Nate’s Notes 217: The Best Leaders Are Tough & Kind | Cincinnati Business School Dean Marianne Lewis on Leadership Paradoxes

I love Marianne’s insight that the best leaders are not tough or kind, but rather both.  Toughness and kindness are not opposite ends of a spectrum but rather two sides of the same coin. And any leader who pushes too hard on one, while ignoring the other, will not reach their potential.

And I thought it was especially interesting to hear about the creative geniuses who also appreciated tension and paradoxes: motion vs rest, particle vs wave, harmony vs discord, light vs. dark, life vs death. The magic is in the tension.

And when it comes to leadership the best leaders are both tough and kind.

It’s a simple idea. Please take it seriously.

Marianne Lewis Bio:

Marianne Lewis is dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Business, and she previously served as dean of Bayes Business School at City, University of London. Marianne researches organizational paradoxes, including the tensions surrounding leadership and innovation. She has been recognized among the world’s most-cited researchers in her field, having won numerous academic awards, and her work also appears in media outlets, such as Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Newsweek. Her latest book, Both/And Thinking is published by Harvard Business School Press.