Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Rethinking The Polarity Map with Dr. Joel Rothaizer

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 309

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Dr. Joel Rothaizer is a psychologist, executive coach, organizational consultant and leadership development specialist. He’s Board Certified in Organizational & Business Consulting Psychology, and a Master Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation. His book on leadership, called Clear Impact, has been strongly endorsed by Ken Wilber. The head of Integral Zen calls it the most integral book on leadership he’s ever read.

A  Few Quotes From This Episode

  • “Helping leaders see the logical next step is the easy part. Helping them see why they do not take it is the art.”
  • “Whatever you are biased toward, you lose the value of it when you over-privilege it.”
  • “Everything goes better as a polarity. There is not a single value you can come up with that is not better understood as a polarity.”
  • “People will integrate a tool at the level of complexity they live at.”
  • “A polarity map is inherently developmentally energizing. It temporarily helps people think at a higher level than they would on their own.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

  • The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. 

About  Scott J. Allen

My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspec


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Scott Allen:

Okay, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today, I have a returning guest, Joel Rothaizer. And he is a PhD psychologist, executive coach, organizational consultant, and leadership development specialist. He's board certified in organizational and business consulting psychology and a master certified coach through the International Coaching Federation. His book on leadership, called Clear Impact Building Leadership Capacity, has been strongly endorsed by Ken Wilbur. The head of Integral Zen calls it the most integ on leadership he's ever read. Sir, this is our second conversation. I was just saying to you before we started recording that I just really enjoyed our last conversation. And so I'm looking forward to where we go this time. Maybe bring listeners back into you. And what's something that you would like them to know about you that isn't in the bio that we just read?

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

When I was 41, my wife got me into distance running. And from the age of 43 to now, I have done 31 marathons all longer.

Scott Allen:

Wow. Okay. Now when you say or longer, there's a there's a big spread of what's possible.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yes. When I was younger, but still obvious obviously over 43, I did two 50Ks and one 50 miler. Wow. And uh the good news and the bad news on the 50 miler, I actually won my age division. Okay. But I was also the only one who finished. So I was also last in my age division.

Scott Allen:

So oh well, I'm really, really looking forward to the conversation today. And I think we're gonna start at least uh on polarities. And uh you had mentioned that you have kind of an interesting and unique take on this that you wanted to share with listeners, and so I'm excited to learn, and maybe we we jump in there.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Sounds good. And you've had guests already who have done some really good things on polarity, so I want to build on that. Um, I'm kind of at my polarity thinking 3.0 at this point. I thought what I'd do is we'll actually do a polarity map, and that way, even if people have no experience with it, they can get a feel for it. And then I'll unpack what I'm doing, what I did that might be different from what some other people do. Great, perfect, awesome. And we talked briefly beforehand, we're gonna do collaborative and decisive. Okay. And if you're following along, if you want to score a card at home, make a two by two box with a lot of space in it. At the left of the first row, make a plus sign. At the left of the second row, make a greater than sign. Um put a top box and a bottom box. On the top and bottom boxes are about two-thirds as long as the overall chart. So it kind of looks like a box with a hat on it and a bottom. And then on the first row in between the first and second box, make a circle and write collaborative. And on the second row in between the first and second box, write decisive. So this is kind of a generic framework for a color for a polarity map, two by two plus on the left, greater than on the left. I'll talk about that more later. But we'll start with the top left box. When you're actually doing a polarity map, you always start with what you think somebody is biased toward or overprivileged toward. That's the language and polarities. Um, here I'm just doing it generically so that if you're listening to the podcast and you're doing this for yourself, you might be really balanced on this, or you might find that you are biased toward one over the other. So let's start out, Scott. What's good about being a collaborative leader? What comes to mind?

Scott Allen:

Well, I think if you are a collaborative leader, you uh are an individual who can foster buy-in. I think if you're a collaborative leader and you create a space of psychological safety and uh an environment where people feel like they have voice, then you can mitigate some of your own cognitive biases. Get to a more holistic understanding potentially of the of the problem we're working on. I mean, you obviously you need to have the right audience with you to be to collaborate, actually, but I think it can mitigate for some of your blind spots. There can be shared ownership. I think it it's another benefit of collaborative leadership is that people feel like they are partners in the process. And obviously, then a byproduct product of that might be that buy-in. When it's collaborative, people might self-select into where their energy is, and people have different ideas of where they want to contribute. And so if we're relying on people's different strengths or different energy levels of where they want to focus their attention, that can be of benefit relying on their skill set. And I think probably given a lot of that, you're gonna have more likely a higher level of intrinsic engagement. You're gonna probably have some more um discretionary effort given. It's just I've decided you are doing X and the person has no voice. So those are a few things that come to mind for me about some of the benefits of collaborative leadership.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, that was really good. Um I really don't have much more to add except to build on what you said that complex issues require the integration of multiple perspectives. And a collaborative leader creates that kind of safety and trust, as you said, where everyone feels comfortable giving their best ideas and then integrating them.

Scott Allen:

Yes. Yes. And I think another another element of collaborative leadership, especially when we're dealing with complexity, because I I think in some ways that's where this is most appropriate when it's a complex adaptive challenge if we want to use language. But yes, I mean, I think I think there you're gonna there'll be a spirit of experimentation. There, there's there's a humility in no one person has the answer. It's uh what's what do we think is our best guess as to the best path forward? And ultimately it's a little bit of an experiment. And again, if you don't have that psychological safety and you're just being decisive and telling the group, well, the military found out a long time ago you make a lot of mistakes.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, you know, and again, right now we're just focused on what's good about being collaborative. Okay. Um which is important when you're doing one of these is to try to keep it focused. Um, but everything you said is really is really good. Um sense of shared ownership, it's energizing, it's engaging. Okay, what's good about being a decisive leader?

Scott Allen:

Well, we get things done. We move things forward at a quicker pace. We have direction and it's clear. It's not confusing, confusing. It's it's decisive, it's been decided, and we're moving in a certain direction. Um if if I know if it's a simple or complicated problem, if we want to go to Snowden Boone, um I know the answer. And I know how to develop a cellist or I know how to develop a piano player or a surgeon. So if I'm I can be decisive in how I actually build your capacity, especially if you're working in like known knowns, right? So I think that can be really, really good because I don't it it's not appropriate sometimes to collaborate with me if I have no knowledge of what we're trying to talk about. I need you to be decisive and help scaffold my learning. So in those cases, it can be really good. I think a decisive leader also, there's an air of of confidence and there's an air of I have the answer. And again, that can be comforting at times for folks that uh that decisive individual, here's what you need to do. So there's been times in my life where I've had a coach and they've said, here's what you need to do, Scott. And that felt comfortable. So at times that decisiveness can feel like a weight is off my shoulders because I feel like I trust their judgment and I go. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, I just had a coaching session right before this, and I was meeting a lead, a leader for the first time in the military. And at one point I said, that's wrong. And he lit up, like, okay, I'm gonna get some good stuff here. Yeah. And you you brought something in there that's important. When I do polarity maps, I often I want leaders to talk talk about both the results and what they like about the feeling of it. So both outside in, inside out. And you mentioned that there's a sense of leadership presence. I'm a strong leader, I'm decisive. Um, on the collaborative side, people often say, I feel like a good person. I feel like I'm you know kind and caring. Yep. Okay, so now we're gonna do the bottom right box, and this is not uh what's bad about being decisive. This is not the downside of being decisive. That's too limited. This is if you look at this as an integrated whole, collaborative and decisive. If you're a leader who over-privileges decisive over collaborative, is biased toward being decisive over being collaborative, what's the inadvertent downside of that?

Scott Allen:

Okay, so the downside, if I have a bias for decisiveness, some potential biases or some potential downsides of that bias might be the wrong decision, the wrong path forward. I may miss important data that again, I think we all suffer from what, 180 cognitive biases. So my limited purview on the situation may result in a limited solution. Another potential downside of being biasing or privileging uh decisiveness might be that people don't feel like their partners in the process, that they didn't have any voice, that they're now along for a bad decision. So those are some things that come to mind. If I if I overly kind of bias towards that, I I think another another downside is that those individuals may not grow because they're looking to me to be dad or to make the decisions for them. And it may stall the growth of some of the people who are working for me.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, very good. Um, people feel shut down, they feel devalued, they stop giving their best ideas. Um it hurts innovation, creativity. And how about the the the left? I'm a leader, I love being collaborative, it feels so good. Everyone, I like getting this input, safety and trust. I lead these great open meetings, but I'm biased toward that over being decisive. Yeah. Um what's the inadvertent downside of that one?

Scott Allen:

Some in the group might feel like we're wandering, some in the group might feel like we're wasting time. It can take a lot of time. We might be setting up a scenario where not everyone is gonna get their way, and so we're gonna have a faction of people check out regardless because they're they didn't feel their voice was heard or their decisions or their contributions were acted upon. So you're losing time. You're you're in some cases maybe watering down and try and please everyone. Now we have some watered down version of what we're gonna try and do, and it becomes clunky and wonky at times. And in in a spirit of not hurting anyone, uh I think um I again, I think that leader can be perceived as wishy-washy or indecisive or not clear and confident in their own skin. And that can be a perception.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

That was great. And you and you end up not getting much done. You know, I work in systems where they form committees and then they form committees about the committees, and and and people are just crying out, would someone just make a decision?

Scott Allen:

I served on uh our uh at the my former university, the the uh the governing group of of academics, and there literally was a committee about uh advisors. So it was the advisory committee about advisors.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Right.

Scott Allen:

Oh, it just stalled. It was so slow, it was so painful, and just demoralizing because nothing got done.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah. And so that moves into there's basically three ways that I would process a polarity map so far. Okay. Um the first, which tends to be the biggest aha, is that whatever you are biased toward, you lose the value of that when you over-privilege it. And so if you just if you if you were writing these down at home, on the collaborative side, I want engagement. Everyone's ideas, people feel like they're in it together. But if I'm over-privileging being collaborative over being decisive, people are frustrated, they become disengaged. Um, they give up trying. Yep. All that I wanted to be true. I wanted this high-performing team where we're dealing with complexity well, and people are just frustrated. Yes. On the decisive side, I wanted that feeling of we're we're getting stuff done, we're moving forward, we have a clear direction. Uh but actually now people are shut down. We make bad decisions, we don't include all the different perspectives we could. People feel devalued. And instead of seeing me as a strong leader, they see me as autocratic and dominating and somebody that they'd like to escape from. Um so the first one is it which tends to be the biggest aha for leaders, if they are strongly uh biased toward one or the other, is seeing how they actually lose what they want without integrating the other. Yes. And that's why polarities are a pair. They we they need each other to be effective. Um the second thing that I point out, whether it's an individual or a team, is how most of what's in the bottom boxes are the same. You end up on both sides with people being more disengaged and poorer decisions being made. Yes. Yes. So the bottom boxes are very similar. Um the last part, which again one of your guests mentioned before, is that if I'm strongly biased toward being collaborative, it's because I'm I'm mostly afraid of the downside of the other pole. So I really don't want to shut people down. I really don't want to hurt creativity, innovation. So I overdo collaboration. Or if I'm overly decisive, I'm so afraid of not getting stuff done and just spinning wheels and talking, talking, and not getting not doing getting results, serving our stakeholders, whatever that might be. Um, so uh that's the diagonals. Okay. Now the bottom box we have to do a little more theoretically, because this is part of what changed from my um polarity thinking 2.0 2.0 to 3.0. This used to be more of a cognitive what's the downside of not managing this polarity well. And that became really boring at some point because that was always people are less engaged, we're getting less stuff done. Yeah. So this instead became the emotional intelligence part. It's kind of like um well, one of the ways of looking at this is that when I teach coaching, uh one of the things I like to say is that helping leaders see the logical next step is the easy part. Helping them see why they don't take it is the art.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Um and so when I'm working with individual leaders, but also with groups, we'll get to that too. This is okay, you you're looking at this map, leader. Uh you it's obvious why collaborative and decisive will get you better results. Why won't you do it anyway? What's going to get in your way? Um it could get like immunity to change. You know, like what's the core thing that actually will stop me from doing this, even though it makes sense? And now if we're working with a leader who's overly collaborative, that'll often be things like I'm really afraid of hurting people's feelings.

Scott Allen:

Yep.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Or I'm desperate to be liked.

Scott Allen:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The competing commitments of, you know, um, I'm committed to pleasing others, I'm committed to being liked, I'm committed to uh, you know, not ruffling feathers or maintaining harmony at all costs, right? Yeah, all those competing commitments for sure.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, yeah. Conflict scares me. Anything like that. If I'm a leader who's overprivileged and being decisive, often what comes up when I talk about this is I would really feel awkward and weak if I start, if I let go of my strong, powerful leader stance and started asking people, you know, hey Scott, what do you think about this? What's your perspective? Yeah. And also, I'm really good at the decisive stuff. I feel awkward trying to be collaborative. It's not my thing, you know, other people are good at it, I'm not. So again, I feel weak and I like feeling strong. So the bottom box becomes the emotional intelligence piece. What's going to be in your way of actually getting this done? And I found that works both for individuals but also for teams. I'll give an example soon. And so it's the top box is always homework for me. Because what I'm saying to the leader is the top box is going to be your uh leadership uh purpose or like a value statement. What kind of leader would you be uh if you were in this case being really good at being both collaborative and decisive? Yeah. And so it has to be personal. It could be a character, it could be Yoda, you know, it um it could be One word, it could be a short phrase, but I need it to be meaningful to somebody because this is going to be the wake-up call. Whatever that top box is, you're going to think about that right before each meeting. Yeah. Before each one-on-one, before you lead your team. And it'll temporarily get you more balanced, just like, you know, kind of a chiropractic adjustment in your mind. And so the top box, I want somebody to really think about that and have something that touches their heart, that touches their sense of the kind of leader they really want to be. So I don't want to give even examples of that. I want somebody to come up with something.

Scott Allen:

Yeah. And I like that touches their heart piece, right? Because if it's embodied like that, I think there's a there's just a difference there.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah. Yeah. And so that's the basic way I would do a polarity map.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

And now I'll I'll unpack some of what might be different from some people. Um one of the problems with polarity maps is that there's not a greater than sign on the second line. There's a minus sign in the way that they were first taught. And uh deep bow to Barry Johnson, his contribution is brilliant. And so this is all building on that. But when people see a minus, they turn it into a pro and con list. And I was even part of a system where thousands of people got a training and polarities were included, and it was what's good and bad about each one of these. And then it's not developmentally sophisticated. It doesn't help people think at a higher level of complexity. And or even if somebody says, okay, what's good about being collaborative? What happens if I overdo it? That's still not polarities. Yeah. That's closer. It's only a polarity when you really get that these are two interconnected holes that need to be honored at the same time. And so every time I did a polarity map when we were doing the uh City of Edmonton's leadership program, I'd say, I know it says minus there, but it's not really minus. It's actually what happens if you overprivilege one over the other. Yeah. And then I still remember this guy who was sitting at a table in front of me who said, Why don't you just use the greater than sign?

Scott Allen:

Like, duh.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

I love it when audience members give you the obvious solution to your and so when you when you put the greater than sign, it helps correct for that tendency to make this into a pro and con list. Yeah. And kind of to go along with that, people will integrate a tool at the level of complexity they live at. That's why when you do a polarity, people always revert to versus. Great. I really like the one we did about collaborative versus decisive. Because if you're looking at developmental models, at an achiever level, I look at things more as complicated instead of complex. And so this becomes like, okay, I need to be ambidextrous. So I think in this meeting I'll be 70% collaborative, 30% decisive. And that's good. But um later stage thinking would be no, it's it's a both and. And that's another bias of mine. Uh polarity thinking is both and thinking, but not all both and thinking is polarity thinking, and people can merge those. To be trait, I like my hot dogs with mustard and ketchup. I'm a both and thinker. The fact that you've said and doesn't mean that you get the sense of the interconnect interconnected whole. Okay. It doesn't mean you get the sense that these two need each other. Because part of what I've learned over time is that everything goes better as a polarity. There's not a single value you can come up with that isn't better understood as a polarity. You know, like I've heard you say, I mean, you think that there's a lot of polarities out there. My my perspective, everything needs to be a polarity to be thought about more effectively. Even you know, someone could say, well, how about being open-hearted? Well, no. Open heart and discerning mind is a great polarity. There was a Buddhist teacher who came up with the term idiot compassion for people who had a very open heart and not a discerning mind. You make very bad decisions. Yes. Um, I think it was Beanus Sharmer who said that organizational values should be polarities. Um, one of our clients actually took us up on that. Um, like the city of Edmonton had a value of excellence. That's just silly as a municipality. It's excellence and pragmatism. It's this tension between wanting to do really good work and wanting to not spend money or minimize money. We had people who worked on roads who told us, I can fix your potholes so that they'll never need to be fixed again. And your property tax will go up. Are you you know, are you willing to do that? So a real honest value for a municipality would be excellence and pragmatism. You're you're living in the tension between those two. Yes, 100%. Okay. So so one issue was the minus sign. Another is that when I learned polarities, they talked about this infinity loop. And the examples you would give would be breathe in, hold it a little too longer. Oh, now you have to blow out carbon dioxide, breathe out, nice. Now you have to wait a little, now you wait a minute, now we have to breathe in, and that it's a nice infinity loop. And that um, and polarities were presented that way. You overdo one side, you then go to the other side, and you kind of you're balancing back and forth. Now that's true for some polarities. Like if you're in a relationship, the polarity of my needs and your needs, if you have a partner, is one of those polarities where, you know, I really want to meet my needs and do what I want to do, but then I start to feel a little too selfish and my partner's getting pissed off. So I lean a little bit more on what they want, but then I feel like I'm giving up too much and I get resentful. There are some times when the infinity loop works. But then I started applying this in the real world and found that from a lot of human beings and for a lot of organizations, they're stuck in one direction. It is not a moving back and forth, it's not the seesaw, action and reflection. I have never seen an organization that overdoes reflection over action.

Scott Allen:

Uh, I don't know. Like, um, what would it be? I'm trying, I'm I'm just like, I love that little thought uh thought.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, I mean, maybe maybe some kind of fringe new age kind of, but or operational and yeah, or like operational and strategic. Yeah. All organizations tend to be overly operational and they don't step back enough. We were talking about the Enneagram, and even though the Enneagram, I'm an Enneagram three, I've applied polarities to the Enneagram. So I have a whole system where for every every Enneagram type, I talk about what polarities go with that. Oh wow. My my type, one of the polarities is over-privileging doing over being. If I looked at my whole life until maybe recently, did I ever overprivilege being? No chance. Yes. I was always overdoing the doing. I even went on sabbatical one time and I wasn't working, and I was busy all the time. I just somehow, you know, I never had a time to breathe then. It wasn't the work, it was me. Yes. So what I found was that with a lot of people and with a lot of organizations, it's a chronic overprivileging. It doesn't do this back and forth. And that that was important because when I first started teaching it, I taught it as well, you do a bit too much of this, and you go to the other side. And to me, in the real world, that often is not what happens.

Scott Allen:

Well, yes, and and and to some of the you know, online conversations we've gotten into, you know, how does the context kind of reinforce some of that, right? Quarterly earnings environment, and I'm the CEO. Yes, now that is acting upon me and the organization and the board, and that causes us to overprivilege. Wouldn't you agree?

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Oh, totally. And and there the polarity is short-term and long-term.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

And yeah, if I'm if everything is about this next quarter, I will jettison my innovation team because it'll make it look good, even if I'm hurting long-term capacity. Yep. Which is why privately held companies often move very differently than publicly traded. Because there's that they don't have to answer to somebody for the next quarter. There's nobody putting that pressure on them. So that's true. Even leaders who could think very long term won't because of that pressure. It's a good example. And I mentioned the bottom box could be true on a team level, but this is also contextual, like you said. I was doing work with an environmental group, and the key polarity ended up being task and people, which is one of the very basic ones. And they were overprivileging task over people. And if there's some group somewhere that wants to give us $10 million to do a project, even if we don't have the people, we don't have the systems, we don't have the project managers, we're going to just be running everyone too hard, I'm scared to say no. Yeah. I feel like I'm a bad steward of the environment if I say no. So I'll keep saying yes. Yep. You know, that's the emotional piece to it. I'd feel like a bad environmental steward if I said no.

Scott Allen:

Well, Joel, the the interesting thing here is, and and I really appreciate that you brought in the emotional intelligence piece, because at least how I facilitate immunity to change. You know, those competing commitments, they've served us really, really well in certain situations. I mean, they've gotten us to where we are in some situations. And we have these strong emotional ties to these things that we're biasing or overprivileging at times because I'm an environmentalist. This is my jam. I have to take that money so that we can make a difference. And again, you start getting into this very um, we have strong, strong emotions surrounding those things that we bias, bias or privilege. At least that's my perspective. It's just subconsciously driving our behavior.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Very much. And that's why the top and bottom box changed for me on the polarity maps, because it can't just be cognitive. From from a cognitive level, it's no the the both ends important here. That question of what will get in your way of actually doing it. And there are some polarities that are really useful for a lot of leaders. A lot of leaders are much more comfortable smoothing out than creating friction. When they create friction, they feel like a bad person, or it scares them when things get heated up. They're very good at cooling things down.

Scott Allen:

I I love that the okay, this is a cognitive exercise. This is also an emotional exercise. How much of this of this at times is a neurochemical? I I'm I'm searching for other reasons why someone might struggle to change, someone might struggle to give less privilege to a certain polarity. What else is in what other boundaries are in their way? And I don't know how to better verbalize it than that. There's emotional reasons, there's cognitive reasons, there's the this knowing-doing gap, right? That so the things that are getting in our way of actually living into, are there neurochemical reasons at times? Have we behaved in a way for so long that shifting that neural highway is deep work, deep work. Unpack that makes sense of what I just said.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, well, as as we all do, I'll take that someplace where I have something to say. If we think about Dan Siegel's window of tolerance, and I want to stay responsive and not reactive. I don't know if this is neurochemical, but I'm gonna avoid anything that throws me out of my comfort zone. And again, for some leaders, that's heating things up. Other leaders have the opposite, cooling things down. And now and then I'm brought into the Google School of Leaders to do one-offs on polarities to try to help a leader find their best polarity. And I was looking at some of those, and it was fascinating. And this relates a bit to that dialogue we got into on LinkedIn. There was one leader who over-privileged being powerful and empowering others. Okay. There was another leader who overprivileged empowering others over being powerful. So the leader who over-privileged being powerful over empowering others, his core fear was not leaving a legacy, not not being seen, not being valued. But the leader who overprivileged empowering over being powerful was really caught up in being nice and respectful and kind and not standing out. And so the reason why you when when you do a polarity map, you start with what somebody is biased toward is to get at some of that. That's by the way, when we did the polity map, I always do the top left, top right, and then I do the bottom right because that's the one that comes easiest to them. So in the one that we did, if I if I knew someone was one of these very collaborative, you know, let's form committees, let's come back to this and let's decide in three years. I know that what's going to come easy to them is what's what's uncomfortable about being decisive for them. And so then I go to the other side. Um I'm convinced that I could watch somebody doing a polarity map in a language I didn't understand, you know, Swahili. And it would be really clear where the overprivileging was by how quickly the words came for each quadrant. Wow. And and I notice that a lot that you know, if you're a leader who's strongly collaborative, and they say what's good about being decisive, sometimes what'll come out, what they'll say is what's not good about it. Or it'll just take them longer, or it's kind of begrudging.

Scott Allen:

And that's part of the challenge at times with LinkedIn, where you have a lot of, you know, be kind at all costs. And it's it's these statements that don't be a manager, be a leader. And it's really interesting to kind of explore some of the messaging that exists on that platform because it rarely takes into account the complexity. Now, if you take into account the complexity, that gets really confusing for a whole swath of people, right? I mean, it's uh it's fuzzy and it's not it's not easily digestible and consumable, right? And that's why I love some of your work is that it's complex, but it's digestible.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah. And I'll build on that. I mentioned that someone will take in polarities from their current level of thinking. Yeah. And that's why polarities, that's why people say versus so much. And it's why people turn this into being ambidextrous, you know, doing 80% here, 20% of that one, instead of living in the tension of the two. You know, like one of my favorite polarities is confidence and humility.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

And there's a there's a visceral internal sense when we get that right. It's not I'm gonna be 80% confident here. It's like I'm both. I'm I'm living in the in the tension of both. I know, I know what I'm doing, and I don't.

Scott Allen:

I I still don't have a clear picture, Joel, of of what that feels like.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, it's well, it's like let's take collaborative and decisive, just because it's the one we did. Yeah. And then I want to get to something else too, but let's stay with that one. If I'm an effective leader, I'm collaborating with a goal of being decisive. I'm actually doing both. I'm leading this interaction, not just very good idea, Scott. And what do you think? Somebody else. I'm leading it with an energy toward getting to a result.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yes. Even if I'm someone who's tended to be decisive, but I really get this polarity right, my way of being decisive is collaborative. Okay. People feeling heard and we get shit done and we move forward. Yes. Um, I'm not doing one and then the other. Um at the achiever level, if we use that map, I look at it with 70%, 30%. It's the next level. I like catalysts for the next level. We could go into those maps more than individualists or redefining. That's the first level that gets it as a visceral both and. You know, I'm I'm kind of I may be advocating something, but I'm really curious what you're gonna say and and and how that can shift my perspective. I'm living in the both of that, you know, in the in the self-transforming mind and Keegan's way. We're authoring each other as we talk. Yeah. I'm not gonna be inquir inquiring for a while and then advocating. We're just kind of doing both and we're in a dance together like that. Okay.

Scott Allen:

Another sidebar. Yes. In Carl Kuhnert's, I believe it was 87. I I don't know if you've read this, where he took Keegan's work and applied it to transformational leadership. One of the first papers to kind of really take that perspective. They said something, you know, you might have, I'm gonna go to Keegan right now, but you might have like a stage four, uh a self-authored individual or self-transforming individual, might just sound, you know, and I the classic example of this is I believe it was James uh Jim Jim Key, Jim Carrey. Oh my gosh. Not Jim Carrey. He's a good Canadian, but I'm not the um presidential candidate in the United States. Oh my gosh. One of the candidates that was going against George W. Bush said, I, you know, I I see complexity. And you know, so so Bush came back and said, Well, you're you're a flip-flopper. And and that statement resonated with a large faction of people. Of course, it's amplified by the media, et cetera, et cetera. But it it's it's an interesting thing at times, we even in your example of that person that you were coaching before our call, I need to maybe communicate down at an achiever, and that's how I'm gonna get through to this individual. That's where I'm gonna connect. If I stay up here, well, it might sound just foo-foo. And we're we're not so I I think sometimes, at least in the United States, you know, you have you have uh Democrats who struggle to communicate in a very and and Lincoln was known as an individual who could take a very complex concept and communicate it to a group of farmers, so it made perfect sense. So how do you think about that? How do you think about how we communicate? If I'm with an achiever, do I need to communicate in an achiever language? Is that a piece of this conversation?

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yes, and yeah, the value of a polarity map is that it's inherently developmentally energizing. Um so I mean, certainly you're talking to an achiever, you're talking in terms of getting results and how to get the best out of people. Um, it's probably not till the next level that people that developing people for its own sake seems like a value. It's gonna be more again, the person I was talking to right before this, it was about how his way of being decisive shuts down people, which will hurt his next decisions. Because that was his value. Not in terms of uh the impact on humans for its own sake. So so for sure, you need to talk to people uh in a way that makes sense to them. But um the piece I was gonna bring in before I forget it is that and this goes back to finding simplicity on the other side of complexity. I'll give an example. There's a great 360 um from a guy named Rob Kaiser, who's a friend and he's my psychometric guru. Um it's a uh the assessment is a leadership versatility index 360, and it's all built on polarities. It starts out with one big polarity, forceful and enabling, another operational and strategic, and then it breaks it down into subpolarities, and you get all this really cool stuff because polarities are actionable, right? Yeah, if you're if you get a 360 and you get 4.3 out of five on communication, so what? What do you do with it? But if you get uh you talk too much, you listen too little, or you talk, or you you know you you or the others the way it's immediately clear what you need to do. But what I what I did at first when people got this 360 was I said, so I want you to look through all this data and come out with what's the one polarity that will have the highest leverage for you, that will have the biggest impact. And what I learned was that was too sophisticated for almost anybody. And that I needed to use my level of complexity to help them see the one thing. Yeah. And then they would go, Oh, that's right. And and I've done the same thing where if I like if I do 360 interviews for a leader, I feed it all back in polarities. You know, I was doing this with a uh CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, and I said, I have 10 pages here, I have lots of polarities, but there's actually one for you that's your main polarity. And it's you're really good at engaging minds, you suck at engaging hearts. And if you can get if you can do that one better, almost everything else falls into place. And I do the same thing when someone has a battery of tests. Yep. I don't I don't ask them to learn about polarities and figure out the best one for them to do. I suggest one and see if it fits.

Scott Allen:

I'm not top-down comedian, but that's a nice balance of the collaborative versus decisive. Like here's what I'm seeing. Does this resonate for you? So being collaborative, but I'm also centering the conversation to to move forward, right? Exactly. That whole meeting could be. So, how do you feel about this? And you know, I can tell you anything that I think, you know. And yeah, I think at times, back to the 360 or back to some of these other things, we we spend so much time giving people just loads of feedback. And I mean, that's like looking at a basketball player and saying, you need to do this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and these 14 other things. Well, okay, where do I start? I need you to guide me. I need you to help me figure out where is gonna make the most impact on my game. And are you a good enough coach to help guide me in that development and in that growth? Right?

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Totally. Um, it reminds me of a friend who took me out golfing. I don't golf. And it was like, you know, so when you do this, lower your shoulder, bend your elbow. You know, like I can't do all that. Can you can you ask me to do one thing? That's like me in yoga.

Scott Allen:

You know, the biggest creep because they say to do something, and my mind doesn't know what that means. So then I end up looking all around, and then people see me looking, and I'm like, oh sorry, but I don't know what my body should do right now. But yes.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah, I mean it's also why, and I think this is I think executive coaches need to function at a higher developmental level than their clients. Otherwise, you can't really scaffold because and so I think I don't know, that doesn't get said much, and that's not very uh not very green. Um it could be taken the wrong way, but I don't disagree. But I think it's true. I mean, I I I think that in order to really challenge the thinking and to scaffold a leader, we need to be thinking at a at a more sophisticated developmental level.

Scott Allen:

Yes, yeah, yes. And we then also need to be really clear. What I see in leader development is I have I have former colleagues who as a professor, they would start off with like complexity. That's like flying a Boeing 747. Let's start with a cessnut, let's start with a piper. Let's just kind of yes, that is a thing, and it's critical and it's important. It's very important. And we should probably start with active listening as a foundational level of what we need. You know, we don't start with a heart, we start with a gallbladder. Joel, uh, as we begin to wind down our time, always a pleasure. We'll do it again. And um anything that you've been reading, streaming, consuming that's caught your attention lately that uh you want listeners to know about?

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Oh gosh, yeah, I mentioned this last time, but it's so deeply meaningful to me. Daniel Brown's three volumes on Cloudless Mind?

Scott Allen:

Is that the You're like me? I couldn't remember. John Carey's name a few months ago. I called him Jim Carrey. I love it.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah. Um, Cloudless Mind, the three volumes set from these impromptu talks he gave for years. Just profound.

Scott Allen:

Awesome.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Awesome.

Scott Allen:

Well, sir, I appreciate the conversation as always. Thank you very, very much. Uh, something I respect about you that I really, really enjoy is that we have these tools and they're important tools. And then those tools interface with reality. And at times some of those tools need to be augmented or shifted so that when interfacing with that reality, uh, we can get further faster, or it can have deeper meaning with that individual who's sitting in front of us. And so I love that you have that theoretical background and and that wisdom. And I love the fact that you're experimenting with how these concepts and these tools interface with humans and that experience that that space for me is fascinating. I absolutely love it. I really do.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Yeah. And, you know, just a last example is that there are some polarities, like consistency and flexibility, that if someone's doing anything that's about regulations, they're giving you know, they're giving building permits, it's universally applicable. And if that polarity map is up on the wall in front of them, they will temporarily think at a higher level than they would on their own. That's scaffolding. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Scott Allen:

Exactly.

Dr. Joel Rothaizer:

Okay, be well. You too.

Scott Allen:

Okay, before we get to my summary of that episode, I have a special guest, and this is Dr. Marcy Levy Shankman. And we have been colleagues, co-authors, friends since probably like 2006, back in the day, back in 06. She is helping with ILA's dialogue lab. And so, Marcy, tell listeners a little bit about this opportunity and how they can get involved, how they can get engaged. New Orleans in January sounds pretty good to me. Tell us a little bit more.

Marcy Shankman:

So, Scott, thanks for asking me to talk a little bit about the dialogue lab. This is a really exciting experience. It's only offered every other year. We're going to be in New Orleans, as you said. So, this three-day dialogue lab, which is going to be in New Orleans, is focused on dialogue as a form of leadership. So that means we're not going to have panels, we're not going to have workshops, we're not going to have presentations. What we're going to have is true deep engagement. So, individuals will sponsor inquiry sessions, and those individuals are the participants themselves. And if you're interested in attending the dialogue lab, you can come and participate as a full-fledged member of the community. This is a full-on, co-created learning community. And if you want to bump up your level of engagement, then you can propose a topic to discuss. And the proposal is simply a question. And that's what we call our inquiry sessions. We're also going to take advantage of being in New Orleans, which means we're going to have this experience grounded in music, food, and civic life. And we'll have opportunities to engage with members of the New Orleans community. So we think this is the right time for this gathering. Dialogue's needed in this time of polarization, of complexity, and of disconnection. And the dialogue lab is uh an antidote of sorts to that. We want people to come who are interested in expressing their curiosity, who have courage to ask deep questions, practice deep listening, express their vulnerability. Expertise is not a requirement, a growth mindset is. So we're really excited to invite your listeners to apply to participate. The gathering is three days, as I mentioned earlier, January 30th to February 1st of 2026. And all who are interested in leadership are invited to attend.

Scott Allen:

Awesome. And I what I love in there is your you mentioned the opportunity to practice. And we can practice listening and practice engaging and practice discernment and truly being present and mindful. Absolutely love it. So for listeners, there is all kinds of information in the show notes. So please feel free to check that out there. And you know what, Marcy, thank you so much for being a part of the leadership team that's putting this on. And thanks so much for stopping by today. I hope it goes awesome.

Marcy Shankman:

Thanks, Scott.

Scott Allen:

Okay. I don't know what to say that I haven't already said in these last couple episodes. Dr. Joel, so thankful for you. Thankful for your wisdom. Thankful for the reality that uh you're taking a lot of these theories and seeing how they interface with human beings. Loved that from our first conversation, incoming humans. So a lot of times some of these things make a lot of sense, and then people make sense of them, and there's an opportunity for us to adjust and tweak. And Joel, I think, said, you know, he's on 3.0 of how he's thinking about polarities and the power of that activity when helping others see some of the dynamics at play. Practical wisdom for me. Don't just sit in a room and think about it, design it, take it out, try it out, see how people take it in, what makes sense, tweak, learn. And it's that process of continual growth, continual development, that iteration. And then hopefully we are better preparing people to serve in formal and informal leadership roles. For me, that's the goal. Everyone, as always, thanks for checking in. Take care. Be well.