SixSEED Partners

polarity thinking

Caring for Self AND Caring for Others

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This is the third in a series on leveraging tensions during this time of the coronavirus.  For SixSEED Partners, Covid-19 is a powerful reminder of what already exists in our world which is complex and unpredictable circumstances that can cause much pain unless we learn to take a more systemic view, and get comfortable leveraging interdependent tensions.  Previously, we covered the paradoxes of:

  • Leveraging Facts AND Faith
  • Leveraging Staying Present AND Anticipating the Future

I am thankful and in awe of my healthcare executive clients who are staffing command centers yet continue to honor our time together and their development work.  The tension of Caring for Self AND Caring for Others is present as they wrestle with the pull of the never ending “to do list” and command center requirements with the desire to structure in time during their day that refuels their energy and feels like a gift to themselves.  Many of these leaders have chosen to do a “walk and talk” session where we both get outside so that we can experience the simple pleasures of exercise; sunshine; animals; and blossoming trees.  Spoken by several of my clients: “I’ve been sitting for hours on zoom calls:  this is the first time I’ve allowed myself to get outside and move!”

For many of you reading this, if you’re in a leadership role, you may have a story of “I’m responsible and that means I model total commitment to the work that needs to be done.”  Working twelve-hour days becomes a badge of honor.  Of course, you have no time for exercise—you are doing your job:   there are no other options.  Self-Care requires you to challenge your internal operating system—your belief structure that might actually be getting in the way of your committing time to care for yourself.  It’s an interesting tension between playing the hero as you rescue others, while also having the self-awareness of knowing when you might be overdoing that role, to the detriment of yourself and of others who have the capacity to learn and grow in assuming additional responsibilities.  One of the most important lessons I had to learn as a nursing leader was to make myself dispensable because I was developing others.

Below is a polarity map, which outlines this tension of Caring for Self AND Caring for Others in service to creating health for all.  

At SixSEED Partners, we want to develop leaders who have the capacity to see these interdependent tensions to better lead in this time of uncertainty.  We’ve taken the liberty of adding some action steps and warning signs that we’ve heard from our clients.  Perhaps they ring true for you as well.  I admire those healthcare leadership teams who have relaxed their pre-Covid policies around who staffs their command centers, in service to both developing others AND providing relief for over-worked leaders.

If you’d like your own editable polarity map to give yourself the systemic view of the tension you are navigating, or if you have questions about how you might use this information now, complete our contact form and we’ll respond within 1 business day.

Staying Present AND Anticipating the Future

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During this time of the coronavirus and high stress amongst many, it is easy to find oneself blaming others for what might not be working.  For example, I’ve read complaints that we knew we were vulnerable to a pandemic and failed to plan adequately for it as we focused more on political or economic agendas which were real NOW.  There were some who feared that spending too much time preparing for something that might never happen would be a waste of time to the detriment of immediate issues.  Which perspective is correct?  Both!

One of the tensions often present as we lead complex organizations and deal with unpredictable change is that of honoring and being present to the needs and gifts of now, AND planning for future demands.  Healthcare has had to meet volume-driven payment models while planning for value-based care.  We have to serve our existing inpatient and ambulatory patient visits while planning for the future of telemedicine.  More imminent right now is meeting the existing demands of COVID-19 patients while planning for predictive surges in viral spread and increasing demands for personal protective equipment and ventilators, as well as planning for sustainable adaptation when the new normal becomes evident. 

What happens when we take a problem-solving approach to these interdependent challenges, without considering the interdependent tensions?  We find ourselves arguing loudly for our perspective believing there is one right answer and we have it, which creates more stress for us and others and can cause a see-saw-like approach which results in inconsistent performance and wasted resources.

I met with a client recently who is a physician and clinical leader dealing with both in-hospital and public health issues.  What she found most helpful in our dialogue were the reminders to practice self-care now, so that she could take care of others in the future.  She also appreciated the idea for harvesting seeds of positive ways of interacting during this crisis now that can help her, her teams, and her system to function more effectively in the future.  Without the intention to pause and document those positive interactions, she and her system remain at risk of reverting back to ineffective habits.

Below is a polarity map which outlines this tension of being present and anticipating the future, in service to an agile and prepared organization.  

At SixSEED Partners, we want to develop leaders who have the capacity to see these interdependent tensions to better lead in this time of uncertainty.  Missing are action steps and warning signs that would be added based on what is relevant for you and your teams.  One action step for staying present for the leader previously mentioned would be taking the last 15 minutes of a meeting and harvesting what worked during that meeting and what barriers existed that would allow them to create new ways of interacting in the immediate future.

If you’d like your own editable polarity map to give yourself the systemic view of the tension you are navigating, or if you have questions about how you might use this information now, complete our contact form and we’ll respond within 1 business day.

Gathering Facts AND Thriving in Uncertainty

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As mentioned in our previous post, SixSEED Partners would like to provide you immediately applicable tools to help you lead during this time of unprecedented disruption.  These tools can help elevate leadership capacity in leaders at any level.  These times call us to leverage problem solving skills which often have a right/ wrong- black and white answer along with both/and responses to complex interdependent tensions (if you want to know more, stay tuned for a webinar being offered soon).  

Leading during Covid-19 requires both problem solving as we learn facts concerning viral spread and leveraging uncertainty- what we don’t yet know.  As we learn facts about the corona virus, we can problem-solve where there are definitely right and wrong answers.  For example, we know the right way to wash our hands and to deploy personal protective equipment so that it is accessible to those who most need it.  Decision-making during complex and ambiguous times also requires the ability to know when we’ve exhausted what we know, and could benefit from the deployment of faith and possibilities.  Faith is not often spoken in healthcare, AND we know that deploying faith along with facts helps to strengthen our resilience and positively infects others.

The Polarity Map® below takes you through how you might leverage this tension in service to our greater purpose of impactful and informed decision-making.  Since this virus is new, we are leveraging what we know and have used in the past, while dancing in the moment as we discover new patterns of viral spread; infection and disease manifestation.  

If we listen to the news, there are many who want to blame others for spreading “wrong information.”  If all acknowledged the tension of what we know with what we don’t know, perhaps we’d be more forgiving in our perceptions.  Each human being on this planet is now challenged with leveraging their own tensions around their behavior.  How do I protect myself and loved ones, while also contributing to the common good?  As the primary caregiver for my 88 year-old mom, I’m challenged by leveraging the therapeutic benefit of my presence and healing touch, with the risk of exposing her to the virus should I be a carrier without symptoms. I’m not convinced the risk of exposure is of greater risk than that of her not seeing me which provides her reason to live.

The map below is a suggestion of how you might leverage action steps and warning signs to make sure you’re fully-leveraging the benefits of both poles and minimizing the downside limitations.  Merely balancing isn’t good enough. Truly great performance comes from full-leverage – staying out of the downsides as much as possible and staying in the upsides as much as possible. System-level resilience is directly tied to how well leaders and those who follow them leverage this and other polarity tensions. Here’s the bottom line: while either/or thinking is useful, it’s not up to the task of leveraging the interdependencies that show up for leaders, teams, and organizations.

If you’d like your own editable polarity map to give yourself the systemic view of the tension you are navigating, or if you have questions about how you might use this information now, complete our contact form and we’ll respond within 1 business day.

Next Generation Succession 2.0: Leveraging Succession to Accelerate Leadership Capacity

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On July 25th, Dr. Larry McEvoy and I had the privilege of presenting the above topic to a room filled with leaders, recruiters, and consultants attending the American Hospital Association 2019 Leadership Summit in San Diego.  We provided a case study that illustrated the application of a different paradigm in addressing succession planning. What the audience most appreciated were the five key shifts necessary to leverage systemic leadership capacity that drives results while fostering better engagement and well-being.  They are as follows: 

  1. “Bet on the herd; not the horse.” Paradigm shift from heroic leader with development of a select few, to increasing the thinking capacity of many leaders.  Focus on the collective rather than individual leadership.
  2. Create deep thinkers who are comfortable with the unknown and who create developer leaders. These leaders see “scaling leadership” as a key accountability area for their role.  Development is not a “nice to have.” It’s an intentional, systemic priority with frequent and varied feedback loops.
  3. Cascading both/and—polarity thinking along with problem-oriented thinking (either/or): Leaders are often promoted for their problem-solving ability.  Unfortunately, all the simple problems have been solved and healthcare is now dealing with complex issues that are interdependent.  This requires the ability to see and effectively leverage the larger system of polarities: mission and margin; tactical and strategic; centralized and decentralized; continuity and transformation.  Cascading a system’s capacity to manage paradox increases the system’s ability to compete in this complex world.
  4. Providing strategic simulation experiences that intentionally take the leaders out of their comfort zones; pairs them with leaders with whom they share different perspectives and apply time constraints that simulate the pressures CEOs face in dealing with real environmental challenges. This exercise provided a real-world “heat” experience that included their presenting to a mock board with challenging questions a CEO would experience from the board.
  5. Be a lens, not a filter: Shifting from silo’d selection and placement of CEO to an integrated process that proactively identifies development needs and structured methods to meet those needs post CEO hire.  The goal of the succession/ development efforts being stabilization of the entire system during times of transition as compared with filling a given role.

Click here to download a copy of our presentation. We’d love to hear from you! 

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References: 

Anderson, Robert, and William Adams.  Scaling Leadership: Building Organization Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most.  Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2019 

Anderson, Robert, and William Adams. Mastering Leadership: an Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2016

Johnson, Barry. Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems.  Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc. 1996

Petrie, Nick. The How To of Vertical Leadership Development Part II:  30 Experts; 3 Conditions and 15 approaches. Colorado Springs, CO: The Center for Creative Leadership, 2015 (http://tinyurl.com/jrxuvgx)

Leveraging Polarities to Create Sustainable High Performance: A Physician and Nurse Leadership Academy Day of Learning

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In April of 2019, WellSpan Physician and Nursing leaders were brought together for a transformative Day of Learning conducted by SixSeed Partners.

Dr. Larry McEvoy presenting the background of polarities.

For over a year SixSeed Partners worked with system senior leaders to increase the capacities for transformational change and leveraging polarities to create and measure sustainable performance. As the work of polarities had begun to permeate throughout the system, the was an expressed need to increase nursing and physician leadership knowledge about the power of polarities.

Educating Nursing Leadership AND Physician Leadership

Polarities are interdependent pairs of values or points of view that may appear as opposite, but when leveraged together can produce powerful outcomes. Prior to the workshop,

WellSpan choose four polarities to concentrate their work:Joy Goldman, RN, MS, PCC discusses the mindset shift to AND thinking.

Joy Goldman, RN, MS, PCC discusses the mindset shift to AND thinking.

  • Centralized and Decentralized- Focus on the independent business units needs AND systems opportunities;
  • Continuity and Transformation- Keeping the legacy and traditions of the past AND transforming for the future;
  • Tactical and Strategic- Increasing leadership capacity to think tactically AND strategically at the same time; and
  • Margin and Mission- Optimizing the financial health AND mission goals for individuals, systems and teams.

The physicians and nursing leaders learned that each polarity was not a problem to be solved, but a mindset to embrace, thus the “AND” mindset was put in motion for the group.  Interactive practice tools were given to help mobilize teams toward forward movement when they experienced repeated cycles of interdependent tension.

Perhaps the most significant take-away was the provision of language for the leaders to hold and invite numerous perspectives, which support AND thinking and leading within complexity.

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Individual leaders start to map their own polarities.

“It was so helpful to hear what others have learned. I’m a new director, so to hear from other directors and doctors was so helpful for me in my new role.”  — Nursing Director

 

“To mention the elephant in the room, it was pivotal to our success today to bring nursing and physician leaders into the same room, to encourage dialogue around our common polarities.” — Chief Medical Officer

 

“I am going to go back to my team tomorrow and integrate eight minutes of dialogue into our meetings instead of our usual one-way conversation and problem solving.”  — Physician Leader