To excel, leaders need to set a high bar and push people to accomplish bigger and better things. While this challenge is necessary to achieve excellence, it can quickly push people too hard, too far, and too fast if it is not mixed with the support and reassurance people need while reaching for new heights.
To achieve both excellence and growth, leaders must provide Challenge::Support. This means daring people to reach higher while also providing the encouragement and instilling the confidence needed to clear the high bar that’s been set. This Both/And balance creates the conditions for high performance, where people feel both stretched and supported.
How Does it Help with Complexity?
For some, complexity can be experienced as difficult and hard. The uncertainty and lack of predictable solutions can be unsettling, which impacts people’s ability to perform at their best. Leaders need to provide support in these situations and regulate distress in the system so it can continue to move forward in the face of complex challenges.
On the other hand, there’s a growing tendency to blame everything on complexity, using it as an excuse not to move or justify under performance by saying, “it’s just so complex.” So, challenge becomes an important leadership asset—holding people accountable and moving them beyond the hand wringing of “complexity is hard.” Additionally, leaders need to challenge and inspire people to not fear, but prepare for, complexity as they raise the bar and set new goals. For example, if you want to enter global markets, things will get more complex. Embracing the challenge of that complexity and providing the support to deal with is a key differentiator.
Challenge—Benefits and Overuses
Challenge tests assumptions, raises expectations, and calls people forward. It fuels ambition and encourages growth beyond current limits. But lean too heavily on challenge and pressure accumulates, stress increases, mistakes feel costly, and relationships fray. What once inspired performance can turn into fear and disengagement. We can’t lead in complexity without Challenge—inspiring people to act when uncomfortable, providing quick feedback for learning, and asking the best from all parts of the system. But with all polarities, we need the other pole for Both/And Leadership.
Support—Benefits and Overuses
Support offers care, connection, and encouragement. It builds trust and creates the psychological safety people need to take risks and learn. We can’t thrive in complexity without it. Leaders have to help regulate the distress caused by the unknown, remove barriers where they can, and instill confidence to take the next best step—and make it OK to learn and adjust. But overemphasizing support is deadly. Accountability softens; urgency fades; conversations are avoided; performance plateaus; and nurturing drifts to complacency. It allows complexity to become an excuse and threatens the success of the system which is why navigating polarities is so important.
Creating the Conditions with Both/And Leadership
Complexity requires growth fueled by stretch and resilience anchored in care. These are the conditions that emerge when leaders hold the right balance of both Challenge and Support. They set clear expectations of growth and performance, invite people to stretch and rise, and at the same time create the trust, encouragement, and safety needed for people to take risks, learn, and recover.
But this requires leaders to understand their own default for either Challenge or Support and develop the capacity for Both/And thinking, allowing them to hold onto the benefits of their natural tendency while expanding to get the benefits of the other pole. Unfortunately, it’s much easier said than done when the stress of complexity pulls us toward our defaults—causing us to either push harder or soften too much.
The Key Polarity Indicator makes these preferences visible and gives leaders a practical leadership development tool to harness the power of this polarity for greater results, growth, and impact.
Ways to Create the Conditions with Challenge::Support
Here are three simple practices to help Challenge and Support strengthen each other so teams can grow without losing resilience.
Complain and Then Create
A rule of thumb: People need to complain before they can create. We typically want someone to hear our frustration so we can move beyond it. So, in the midst of the ambiguity, not knowing, and dead ends, be sure to make people feel heard. Acknowledge, and don’t try to fix, their emotions: “I get how maddening it is…what’s the hardest part?” “It sounds like not knowing all the pieces is unnerving. That makes sense.” Once you show them you don’t think they’re crazy for their perspective, move them to action: “So given all of that, what do you think is the next best step?” Each part of the equation is equally important and demonstrates Challenge::Support in the moment.
Watch Your Language
When people spend a career getting it right and avoiding failure, the lack of clarity and need to step in and learn from the unknown (i.e., “I might fail”) part of complexity is stressful. Since not everything is complex, help people differentiate where they need to “get it right” from those where the answer and path are unknown. When pushing your team in complex situations, include in your language things like: “We’re going to give this a try, I’m not expecting perfection, we’ll see what we learn;” “It seems this is the next best step – go give it try and we’ll see if it works.” Make it sound distinctly different than other tasks where failure isn’t an option—it supports taking the challenging step.
Be Super Human not a Superhuman
Superhuman is one word. But in complex situations outside the movies, no one person has it all, so superhuman doesn’t work. We need to be a super human instead. In complexity Both/And leaders ask, “In this situation, how can I/we be Super and Human?” They come up with answers to both to approach the current situation or next leg of the journey. They create the conditions to help teams cut through the noise and advance towards the goal while remembering we’re not robots. Put a note on your monitor that says Super Human. And then, be both.
Manage Your Preference to Support Expansion
Most of us have a preference for one pole of a polarity. There’s nothing wrong with that—unless we overuse it. Both/And Leaders navigate the leadership polarities effectively to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Preference for Challenge? It’s a simple question, “What support do you need from me to make it happen?” When moving people to action in the midst of complexity—plotting next steps, adjusting plans, and pushing their thinking, leave space at the end of your conversation to ask the question. It might be removing a roadblock, an extra set of eyes, running defensive. Support doesn’t equal always being warm and fuzzy. If you don’t get immediate responses, keep at it, make it a habit, and people will start to answer.
Preference for Support? Encouragement and confidence-building are vital as people dance in the unknown of complexity. And support should move people to act. To ensure your care doesn’t become coddling, end your supportive conversations with something like, “What’s your next best step?” If needed, follow up with “And what would it be if I were to challenge you to (move faster, go bigger, etc.)?” Not the whole plan, the next step. You’ll be surprised how Challenge to move can feel like Support.
Read about the Key Leadership Polarities in the Complexity Series:
Posted In: Complexity Series