most of all, I want to belong.

 

No Comfort in the Growth Zone

Polarity thinking helped me recognize an old tape in my head that used to be on auto-play. I thought I’d found my peace with it, but here it is again.  It’s the tape that says that I’m supposed to be agreeable and not ruffle feathers – that being wrong is bad – that it’s safer to fit in than stand out.  OOF!  What a gut punch.  I really thought I’d sorted that out.  Of course, it’s ok to be wrong.  Who cares if people don’t like me?  It’s ok to stand out, and sometimes the world is better off when you ruffle feathers. 

 

This “conform to the norm” tape got wired into me at a young age.  My mother didn’t ruffle a single feather unless it was to tuck one back into place with one of her children.  No wonder that tape is so deeply rooted.  My mother would not approve of me being bold.

 

Now that this blind spot is visible, I can experiment with more boldness to gain its benefits and to guard against the overuses of humility.  I will continue to blog, and hopefully I will feel less sick when I click “publish.”  I’m also going to get on podcasts.  See me being bold?  I hope you don’t judge me for it, but it’s ok if you do.  I can take it.

 

In one last act eating humble pie, I’m taking the advice I love to give to clients: “There’s no growth in the comfort zone, and no comfort in the growth zone.”  Being bold won’t feel very good for a while. And then one day, as with all development, the discomfort will dissipate and I’ll look back at this day and smile while thinking, “Remember when I had such a hard time being bold? I’m glad I’m past that now.”

 

If you have any suggestions on how to get more comfortable with this bold thing, or if you are wrestling down your own polarity, I welcome your thoughts in the comment section below.

 

I’m still beta testing the family business polarity assessment so leaders can see how well they are leveraging the most common tensions in family business leadership.  To access the assessment, join my mailing list and check the box next to “Please send me the complementary family business assessment.” 

 

To learn more about polarity thinking and how to apply it in family businesses, join my mailing list. That should tide you over until Hug of War is released in July 2024!

Announcing the Family Business Polarity Assessment!

I’m kinda giddy today because I have a free assessment to offer family business leaders.  For several months now, I’ve been blogging about polarities in family business because I sincerely believe polarity thinking is a leadership superpower, and managing polarities well is especially important for family business leaders given the countless polarities they face:  Invest::Harvest, Tradition::Innovation and Include::Exclude to name just a few.

 

The Family Business Polarity Assessment

Drum roll here!  I’ve crafted a free family business polarity assessment* for family businesses leaders to take so that they can see how well they are leveraging these important tensions.  To access the assessment, join my mailing list and check the box next to “Please send me the free family business assessment.”  If you are already on my mailing list, email me and I’ll send you the assessment.

 

If the results show that you are managing the family business tensions well, hooray!  If you identify a polarity or two that need attention, I can offer some tips and provide you the names of consultants and/or coaches to support you.

A few notes:  

This assessment is in beta, so I welcome any feedback on how to improve the user experience.  (Truly, I need and want your honest feedback.)

Given this is still in beta, I’m asking participants to contact me to schedule a 30-minute debrief of the assessment.  For those unfamiliar with polarity thinking, the results need a wee bit of explanation.   This will also help me work out some kinks when it goes fully live. (This is not an attempt to upsell.)

 

I hope this family business polarity assessment whets your appetite for my upcoming book, Hug of War: Uniting Love and Power in Family Business, coming this July. Hug of War is filled with vivid stories about the drama that results when polarities aren’t managed well.  Plus, two chapters are devoted to building the skills to transcend the drama.

 

To learn more about polarity thinking and how to apply it in family businesses, join my mailing list to tide you over until Hug of War is released in July 2024!

 

*This assessment is crafted in close collaboration with my wonderful colleague at Polarity Partnerships, Cliff Kayser. www.polaritypartnerships.com.

Trigger Warning: Family and Politics in this Post

Ooh wee! Our family dodged a bullet this holiday season.  We mixed family and politics at the dinner table, and we survived, thanks to polarity thinking.

 

The argument will sound familiar -- it’s the same argument families are having across the nation.  Some lean red.  Some lean blue.  And each side calls the other side naïve or stupid or heartless or namby-pamby.

 

This year our cousin’s wife got involved.  That was a first.  As I ambled from the buffet table to the dining table, I saw her eyes roll.  The pleasant clinking of holiday cheers quickly dulled as another cousin mumbled something, and I watched the familiar dance begin.  Left. Right. Left. Right. Only it wasn’t their feet moving, it was their mouths talking politics.

 

This time, however, I changed the dance.  Before the left-right sidestep grew to a left-right stomp, I asked the table, “Hey, I have a request.  Would you be open to an experiment with my favorite topic these days -- polarity thinking?”

 

I hadn’t been in town for a while, so the group gave me extra leeway and agreed to my request.  All eyes turned to me, so I asked the family members who lean conservative, “What’s the best part of conservatism, in your opinion?”

 

The answers popcorned up quickly. An uncle opened with, “It fosters personal responsibility.”  His wife added, “It supports individual freedoms.”  My sister contributed “It limits government taxation – the private sector can provide services more efficiently than government.”

The liberal leaning side of the family stopped eating and gave me the stink eye until I asked them, “What’s the best part of liberalism, in your opinion?”

 

They perked up with an aunt who shared “It provides social services for people facing undue hardship.”  Her husband added “It supports civil liberties and uplifts those who have been oppressed.”  Another sister contributed “It limits environmental pollution, workplace hazards and unsafe products.” 

 

This time the conservative leaning side of the family crossed their arms and looked annoyed, but I stayed with the liberal side and asked, “What happens when conservative has gone bad?” 

 

Answers were quick!  I heard an onslaught of replies including, “The large corporations are chewing people up and spitting them out!  We need to raise the minimum wage so people can eke out a living!  The profit motive has poisoned our lakes, streams, and land! It ignores the historical and systematic oppression many fellow citizens have struggled to overcome!”

 

As the agitation grew on the red side, I invited them to share “What’s the worst part of liberal?  When has liberal gone bad?” 

Answers again were quick. “The government is bloated and horribly inefficient!  Liberal social policies have created lazy freeloaders who live off welfare!  We’ve become so politically correct and hyper-sensitive that we can’t even debate ideas without issuing trigger warnings in advance!”

 

Then Grandma, gifted at staying neutral amid conflict, quietly asked “What was the purpose of that exercise?”  I replied, “They fell right into my trap.  They just argued the diagonals!”

Arguing the Diagonals

When we have strong pole preferences in a polarity, we frequently argue the diagonals and spin our wheels.  Liberals argue the benefits of liberalism and the overuses of conservativism.  Inversely, conservatives argue the benefits of conservatism and the overuses of liberalism.  Although we speak a lot of words, we aren’t really listening to understand each other.  We’re just expecting the others to understand us.

As Stephen R. Covey implies with his “First seek to understand, then to be understood” quote, it’s human nature to argue your truth until you are confident that you’ve been understood.  Only then will you be open to another perspective.  This is a Catch 22, however, because someone must make the first move.  So, I did.

 

I asked each side to state what they appreciated about the other’s ideology.  Reluctantly, the blues said they liked the individual freedoms and wouldn’t mind some lower taxes.  The reds said they liked Medicare, Social Security, and they also want clean water. 

 

Heads started nodding.  My mom sat back in her chair.  I could feel the tension easing, albeit slowly. 

 

A Bridge Too Far

Then I upped the ante.  To the liberals in the room, I asked, “Name a part of the liberal agenda that is a bridge too far.  Something even you can’t get behind.”  The blues mentioned the recent fiasco on Capitol Hill when three university presidents equivocated on whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their code of conduct.

 

Then I turned to the conservatives to ask the inverse, “What part of the conservative agenda is a bridge too far?”  They named the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border between Mexico and the US as something they couldn’t get behind.  Yes, they wanted border security, but separating children from parents violated human decency.

 

Family and Politics

That’s when the breathing eased, as if oxygen had been pumped into the dining room.  The conservatives heard the liberals acknowledge something good about conservatism, and more importantly, something they disliked about their own liberalism.  The liberals heard the conservatives acknowledge something good about liberalism, and more importantly, something they disliked about their own conservatism. 

 

Framing our ideological differences using polarity thinking allowed for constructive conflict and minimized destructive conflict. We could agree to disagree on the ideologies, without the vitriol in the relationship. 

 

And we enjoyed the rest of our holiday meal.

 

Use polarity thinking in your family business when you find yourselves arguing the diagonals, and both sides are right.  “Should you invest or harvest profits” is a common example.  Transcend the tension by changing the question to ”How can you get the upsides of both invest and harvest?” 

 

Learn more about polarity thinking and how to apply it in family businesses in my upcoming book, Hug of War.  In the meantime,  Join my mailing list to tide you over until the book launches in July.

Speaking Truth to Power in Family Business

“How do I tell the CEO that her son, the Vice President, is derailing at work?” Jalen’s coaching topic was a family business classic... Speaking truth to power in family business feels risky.

Jalen shifted around in his chair. “On one hand,” he said, “her son, Marco, is responsible for a critical growth area of the business - International Sales. But because Marco was promoted early to give him much-needed experience, he is in over his head and needs help. He doesn’t yet have the business experience nor the interpersonal skills to navigate these international waters.” Jalen paused and looked out the window. He’d been CFO for almost a year, and this discomfort was a familiar feeling.

“The President could be helping Marco,” Jalen continued. “But the President wants Marco to learn from the school of hard knocks, which leaves Marco flailing in the wind. We have a short window to stay ahead of the competition, about fourteen months, so we don’t have time for Marco to learn the hard way. We need to fix this fast.”

Jalen shifted in his seat again, then turned to face me with wide eyes. “On the other hand, how do I tell the CEO that her son isn’t performing? I don’t want to get between a mother and her son. Will she get angry with me for thinking poorly of Marco? Will it tarnish her image of me? I really don’t want to get involved in a family issue.”

Jalen sat quietly for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Should I or shouldn’t I say something to the CEO?”

The Opposing Mindsets of Business and Family

Does this scenario feel familiar? The rules of engagement in family businesses are often unclear due to the competing norms of business and family.

The business norms are clear: Get Marco help, and fast.

The family norms are clear: Don’t get involved in family matters – it can be a career limiting move.

As we talked through the situation, Jalen noticed that he considered this an either/or problem. Either he speaks truth to power in family business or he keeps his mouth shut. So instead, he decided to frame this challenge as a polarity and experiment with both/and thinking:

Jaden closed his eyes and imagined what it would feel like to both fix an important problem and respect the parent/child dynamic. “Empowering and satisfying,” he said. Then he sat with the discomfort of his fears – that he could get crossways with the CEO or fail to address the business problem. Both outcomes felt quite vulnerable and highly undesirable.

Creative Ways of Speaking Truth to Power in Family Business

Soon, Jaden started to brainstorm strategies to integrate these opposing mindsets so he could enjoy the upsides of both: fixing the business problem and respecting the family dynamics. He came up with four possible strategies:

Convene a broader group of leaders, including the CEO and her son, to discuss the business problem and co-create a plan to resolve it.

Try to influence the President to provide greater guidance to Marco at this critical time in his development.

Take Marco to lunch to see how Marco feels about his performance, which may yield an opportunity to offer different kinds of support.

Send the CEO a report highlighting the international sales forecast, so she has the information she needs to take action.

Unsticking with Polarity Thinking

Jaden started our coaching session with an either/or problem and felt stuck in a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation. Once he reframed his challenge as a polarity, he identified many different possibilities for resolution. Polarity thinking got him unstuck.

Where are you stuck in either/or thinking? What polarities are at play? What strategies can you experiment with to move forward?

Learn more about polarity thinking and how to apply it in family businesses in my upcoming book, Hug of War. (Publishing in July 2024.). Join my mailing list to tide you over until the book launches!