Nov 03 2024 49 mins
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On today's episode of Good Authority, Jonathan sits down with Wendy Smith, the renowned author of Both/And Thinking, to delve into the traps of either-or thinking that affect our decision-making, relationships, and even political discourse. Wendy shares insights from her journey as a self-proclaimed "uncertain academic," exploring how embracing ambiguity and conflicting forces can become powerful tools in both personal and professional contexts. Together, they discuss why a “both/and” mindset is crucial for fostering understanding and avoiding the polarization that often stems from black-and-white thinking. Wendy explains how our natural comfort with certainty and simplicity can often limit our creativity, while a more expansive approach can help us see opposing ideas as interconnected rather than mutually exclusive. Throughout the episode, Jonathan and Wendy also examine how this mindset can aid leaders in guiding teams through complex challenges by balancing diverse perspectives, allowing them to navigate seemingly contradictory goals more effectively.
Key takeaways from this episode are the value of embracing ambiguity to foster growth and creativity, practical methods for moving beyond polarizing perspectives, and strategies for leaders to guide teams through complex, contradictory challenges.
Wendy Smith earned her Ph.D. in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, and is currently a professor of management at the Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics and Co-director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the University of Delaware.
Wendy’s research focuses on strategic paradoxes – how leaders and senior teams effectively respond to contradictory agendas. She studies how organizations and their leaders simultaneously explore new possibilities while exploiting existing competencies, and how social enterprises simultaneously attend to social missions and financial goals. Her research has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science and Management Science. In 2018, she won the University of Delaware’s first Mid-Career Excellence in Scholarship Award. In 2015, she won the Lerner College Outstanding Scholar Award.
Wendy teaches leadership, organizational behavior and business ethics. She has taught MBAs and undergraduates at University of Delaware, Harvard and University of Pennsylvania – Wharton. Wendy was awarded the University of Delaware MBA Teaching Award in 2016. Wendy has also taught executive and senior leadership teams how to manage interpersonal dynamics, emotional intelligence, high performing teams, organizational change and innovation, managing in times of crisis, and managing strategic paradoxes.
Connect with Wendy: https://bothandthinking.net/
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