Why do great companies and other organizations fail, sometimes abruptly? Why do admired leaders fall from their organizational pedestals? Why do young and promising managers derail? Why do organizations create and reinforce rules that manifestly damage both them and those that they employ, serve and sustain? Leadership is a much-discussed but ill-defined idea in business and management circles. Analysing and understanding the skills and behaviours exhibited in leadership practice reveal that leaders exhibit paradoxical activities that challenge our understanding of organizations.
In this text, the authors identify leadership behaviours that compete towards business equilibrium: selfish versus selfless, distance versus proximity, consistency versus individuality, enforcing professional standards versus flexibility and control versus autonomy. These paradoxical dilemmas require a reflexive and analytical approach to a subject that is tricky to define. The book explores the paradoxes of power and leadership not as a panacea for solving organizational problems but as a lens through which leadership and power are seen as an exercise in dynamic balance. Read this book as an invitation to the paradoxes of power and leadership that frame organizational life today. Be prepared to find surprises – and some counterintuitive arguments.
Providing a thought-provoking guide to the traits and skills that will help readers to understand and navigate paradoxical leadership behaviour, this reflexive book will be a useful reading for students and scholars of business, management and psychology globally.
Author(s): Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg, Arménio Rego and Marco Berti
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Cover
Half Title
Endorsement
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
About the authors
Glossary
Introduction
Both Equal and Different
Paradoxical Leadership As a Meta-Competence
A Guide to this Volume
Crossing Types and Levels of Paradox
A Sketch of Each Chapter
Challenges Rather Than Absurdities
Conclusion
1 Leadership and Paradox
Neither a Morality Tale Nor a Manichean View
Implications of Power-To
What Is Leadership?
Leadership As Competency Than Can Be Learned
Results and Ethics
From a Leader-Centric to a Leader-Centric-Follower-Centric Approach
Capacity to Articulate Tensions
Leadership As Process
A Relational Process
Implications of the Processual Nature of Leadership
Leadership As Pluralistic
Diffuse Power
Divergent Objectives
Competing Logics
Leadership and Paradox
An Introduction to Paradox
Opposite But Mutually Defining Forces – That Interact and Persist
Contradiction
Persistence
A Classification of Paradoxes
Difficulties With Navigating Paradoxes
Paradoxes are Nested
Difficult to Detect
A Paradoxical Mindset Or Orientation
Paradoxical Leadership in a Nutshell
Paradox Dont’s
Taking Consistency As Sacred Cow
Representing Paradox As Strange
Representing Paradox As Positive
Representing Paradox As Recipe
Conclusion
Guide for Further Exploration
Notes
2 Paradoxes of Self-Leadership
Leading Oneself and One’s Self
Why Is Self-Leadership Paradoxical?
Janus-like Leadership
Chameleonic Leadership
Level 5 Leadership
Paradoxes and the Self
Self and the Paradoxes of Performing
Self-goals
Independence Versus Interdependence
Intuition Versus Rationality
Self and the Paradoxes of Learning
Paradox of Excellence
Humbition
Grit
Self and the Paradoxes of Belonging
Similar and Different
Role Makers and Rule Breakers
Talking to Listen to Oneself
Self and the Paradoxes of Organizing
Project Leadership
Define Priorities
How to Manage the Paradoxes of Self-Leadership
Natural Propensity Towards One of the Poles
Lack of Self-Awareness
Reflexivity
Mindsets
Conclusion
Guide for Further Exploration
Notes
3 Paradoxes of Dyadic Relationships
“The Backbone of Successful Organizations”
Why Are Dyadic Relationships Paradoxical?
Tensions in Dyadic Interactions
Paradoxes at the Dyadic Level
Dyads and the Paradoxes of Performing
The Paradox of Equality and Difference
Star Performers
Tough Love
Dyads and the Paradoxes of Learning
Multiplying Versus Diminishing
Learning Dyads (I): Coaching
Learning Dyads (II): Reverse Coaching
Dyads and the Paradoxes of Power and Belonging
Intimacy in the Absence of Intrusion
Empathy
Helping Behaviours
Dyads and the Paradoxes of Organizing
Reciprocity
Contradictory Obligations
Dis/empowering
Managing Dyadic Paradoxes
Conclusion
Guide for Further Exploration
4 Paradoxes of Team Dynamics
Teams Are Not Collections of Individuals
Why Are Teams Paradoxical?
Teams and the Paradoxes of Performing
Performance
Cohesiveness
Team Versus Individual Goals
Teams and the Paradoxes of Learning
Psychological Safety and Accountability
Team Porosity
Expose Your Team to Different Logics
Teams and the Paradoxes of Belonging
The Hedgehog Effect
Consensus and Dissent
Winning and Losing
Teams and the Paradoxes of Organizing
Team Fault Lines
Less Hierarchical Designs
X-teams
How to Manage Team Paradoxes
Confronting Groupthink
Virtual Teams
Teaming Rather Than Teams
Conclusion
Guide for Further Exploration
Note
5 Paradoxes at Organizational Level
Diverse and (In)compatible Goals
Why Are Organizations Paradoxical?
Leading Organization and the Paradoxes of Performing
The Paradox of Meritocracy
Planning and Improvising
Governance Mechanisms
Leading Organizations and the Paradoxes of Learning
Ambidexterity
Forgetting to Learn and Learning to Forget
Enabling Environments
Leading Organizations and the Paradoxes of Belonging
Constructive Dissent
Citizen Leaders
Dispersed Community
Leading Organizations and the Paradoxes of Organizing
Freedom Within a Framework
Competing Logics
Elastic Hybridity
How to Manage the Paradoxes of Organization?
Solutions Becoming Problems
From Hierarchies to Agile Designs
Supporting Actors
Conclusion
Guide for Further Exploration
Notes
6 Recurring Paradoxes and ten Lines of Action
Wise Leadership – a Complicated and Paradoxical Endeavour
Why Do Some Paradoxes Recur?
Handling the “Ongoing Puzzle”
Four Recurring Paradoxes
Paradox of Excellence – Or the Tension Between Evolving or Getting Stuck
Paradoxes of Power – Or the Tension Between Humility and Hubris
Paradoxes of Proximity and Distance – Or the Tension Between the Parts and the Whole
Paradoxes of Authenticity – Or the Tension Between Integration and Differentiation
On Managing Recurring Paradoxes: Ten Paradoxical Lines of Action
Be Curious About Contradiction
Synthesize Confidence and Caution
Promote Time for Reflection and to Engage Deeply With Context
Develop a Synthetizing Multi-Perspectival Mindset
Embrace Opposition
Use Experience to Support Improvisation
Interrogate the Meaning of Goodness
Assume That the Solution May Be the Problem
Cultivate Jestership and Embrace Criticism
Consider Disruption of the Status Quo – and reflect On black Swan Scenarios
New Normal, New Paradoxes
New Technologies
Climate Change
Grand Challenges
A Final Paradoxical Word
Notes
References
Index
