Paradoxical Leadership Skills

Great leadership is essentially “an inside job” and I believe self-awareness, self-management and personal development through action are key elements to inspire and achieve results through others.

Paradox Leadership provides deep insights into the balancing act of the seemingly conflicting needs of a leader and allows leaders to truly explore and develop their own personal style and toolkit accordingly.

There are 12 leadership paradoxes which reveal subtle issues of balance, giving a deep insight into key leadership issues and the paradoxical choices that leaders need to make on a daily basis. It provides analytics related to leadership paradoxes which reveal leadership strengths and weaknesses.

The Paradoxical Behavioural Pairs

  • Certainty about opinions with open-mindedness
  • Self-assuredness with self-improvement
  • Directness or truthfulness with tactfulness and respect
  • Fulfilling their needs with helping others
  • Logic with intuition
  • Self-Motivation with stress management
  • Determination with creativity
  • Orderliness with adaptiveness
  • Risk taking with risk management
  • Holding others accountable with maintaining rapport
  • Making decisions with collaboration
  • Optimism with exploring what could go wrong

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be really effective, leaders need to balance these leadership paradoxes. For example, leaders need to hold others accountable but at the same time they need to maintain good rapport. If they overly focus on having rapport but don't hold others accountable, they will not maximise performance. On the other hand, if they focus on holding others accountable without building rapport, they will demotivate others and cause employee turnover.

Leaders often consider their strong tendencies to be strengths when in many cases they are actually leadership de-railers.

This lack of self-awareness is a barrier to achieving both results in business and personally.

Harrison Paradoxes Are Also Core Values

There are four interpersonal core values: Confident receptiveness (Truth Exploring), Self-Accepting Humility (Healthy Self Esteem), Forthright Diplomacy (Effective Communication), and Helpful Assertiveness (Mutual Benefit).

There are four Achievement core values: Logical Intuition (Decision Approach), Poised Achievement (Motivation), Creative Persistence (Innovation), and Flexible Organizing (Organization).

There are four Leadership core values: Mindful Courage (Strategic Risking), Compassionate Enforcing (Holding Others Accountable), Authoritative Collaboration (Participation & Delegation), and Realistic Optimism (Strategic Acumen).

Call me on 020 3375 5509 or complete the contact form to take the assessment for yourself and find out your personal paradoxical strengths and potential de-railers