#241: The KEY To Building Confidence Through Failure, With Professors & Co-Authors Wendy Smith & Marianne Lewis

When we think about both and thinking, we think about a couple of things. One is we start with saying, you've got to change the kind of questions you ask. If you're always saying, should I be brave or should I be vulnerable, you're missing the point because they go together. How do I build confidence? By putting myself out there in uncomfortable situations, by learning through my successes and failures. So to us, changing the question is absolutely vital. How do you take those opposing sides and dive deeply into each one of them? How do you really understand what are your fears coming from?

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Hi and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with me this week and ready to meet two amazing guests. We Wendy Smith is the Academic Director of the Women's Leadership Initiative at the University of Delaware and a professor of management. Marianne Lewis is dean of the University of Cincinnati's Linder School of Business and professor of Management. They are the co authors of the book Both and Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve youe Toughest Problems. Ladies, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Heather, thank you for having us.

All right, so let's get right into this because I know everyone listening is thinking, what the heck paradox can you break down? Wende, what is this all about? What is a paradox?

Heather, thanks for having us. We are excited to be here in conversation with you and with your listeners. We wrote this book because we both faced ongoing competing demands in our lives just the same as everyone else does. And those demands bubbled up for us in how how we thought about our careers, where we wanted to take them, how we thought about our lives, our partners, our parenting, how we thought about our leadership and how we thought about our research. And part of how we got to this idea was that as we were exploring these kinds of competing demands. So in our lives it was work and life. In our careers it was thinking about being a researcher, but also thinking about being a teacher or institution builder or leader. In the research that I was doing and that Marianne was doing, it was about thinking about companies navigating for today and tomorrow. We realized that what often happens in these cases is that people look at these as an either or competing demand, seeing the opposition between them. But what we don't see is we don't see the ways in which these opposing forces are also interdependent and by seeing them as interdependent opposites, as ways in which these things are both contradictory, but also synergistic and mutually reinforcing, it invites us to think about dealing with them in a totally different way, in a both and way. And so underlying so many of the dilemmas that we face are these paradoxes, these contradictory oppositional intention dualities that are also defining and intertwining, interdependent with one another.

Can you give us an example so that I can process this better?

Absolutely. So this shows up for us, for example, in navigating work and life. When I was a new mom, there was always this frustration, this tension about how to spend my time, even now with my teenage kids, how to spend my time, how to think of my identity. Am I thinking about myself in terms of my parental identity? Am I thinking about myself in terms of my work identity? Am I spending time right now, right here, doing work? Am I spending time with my kids that are in the other room? These tensions come up, and I was always in conversation with colleagues or friends who are thinking, I don't know how to see myself. I don't know how to make these decisions. But what we weren't thinking about was how is it that the more that I engage with my work, the more passionate I am about it, the more successful I am about it, the more effectively I can show up for my family and really be there to demonstrate to my kids my success, to inform how I think about my parenting and. And the more that I feel confident and secure with everything that was happening at home, in my life, with my family, with my partner, the better that I could then be able to show up at work. And so we weren't thinking about the relationship between the two of those. We were just thinking about the ways these are in conflict. But, Mary, I'm going to turn it over to you for some examples, too.

I think, Wendy, those are excellent examples. I mean, I would maybe expand it further. If we think about tensions in our career, we have a lot of times the same things we've actually, Wendy and I have seen in strategic discussions with executives, you have this tension between today or tomorrow. Meaning am I putting my time, energy, commitment in hitting my current goals, which means performing, or am I looking at how I'm developing, continuing to learn, thinking about what the next step is going to be? Because Wendy and I see so many of these kinds of tensions, not purely as oppositions, but as interwoven. Well, if you're thinking about the future, it does inform and shape the choices you make today. Just as the work that you're doing today helps you really think about enabling serendipity or plan, luck and thinking towards the future. So that botham thinking thinks about today, tomorrow, family, work, confidence, fear as interwoven opposites that actually we need to work through those tensions and learn from.

How can you break down with the example of fear and confidence? What are the steps that somebody takes to do that?

I think fear and confidence is an interesting one. I mean, I was thinking about this, Heather, particularly because of your focus. I think confidence is such a beautifully paradoxical phenomenon. And so here's what I mean by that. You don't get confidence by sitting in a room, keeping the bar low, trying to just mind your own business. You're never going to build the belief in yourself until you put yourself out there. I mean, Brene Brown certainly talks about that, this paradoxical interplay between confidence or courage and vulnerability. And I think to me, confidence is very similar in that you build, you learn about yourself, you develop your capabilities, and you certainly grow your confidence through failures as well as successes by knowing what's possible. So when we think about both and thinking, we think about a couple of things. One is we start with saying, you've got to change the kind of questions you ask. If you're always saying, right, should I be brave or should I be vulnerable? You're missing the point because they go together, right? How do you start to change this point of, how do I build confidence by putting myself out there in uncomfortable situations, by learning through my successes and failures, Right. Kind of pushing in these opposing ways? So to us, changing the question is absolutely vital. We then also push ourselves and the leaders that we work with to kind of think about, how do you take those opposing sides and dive deeply into each one of them? How do you really understand what are your fears coming from? Where do you feel your insecurities? How do you kind of wrap your arms around what's on that side? And at the same time, when you think about your courage, where are your strengths? That deeping, actually dividing and really thinking further about both helps you then step back and say, and how do I pull them together? What's my higher purpose? How am I holding these in a synergistic format that lets me think, what am I capable of? If I really push forward, then I think from changing the question to the separating connection, how do you start to walk the tightrope and learn through this process? Because it is such a journey, you're not looking for a one off answer. You know it's going to continue. You're going to make a decision today, but in paradoxical tensions, the underlying issue is going to resurface. And that's okay. That's some of how we build some awareness of what's working in our world, what's working for ourselves, and I think build that strength.

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I have to share with you. I have two examples of both. And thinking in my life, which is relatively new to me the past few years of my life, it's not something that I thought about. And for everyone listening right now, definitely try to apply this to yourself and think about where you could change from either or to both. And. And so here's my example. I took a stand up comedy class begrudgingly. I did not want to do it, but a friend of mine said, you know, I was in a place in my life where I just wasn't happy. I was still working in corporate America. And he was like, listen, if you want to start expanding into possibilities in your life, step into uncomfortable that, you know, you just made a face. You don't want to go to stand up comedy class, go. And so I made myself go. And one of the exercises that they put you through, it's this and game, I call it a game. I don't think they call it a game. But you can't stop. You can't say, okay, it wasn't the right thing. That's over. You have to run with it by saying, and. And so it was this really interesting exercise for me to continue the thoughts, join things together instead of the normal way for a lot of us, right? Which is like, I don't like that. No, it's over. And so that was a really interesting exercise. And then when I gave my TEDX talk, I had a speaker coach that I was working with and my TEDX talk is called the Me Too Movement Misstep or misstate or something like that. And she was saying, listen, you're going to alienate a lot of people here if you don't make this an and moment. And I said, what do you mean by that? And she said, people are going to think that you're just vilifying the Me Too movement. Instead, why don't you make it more about. The Me Too movement was great and there's more we can look at. And when she said that powerful moment, just put a. The light switch went on and I got it. And thankfully she gave me that adjustment to change the talk. So I personally love what you guys are doing. Believe in it, Heather.

I love that we talk about this idea of yes. And in the book because it is such a crucial and basic practice that we can do to shift our mindsets. One of the key things in the book, we talk about how we move into both and. And one of the key pieces is shifting our mindset, by the way. Another key piece is shifting our emotions, which we can talk about. So I think that that language is a good. Is such a great way to shift our mindsets. And what I love about your example, about your TED Talk is that, as Marianne said, what we say in the book is that the first practice, as she said, is that whenever we come into these either ors, you know, misstep or mistake or possibility, that we sort of tune our brains to recognizing that it's an either or and just stop and shift the question of what's the and question. How could the Me Too movement enable possibilities rather than restrict it? How can our vulnerability enable our confidence? How can, as another example, you know, how can our acceptance of who we are exactly as we are right now enable our growth rather than us having to make a choice between the two of those. And what we say in the book and what we talk a lot about is that if you talk to people who are meditating, the very first practice is just focus on your breath. Start with your breath. In thinking about both anding and really appreciating these synergies and interwovenness, the first step is just changing the question, noticing that we're asking these either or questions in our lives and changing them into both ands into an and question.

Oh, it's so good. Now you just reminded me of another example randomly. And it's so interesting because I wanted to ask you about the timing with everything going on right now with the Roe v. Wade reversal, and there's so much tension everywhere in the world. I went to church yesterday and I did not think they were going to address Roe v. Wade, and they did. And they addressed it exactly the way you're teaching both and. And it was so beautiful because what it did was it included every. It allowed everyone to feel hurt, everyone to feel loved, everyone to feel understood. And it was such a powerful moment just for life, for business, for everything that I walked away with. It was really about embracing the both. And obviously, the pastor is pro life, and he didn't mince words about it. He said, I think you all know I am pro life. However, that does not mean that that is the only way. And if you are pro choice, that doesn't mean that's the only. And it doesn't mean either or wrong. It means that we all lead with love, and it means that we all have empathy and understanding for one another and that that is the connection. And that's what it's all about. It was just he said it a lot more eloquently.

Heather, I'm so glad you brought that up. One thing that I want to lift up and just make obvious, because as we wrote this book, we thought, oh, it is this point that thinking about both ands is both really critical in our personal lives. It's really critical in our organizations and our leadership. And we see it all the time at the level of politics and national relationships and society level. And so one of the challenges we had in writing this book was thinking about how to apply it to all these levels. But I'm so glad that you're doing it here and thinking about how does it impact our career decisions and how we show up in the workplace, but it also really impacts how do we and we've been thinking a lot about this, this question of how do we have conversations at the national level where what we have is people either this polarization. And so what we talk about in the book is that the ways in which our individual either ors lead us down these vicious cycles. So first our own individual either or gets us stuck in one position or another. And so on the Roe v. Wade discussion, we could see how people get incredibly committed to one side or the other. Then they start reinforcing that side we talk about as going down a rabbit hole. We start reinforcing that perspective. We start it's confirmation bias. We look for the information that confirms our point of view. We talk to the people that confirm our point of view. And so we start really intensifying our point of view. And then we get into what we call trench warfare, where once we start getting into groups that reinforce our point of view, it's like building a trench defensively, reinforcing what we think and sitting there and shooting against the other side really sort of being offensive against the other side and attacking. And that's what we see in our political system right now. And by doing so, we lead to what we call the pattern of overcorrecting or a wrecking ball, where we sort of shoot decision wise from one end of the spectrum all the way to the other, crashing down anything good that the middle has created along the way. And by overcorrecting, creating this wrecking ball where we wreck what's happened. And so we've seen that in, in the abortion decision where the two sides are so polarized that what we're doing is we're wrecking any possibility for creating a better outcome in which we can see possibilities in the middle. We talk about this as a vicious cycle, the vicious cycle of either or thinking. And we really do believe that both. And thinking means that we recognize that actually both sides of this discussion have points in which they really agree with one another, that there is a lot of conversation in which we are trying to sanctify life, life of the mother and life of the fetus, where we are trying to enable opportunities and choice, and that both sides have points of connection, but we're not talking about that. And by living in these sort of very polarized. By taking these either or positions and then living in these very polarized ways of doing so, we're creating worse policy and we're leading to sort of these massive pendulum swings that are causing major problems.

Wow, that was so well said. So how do you get people. I see the people going down the rabbit hole. It's so clear. Right. You can see it happening. How do you get them to stop and pivot?

Well, I would say one way really, is the beautiful framing that your pastor provided. It has to start with some love and compassion, at the very least, respect. Arthur Brooks writes an interesting book called Love youe Enemies where he really talks about this polarization, fostering a culture of contempt, and that the antidote to that is compassion. I appreciate your story very much, Heather, because I think it has to start with taking the deep breath and listening, understanding. Tell me what you're hearing, but more importantly, tell me what you're thinking. Where do you come from? Because in an issue such as abortion, we're all coming from very particular backgrounds. The way we've been raised, sometimes some very personal experiences. I think if we share and start with the point of being human, we have a much better chance of actually working through the defensiveness and listening. And I do say it goes back to starting with the question. I mean, so much. We're all reading lots of points of view in this. And how are you framing this? I mean, I saw, you know, I've seen a couple of different, just diametrically opposed articles. One saying, you know, help me understand why you're not for abortion rights. Okay, but I don't know that this is about abortion rights. Right. I think the way Wendy just said it was so thoughtful. Right. There are the we all care about rights and free agency. And maybe we get into much more nuanced and complicated issues of rights of whom, free agency set by who and whom. And likewise, if we think about kind of different decisions, I think we have to complicate what we're looking at. One of the challenges we see in this either or thinking is you first of all, simplify over simplify. These are complicated issues boiled down into one area. You then see it divide there. You get the trench warfares and then isolate. So that's that confirmation bias. Who are we listening to? What are we reading? And then finally dehumanizing. So that's the name calling. We see some really vicious statements and potentially violence. How do you reverse every single one of those? Well, don't isolate, Talk to people, listen, humanize, Tell people your story, listen to other people's stories. How do you connect in new ways? I think there's so much we can do here and we've got to decide, are we moving in further vicious cycles or is it time to lift up our heads and break out of the insanity and think differently?

Oh, gosh. I mean, it's so true. People just attacking one another and not listening is so obviously one of the biggest issues I see everywhere in our country. But that's because people have these heightened emotions, Right? So how do you get them to shift out of these heightened emotions?

Yeah, and this goes right back to the emotional piece. You know, I was just thinking as you were talking about this. So in the last couple of days, I've seen those emotions play out on my social media feed. I've seen them play out in the conversations that I've had. And the emotions come out in a couple of ways. One is the deep anxiety, fear, uncertainty that people are feeling many times because of some really significant and legitimate background experiences that they have in response to this decision. But I've also seen the emotions of anxiety as there are people who are in families or in friend groups in which they have different opinions from their family and friends and are really feeling torn about having those conversations with one another and just feeling how emotionally challenging it is to be at the kitchen table with their spouse having a conversation where they each have different perspectives and how hard that is. And so we are incredibly empathetic to the fact that navigating these kinds of both ands is hard when they show up in ourselves. And it's even harder when they show up in these kinds of political fights in which we have some real stakes in the game, moral claims, or we have some real emotional or experiential claims. So we don't say this lightly, but we, we do think that part of navigating paradox and living in the both and is finding comfort in the discomfort, knowing that it's uncomfortable and not just assuming that will go away, but owning the discomfort, recognizing it and then being able to move forward amid knowing that it's uncomfortable. We're not saying this is for the faint of heart. We're not saying this is easy. We are saying it's important though, if.

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In theory. Everybody knows. Yes, you know, stepping into uncomfortable, oh yes, that's the way to go. But when you're actually faced with making a decision for the example that I used with the pastor coming out and that was how he led church, you know, that's how he opened. It was shocking to me. But then as I listened I thought I'm so grateful that he had the courage to step into uncomfortable. Of course that was uncomfortable for him. He knew there were gonna be people judging him, right? That some people wouldn't like the way he framed it up, that he might not say it perfectly. And yet he still led. And to me I was thinking that is true leadership. True leadership in any company, any organization and any movement is that individual that still shows up. That still opens up the mic saying, I know this isn't gonna be easy, but I'm gonna step into it anyway.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Couldn't agree more.

You were talking about Brene Brown, which I think is. I love her work. It's so interesting to me around this idea of the need for courage, you know, to step into vulnerability. Can you talk a little bit about that paradox, about courage and vulnerability?

Sure. We're big fans of Brene Brown and we think that she is such a both and thinker. I think it back to the core of confidence and how do you build both sides of that coin? Because it fits with the emotions as well. If we don't put ourselves in the discomfort, how do we ever know that we're strong enough to work through it?

Right.

How do we kind of push ourselves? It's the. I've actually got her Theodore Roosevelt quote sitting on my desk. I'm looking at it. But about being. Putting yourself into the arena and having those difficult conversations, not because you're seeking a fight, but because you're seeking to learn, to understand. That's a real challenge to work through. Another author that Wendy and I certainly value is Tara Brock. And I think the paradox of change and stability builds into this as well.

I was just having this conversation this weekend, and it went like this. I was talking with a friend of mine who is a significant leader in an organization, recently went and hired a coach. And part of the coaching process was trying to explain to her all of the things that she needed to do in order to move up and advance in the world. And she realized that. But it felt to her like all of those practices were really denying who she was as a person and not honoring what she was bringing to the table. And it invited us to think about not just the tension between trying to be vulnerable in order to be brave, trying to be vulnerable in order to be strong. There's another sort of paradoxical tension that we think people need to live into. Certainly leaders need to live into. Female leaders need to live into. And it's this tension of learning to grow change, live on that growing edge by starting with accepting ourselves. So the more that we accept and honor exactly who we are at this moment, exactly as we are, love, value, everything that we are, the more that we can grow and change, the more authentically we can shift, grow and change. And this is again, something else that we talk about in this sort of paradoxical relationship, which is, again, change is enabled by our stability and our acceptance of what is and Actually, the more that we change, the more that we can love and grow and accept who we are. Because we're constantly moving and changing and shifting to meet the moment, meet the opportunities of the moment. And so, as you said earlier, I lead this women's leadership initiative at the University of Delaware. We teach executives, we do executive training for mid career executives. And a key piece that we're constantly working on is this tension between how do we invite them into new practices, new habits, new opportunities, new ways of being, but starting with really loving, valuing, accepting and honoring exactly who they are at this moment. And as Marianne said, one of the authors that I love reading about this is Tara Brock and her work on radical acceptance. Radically saying yes to just what is the good stuff and the hard stuff in order to invite us into change and new opportunities.

And this is exactly why this book is so timely and so needed right now. Where can everyone find the book? And where can everyone find you?

Well, you can find the book certainly on Amazon. You can find the book at any independent bookstore. The book is out August 9th and available and accessible. It's accessible as an audiobook, as an ebook, as a hardcover book. People can read it and hear it in all the ways that they want. We absolutely love hearing feedback about what people are thinking about as they engage with this book. Whether they're thinking about it for how they shift and engage in challenges in their personal life or whether they're thinking about it as a book to enable them as a leader and help their company, how they're thinking about it in their company. So they can absolutely find us. Me at the University of Delaware and Marianne at the University of Cincinnati. And we're happy to share our contact information.

The book is both and thinking, Embracing creative tensions to solve your toughest problems. Check it out. It's going to launch you into your confidence. Ladies, thank you so much for being here and thank you for all the work you're doing.

Thank you, Heather. Thank you for all your work as well. Wonderful to be here.

Thank you.

Until next week. Keep creating your confidence. You know I will be. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're going to hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one alone.

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