Page 136 - Fearless Leadership

Changing Your Direction and Taking a Bold Stand 123

Using Counterintuitive Thinking to Produce Big Results

Transformation requires counterintuitive thinking that goes against our
natural instinct of protecting and avoiding. Recognizing your automatic
instinct to pull back and avoid gives you the ability to press the pause but-
ton and override this reaction by asking

• What am I avoiding or deflecting?
• What am I resisting and trying to prevent?
• How am I shrinking the game and limiting what is possible?

Our penchant to avoid is unconscious and manifests in our behavior.
You can change direction by including others in a new and more effec-
tive partnership and thereby avoiding the downstream threat. The follow-
ing two examples are of fearless leaders who turned difficult and messy
situations into opportunities to build a new foundation of committed part-
nerships.

Moving in a New Direction with Community Leaders. Zari was
the head of the community relations group in a sizable operation.
Her team encountered persistent difficulties with leaders in the
community and ran into obstacles that prevented resolution of con-
flict between the company and the community. Zari’s group believed
that the community leaders were the problem and if the community
leaders changed their ways, everything would be fine. The “conspir-
ing against” behavior of Zari’s group—their judgments about com-
munity leaders—was a primary contributor to the breakdowns and
constant tension between the groups.
Zari also engaged in the conspiracy against the community lead-
ers. We asked her, “Are you aware that you are acting as a victim and
making the community group the persecutor?” Zari retorted: “I’m not
a victim at all. They’re just very difficult to work with and we can’t do
our job.” “But that’s the point. You’re not doing your job. Your job is
to build a partnership, not fight with community leaders,” we pointed
out. “Well, that’s what we’re trying to do,” Zari said defensively. “Here’s
the problem, Zari. You want a partnership with community leaders,
but you blame them for the problems. You can’t build a partnership
when you’ve made others the persecutor, your group the victim, and