The Magic of Paradox

Photo from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter

I’ve always had an obsession with paradox. I am a person of contradiction and skepticism. The concepts that fascinate me the most have a pure simplicity that cuts through their seeming-complexity. Paradox is an inherently human trait. It’s born from our messiness, where our brains turn over to re-examine concepts and our hearts tug towards or away from other concepts. Paradox has been a core part of both my design and coaching lives. I actively seek out paradox as I find the greatest truth to be in the magic that lies beneath the contradiction. 

A paradox is a statement that seems self-contradictory because it holds two opposing ideas yet when deeply considered, is truthful. The magic of paradox is that it can be so absurd or insidious that it drives transformation. It’s the kernel of an idea that once considered, keeps growing.

Both as a designer and as a leadership coach, I’m in the transformation business. Designers seek to create product experiences that solve meaningful problems for the world whether it’s a new way for businesses to get insights from big data or enabling a platform for video creators to share their messages with their fans. In the technology space, new products get dreamed up or existing products get iteratively revamped to be better. In the coaching space, there is only one topic— how do I be a better leader and more fulfilled in my life.

The biggest enemy to evoking transformation is the status quo. Often it’s too scary or painful to contemplate the change, even though there’s clearly something wrong with the status quo. The magic of paradox is that it starts to introduce absurd or infectious thinking to infiltrate life and help sow seeds of ideas to challenge the status quo. 

Paradox #1: People are Naturally Creative, Resourceful and Whole (NCRW) / Evoke Transformation

These are two foundational concepts from my coach learnings from the Co-active Training Institute. The principle that People are Naturally Creative, Resourceful and Whole means that people do not need fixing— we have all the ability we need to overcome external circumstances. As a coach and a leader, I see the best in the people that I work with. They are high performers. Amidst the chaos of being human, they carry an inner essence that is values-based and introspective. I see them as the hero of their story. I have unconditional love and acceptance for who they are. Even if they may not (yet) for themselves.

Simultaneously, as a coach, I am a guide who helps Evoke Transformation in people. All of us are in a state of change and experimentation. Externally, the world is burning— first from our first global pandemic together and now from the rage of racial injustice that’s expressed with protests and riots. This outside-in driven change is causing many of us re-examine our personal relationship with race, for some of us or white or Asian privilege, and for others, it’s yet-another-day. Finally, everyone else waking up to what black people have been fighting for generations. I believe that humans are fundamentally in transition. It may be a slow passive unconscious burn, or it could be a fierce drop into chaos or exuberance. Part of what I do as a coach is to be the spark, the trigger to evoke transformation within clients. 

Another version of this paradox around which I’ve had many discussions with designers over the years, especially during performance review time is: “How can you tell me to celebrate my strengths, and at the same time talking about all the critical feedback and the things that I need to improve?” 

Most of the people I work with, myself included, will flip through the 3 paragraphs of positive feedback and immediately jump to the critical feedback. We want to know what’s wrong with us. We want to jump into action, to fix ourselves, and to solve ourselves as the problem. That’s a characteristic of driven, ambitious people. If this sounds like you, the way that we grow the most is to embrace the part of ourselves that is not-so-familiar. So if you’re the type of person who jumps to the critical feedback, why not run an experiment? Don’t read the critical feedback immediately. Leave it for 24-hours. You won’t forget it… that’s your natural way of being. Instead, stay with the positive to remember what you’re doing right, and learn the art of celebrating wins. If you need to make an action plan, capture how you do more of what works. 

Paradox #2: To Be a Strong Leader, Be Vulnerable¹

As a leader you want to be inspiring, make good decisions, and chart a roadmap for your organization that’s both visionary and operationally-strong. I remember the first time I started managing in an organization, having been promoted to lead my former peers. Not really knowing what to do, I put on a strong facade and blustered through, faking it until I would hopefully eventually make it. Solo, I created a strategy for the product, and plan for the team, and as a mini-general, told everyone what to do. In my attempt to fake it as a “strong” manager, I was a terrible leader. My “strength” continued as I worked as a Creative Director at design firms for many years. In this role, I was the visionary design expert leading our teams to show global companies— Samsung, Sony, Google, Nokia, Microsoft— what their future digital experiences would look like. My “strength” was in expertise, a style of command-and-control to perform and convince that our design concepts were exactly what they needed. 

It wasn’t until I led teams at startups and then at Facebook that I realized there was another way. I stopped putting on the mighty armor of “strength” and started acting more authentically by sharing my vulnerability and truth— how I balanced my commute hours from San Francisco to Menlo Park with raising children, how I always felt imposter syndrome amidst all the brilliance, how I struggled as a female in tech, how to truly lead a team with diverse opinions when we couldn’t get to any consensus, and how I failed to build relationships with key leaders and got asked to leave one of my past teams. I realized that my role models, the strongest leaders I knew were the ones who led authentically as themselves and were unabashed in sharing their mistakes and struggles. 

I keep reminding myself in my current roles & in my writing — To be a strong leader, be vulnerable. 

¹Courtesy of one of my coaches, Rich Litvin.

Paradox #3: Rest Day is a Training Day²

 I recently heard a brilliant talk by ²Matt Chavlovich, an Ironman athlete, pro soccer player, and fellow leadership coach. From his training, he shares the brilliant paradox of Rest Day is a Training Day. As many athletes know, part of a physical training regimen is building in a rest day. Muscles grow when they’re not in motion. The rest day allows muscles as well as nerves, bones, and connective tissue the time to rebuild. Because you’re training for a marathon not a sprint. 

I am an ambitious and driven person. I like to move fast and get things done. Hard work, grit, and discipline have gotten me to my current success. I’m intimately familiar with my workaholic tendencies that drive me to exhaustion and burnout. 

I also know that I’m my most creative when I build blocks of empty space into my days. It lets me focus and create what matters the most, or lets me simply play. And when my saboteur tries to shame me about the time-wasting or idleness of not doing something important, I can tell that part of myself to shut-up because rest day is a training day. 

Bottom-Line

Perhaps, like me, you are obsessed with paradoxes. I adore the complexity of the contradiction, and it sticks in my brain. As a coach and leader, I can simultaneously hold that people are brilliant and that they can continue to transform. I remind leaders I coach that To Be a Strong Leader, Be Vulnerable. And perhaps most personally, I continually remind myself that Rest Day is a Training Day.