Paradoxical Leadership

How to Make Complexity an Advantage

By: Ivo Brughmans

Narrated by: John Chancer

On a daily basis, leaders, managers, and professionals alike have to deal with tensions caused by differing and even opposite approaches. We often feel the need to make a fundamental choice between either one or the other for the sake of clarity. Using practical methodology and an extensive toolkit, Paradoxical Leadership reveals how to transform divisive dilemmas into creative solutions and paralyzing polarization into a constructive dialogue.

Ivo Brughmans focuses on solutions that include both sides of the coin and reconcile conflicting views. He works out the fundamental principles of a paradoxical perspective and explains how to apply them to yourself as a person and a professional, how to integrate them into your leadership style, how to implement them in your team and organization, and how to conduct an effective dialogue on polarizing issues. Developing this paradoxical perspective, the book sheds a refreshingly new light on a wide range of fundamental organizational and management challenges, such as strategy development, business design, corporate governance, performance management, change, agility, innovation, diversity, culture transformation, leadership, and talent.

Demonstrating how to manage contradictions, tensions, and dilemmas in a productive and inclusive way, Paradoxical Leadership provides the skills, frameworks, and tools necessary to integrate both/and thinking into your working and leadership style.

©2023 University of Toronto Press (P)2023 University of Toronto Press