Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems

by Barry Johnson

One way to change people is to see them differently. – Barry Stevens

Seeing a “rigid” leader as “valuing clarity and wanting to avoid ambiguity” can help you work more effectively with him or her.

Seeing a wishy-washy leader as a person “valuing flexibility and wanting to avoid rigidity” can help you work more effectively with him or her.

The point is not that you should change your preference or that you should emphasize both poles equally. Instead, I am suggesting that seeing the whole picture can help you manage the polarity better. You know you can shift emphasis to the other pole any time you want and that you can always shift the emphasis back again.

The crux

Yet, in our organizations, there are often very serious and costly confrontations that take place because a both/and polarity is treated like an either/or problem to solve.

The problem is not with honesty or intent. The problem is with language. The leader accused of glad handing is often using Conditional Respect language to convey an Unconditional Respect message, and it does not work.

Your effectiveness as a leader will increase as you improve your ability to show both Conditional and Unconditional Respect.

The difficulty will stem, in part, from seeing it as a “solution” in the first place.

I work with the assumption that people who feel heard are more likely to listen.