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

Navigating Leadership Polarities with Cathy Carroll

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 292

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Cathy Carroll learned about family business leadership the best way you can – by leading her family business. After a twenty-year corporate career, she left United Airlines to lead her father’s business and instantly recognized a difference between leadership in a family business vs leadership in a large corporation.  

Founder and President of Legacy Onward, Inc., Cathy Carroll is a family business leadership coach and author of Hug of War: How to Lead a Family Business With both Love and Logic. She also trains advisors serving in family enterprises, as well as coaches who maintain their credentials with the International Coaching Federation.

Cathy earned certificates in both Leadership Coaching and Executive Facilitation at Georgetown University, an MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a BA at Boston College.  She is also a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) in the ICF.

An active member of the community, Cathy currently serves as Vice-Chair the Board of the Purposeful Planning Institute and co-founder & Treasurer of A Leg To Stand On which provides prosthetic limbs to children in developing countries. 

A Few Quotes From This Episode

  • “I have to get comfortable with disappointing people. That’s my growth edge as a leader.”
  • “A polarity is like breathing — you can't inhale without exhaling. In leadership, you need both.”
  • “An overused strength becomes your biggest liability.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode 

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

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 perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.


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Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00 

Okay, everybody, welcome back to Practical Wisdom for Leaders. We have a returning guest today. The first time she was on, I had not yet read her book. And then I didn't read the book, I listened to the book. But she reads the book, and she's got a great voice, and she tells wonderful stories. So, I would highly recommend the audiobook if you choose to learn that way. Cathy Carroll, ‘Hug of War.’ And it's this book that really explores the dynamics of family business, and I think, in my mind, really any business. I think a lot of the concepts directly apply to the work of leadership. And she just does this beautiful job of situating us in that context. But so much of what we're going to talk about today really nicely translates to businesses of all types, but just in a wonderful book. Cathy, I'm so thankful that you're back with me today. So, thank you and welcome.

 

Cathy Carroll  0:55 

Thank you. It's great to be back, Scott. 

 

Scott Allen  0:57 

I reached out to you, I think, randomly one afternoon, and I just said, “Hey, I'm listening, and I love it.” And you wrote me back and said, “Thank you.” And then I was listening to a specific chapter on polarities, and we touched on polarities just a little bit last time. So, for listeners, pause now, go back. Listen to our first episode, y. You'll see Cathy's full bio. She grew up in a family-owned business. She ran a family-owned business. She worked in corporate America. Number of experiences. And she is now an author and she does consulting work. But listen to that episode. Push pause right now, and then you're going to pick up with part two here. And we talked a little bit last time about polarities. And so, I got to that chapter in your book. And again, this podcast amazes me. This whole process, Cathy, of going through a PhD, going through, then teaching for 18 years, studying, writing, discussing leader development, living, drinking it. And I'm constantly kind of stumbling upon these new topics that… I just heard of Barry Johnson and his work, but I just never really explored it. And as I learn more and more, and especially listening to your chapter, this is just a critical topic. So, that's where I want to go. And I know you have some stories, and I know you have some polarities or tensions, but maybe prop up the topic a little bit and then we'll jump in. Does that sound good?

 

Cathy Carroll  2:24 

Sounds great. Yeah. And I couldn't agree with you more that this is such an emergent and important part of leadership, and it is going to continue to manifest more and more in the world. So, I'm honored to share the elements of, it's chapter nine from ‘Hug of War.’ It opens with 10 polarity principles. And what I thought I'd do, Scott, is tell some stories and then describe the principles that are exemplified by the story. And I've got four stories. Does that sound like a good plan?

 

Scott Allen  2:52 

Awesome. Yes, I'm just going to sit back and listen. 

 

Cathy Carroll  2:56 

Okay. Sounds good, but I'll pause between my stories. By the way, all these stories are true. These are real clients. To be honest, I didn't lean so much on the family business side of this just because this is bigger than family business, but I do have one family business story. But the first story is Peter. He's an entrepreneur. His business is about 15 years old, and this year he's going to cross the $1 billion revenue mark, which is just something he's thrilled and ecstatic about, and I couldn't be happier for him. And he is an idea monkey. He's constantly thinking of new ideas, and it's got his leadership team in a real whiplash because they go into meetings and he's, “This idea, and this idea, and this idea,” and they're just trying to execute on all of the strategy that he keeps introducing over and over. So, they're really having a hard time holding the tension of strategy and execution because he gets bored to death with anything that is execution related. He's just, “Do it, do it, do it.” But his gift for strategy has become a strength overused because it's derailing the team. So, I introduced that story because this is sort of a foundational understanding of polarities. Let me pause and just explain what a polarity is. A polarity is a set of interdependent opposites that need each other to exist. Sort of like an inhale and an exhale, they define each other. An inhale doesn't exist without an exhale, and vice versa. Well, in leadership, strategy and execution are a core polarity. You can't lead a business with only strategy because you could think about ideas all day long and not get anything done. And frankly, you can't lead a business with only execution because you have no idea where you're going. So, these two things need each other to exist. And what's fascinating about polarities is, once you start to see them, you can't not see them anymore. And they are indestructible. They can't be solved. You can't say, “Should I strategize or should I execute?” You need to do both. And so, the shorthand version of polarity thinking is both-and thinking, and it undermines the deeply human tendency to think in terms of ‘either or.’ We're so wired for ‘either or,’ and it takes a little while for our brains to adjust to this new concept of both-and. So, principle number one: Polarities cannot be solved, they must be managed. Principle number two: Both poles in a polarity tension are necessary over time. Neither pole alone is sufficient to create and sustain high performance. And polarity principle number three: An over-focus on one pole while neglecting the other will guarantee the overuse of the preferred pole.

 

Scott Allen  5:36 

Okay. So, that is awesome. Let me give you an example, just to make sure, and maybe listeners, it could be helpful for them. CEO of Korn Ferry, and this was in the last couple of years, I think, suggested that the work of leaders is to perform and transform. So, this is another potential example, and I thought it was beautifully phrased. These leaders, if I'm Microsoft right now, or Google, we see Google struggling a little bit with this of how do we perform and really ensure that we maintain our level of success? And, in the world of LLMs, which I really don't Google things anymore, I go to the LLM, I go to ChatGPT to find out what I need. I don't say, “Give me a 10-day itinerary for Switzerland,” and see what I sift through Google, I go get one from ChatGPT. And so, they're navigating this tension of perform and transform. And if we focus on any one of those, then it seems to me that would align with your first three. Is that accurate?

 

Cathy Carroll  6:34 

It sounds like, and I love how it rhymes. It does. Yeah, it does because performing is great, and there's an opportunity to transform. And if you're only performing, you're missing the chance to transform. And if you transform and you don't perform, who knows where you're going to end? It's sort of like that idea monkey challenge that you have. So, I think it is a beautiful description of a polarity. 

 

Scott Allen  6:58 

Yeah. If we were to go to New York, for instance, for a moment, you have like a Kodak, which really struggled with that tension. They were performing, but the business was based on paper, and so they couldn't transform into a new version of themselves. Or you have an IBM, which was trying really hard to transform, but I think they've never really, at least in recent times, as I'm aware, gotten back to that level of performance where they were.

 

Cathy Carroll  7:23 

It's that tradition innovation tension. And you know who did it really well, in my opinion? Is Netflix. Netflix had the CD in the mail. Remember back in the day? You used to get a CD in the mail, or a DVD. Maybe not a CD, a DVD in the mail. And it was a big deal when they said they're going to move on to streaming, and, “This is the end of Netflix, they'll never come back.” And now, look at Netflix. Credit to them. They were able to honor the tradition and innovate, given the new technologies that exist.

 

Scott Allen  7:52 

Well, and along that story, there's a fascinating documentary on Netflix about the last Blockbuster, and Blockbuster twice had an opportunity to buy Netflix.

 

Cathy Carroll  8:05 

Fascinating. I didn't know that. Wow. And Blockbuster did not innovate. Yeah, they missed out. 

 

Scott Allen  8:14 

Awesome. Okay. So, story two. 

 

Cathy Carroll  8:17 

Story two. So, this is a colleague of mine, Janine, she was really good at saying yes. She was like, “Yeah, okay, sure.” And she lost control of her life because she said yes to everybody else, and she stopped saying yes to herself. She wanted to be known as nice. In all honesty, she had an identity as a pageant, a contestant when she was younger, and she kind of knew the brand of pageant contestants could be a little snarky. So, she didn't want to be known as beautiful and mean, she wanted to be known as nice. So, she developed this identity around being really nice, but it got really problematic. After she got married, her husband was frustrated that she was always prioritizing other people. They had a child, it got too much, and she said, “That is it, I am drawing boundaries.” And so, she got really good at saying no, and she drew very good boundaries. She prioritized her life, but it happened at the expense of connection to others. She was so good at saying no that she really lost connection to her friends, she lost connection to her colleagues, and it really was undermining the quality of her life. So, as we worked together, she recognized that she was managing this tension between saying yes, and saying no, and she said, “I'm going to find the middle ground.” And I said, “Okay, that's great if you find the middle ground, but it's sort of like sitting in the middle of a seesaw and not inhaling or exhaling but just sort of holding your breath. I'm not sure that's really what you want.” She was like, “Oh my gosh.” So, our work was actually building an identity around both saying yes and saying no. Having the gracious, agreeable, desirable way to be in accommodating relationship with people and drawing boundaries when it was appropriate. It was a really good engagement. And she expanded her identity from one to another, and then to include both. So, here are the two principles. When we experience the overuse of one pole, we tend to see the benefits of the other pole as the solution, so we swing to that other pole and expose ourselves to it's overuses. And then, the next one is, we all have poll preferences, and they're typically born from an aversion to the overuse of the opposite pole.

 

Scott Allen  10:26 

And you tell a story in the book about you and your father, would you just touch on that really quickly? Is that an appropriate example right now to kind of draw upon in yourself?

 

Cathy Carroll  10:37 

Yeah, absolutely. My fourth story is more about me, but I'll touch on this. Yeah, I honestly built my identity around being not him. My father was very disruptive as a child. He loved to spend money, and he was command and control, dominant father in our family. And I didn't like being the kid of that because, in my experience, he was in the overuse of all of those now that I see his strengths. When I was a kid, when I saw disruption, I saw chaos; when I saw spending, I saw inefficient and inappropriate use of funds; when I saw the dominant leadership, I felt stifled. So, I built my identity as a saver, as a servant leader, and as a stabilizer. So, my value in the world was defined by, “I'm going to do these things because that is wrong. That is bad.” And it took me a long time to realize that there's actually great value and disruption and goodness. You cannot save your way to profitability. I ran the risk of running a very complacent, stable organization that didn't innovate, didn't do anything exciting. And servant leadership has its strengths, but, man, I think very often about these two rope companies that were competitors. We owned both of them. They were very, very different, and they would each ask me to do the opposite. And as a servant leader, I wanted to enable both of those because they were both good, they were just different. And I had to work on finding my true north as a leader, and it was hard to do. So, servant leadership, in my opinion, has its great strengths and some limitations. It's not the end-all and be-all. 

 

Scott Allen  12:15 

Oh, 100%. But I think, to your point, we can overorient because, of course, there are situations where being a servant leader isn't the appropriate intervention, isn't the appropriate mindset. And it's just not. But I think if we blindly, back to kind of the struggles we as humans have of this dualistic framing at times of, “Well, I'm always a servant leader, that's always the best,” is it though?

 

Cathy Carroll  12:41 

The command and the control. If you got hit by a bus, I'm not going to gather a group and say, “All right, what do we think we should do? Let's ideate about…” No, I'm going to say, “You CPR, you 911.” Command and control is appropriate in an emergency. It's not very trendy right now, but it is actually an important leadership skill, in my opinion. 

 

Scott Allen  12:59

100%. 

 

Cathy Carroll  13:00

Story three, Isaac and Heath. These are first cousins that built out their grandfather's CPG business. It's a well-known family brand. They're at about half a billion dollars in annual revenue, and they were both approaching their mid-60s. They traditionally had reinvested profits. They took modest W2 salaries and reinvested all their profits, which is why they had such an incredibly successful business. And they had recently renegotiated their shareholder agreement. For the shareholder agreement, they agreed on a relatively low valuation of the business for insurance purposes, in case one died and the other had to buy the other one out. And they also engaged a third-party evaluator to value the business. And it came out to be very high. So, it was a big gap between this low valuation and this high valuation. So, one of the cousins, Isaac, really wanted to plow profits back into the business because he had a child who wanted to take over leadership of the family business. So, he wanted to continue into the fourth generation. His cousin, Heath, however, wanted to sell to a strategic because he was done. He had worked his career. He had children, but they weren't interested in the business and he was like, “You know what? It's time.” And so Heath's motivation, “It's time for me to give back to the community. I really want to take the return on my equity, and my investment, and my sweat, and blood, sweat and tears, and I want to give it to community. I'm going to retire in comfort.” And his cousin, Isaac, was like, “We need to continue growing this business. I've got a child who wants to take over, and I want to leverage their talent and I want to continue our family legacy.” They both were really fond of the family legacy. In fact, Heath, interestingly, was the one who had the family name in his last name, and Isaac didn't. They were both conflict-avoidant. So, that's the setup. And they were in a circular fight over and over and over about whether they sell or whether they keep, whether they sell and whether they keep. And what they ended up doing is arguing the diagonals. And here's what I mean. I'm going to have to draw a visual description. Imagine you've got a big plus sign. And on one end of the plus sign, you have the pole of the polarity, invest. On the other side, you've got the pole harvest, so you've got invest and harvest on either end of the pole. And then, above invest, you've got some benefits, and they might be growing fast, continuing the legacy. And then underneath invest, on the lower left corner, you've got the overuses of invest. So, you can't help the community. You're rich on paper, but after decades of W2, you can't really retire on anything substantial. On the other side, on the right side, above harvest, you've got all the benefits of harvest, like, “We can give back to the community. I can retire in comfort.” And then, the lower right, you've got the overuses of harvest, which, “You lose connection to the family legacy if we sell the business, and we have no connection to the rising generation.” So, what happened is Isaac argued the upsides, the upper left corner of invest, and the lower left corner, overuses of harvest. So, he was arguing this diagonal. His cousin Heath was arguing the upsides of harvest and the overuses of invest, the other diagonal. And they just argued the diagonals over and over and over because they were both right. Both diagonals were true, and that's what's so vexing about these polarities is that everyone is right. If you think about Congress, this is what we do in Congress. We argue the diagonals about the benefits of liberal and the overuses of conservative, and then the other ones argue the benefits of conservative and the overuses of liberal. Okay. This introduces two more polarity principles. First one, arguing the diagonals puts force against force because both poles are right. Each diagonal point of view is correct, but, on its own, incomplete. And then the second one is to leverage the ongoing tension of any polarity, supplement ‘either or’ thinking with both. And I'll say how they did that in a moment.

 

Scott Allen  17:03 

And I love hearing you kind of describe arguing the diagonals again because it's a beautiful visual of common scenarios we get in interpersonal relationships, in any organizational life, faith-based organizations. And so, I love the description. Talk about how they unraveled from this, how we helped them move off of the diagonals and to a place where we can find some common ground. 

 

Cathy Carroll  17:33 

So, they were stuck in this, “Should we continue to invest in the business, or should we sell?” And, again, it was an ‘either or’ question. And once they framed it as a polarity, they started to ask themselves different questions. They had identified the benefits of both poles, and so they said, “All right. Well, how can we continue our grandfather's legacy, and how can we give back to the community, and how can we leverage the talent in the rising generation, and how can we retire in comfort?” And what they came to realize is there's an opportunity for Isaac to buy Heath out. The tension that then became the real issue was they had this difference in valuation. Isaac was very happy to buy out his cousin at the very low valuation in the shareholder agreement; his cousin, Heath, was very happy to sell at the high valuation, which was what the marketplace… So, they had to spend quite a bit of time negotiating a reasonable amount that made both cousins feel respected, and they did. And they had a very successful transition. One cousin bought out the other, and everyone got what they wanted, which is a real successful outcome. 

 

Scott Allen  18:45 

Yeah. But just like in improv, where we have ‘yes and’ it keeps possibilities open, it keeps us in a place of thinking and solutions, and that dualistic or binary thinking, ‘either or’ thinking, it shuts down. It's so fascinating. 

 

Cathy Carroll  18:59 

Yeah, it is. And it's so hard to change our brains. I've gotten to the point now where anytime I hear the word ‘or,’ I just pause and say, “Wait, is this truly an ‘either or’ because there are ‘either ors’?” Problems are often an ‘either or,’ question. Polarities, no. And so, whenever I hear ‘or,’ I'm constantly thinking, “Hey, is there a ‘both and’ here that we haven't even considered?” And it's shocking to me how often there is. 

 

Scott Allen  19:21

Wow. Okay, story four. 

 

Cathy Carroll  19:23

All right. Here we go, rounding it out. This is actually my story. So, I am the vice chair of a board of a nonprofit that I'm crazy about, and I've been admiring the chair for several months here. She takes very clear, strong, decisive action. She listens to people before she makes a decision, but then she makes the right call, in her opinion, and I often agree. She's universally respected by the board. She's not liked by everybody on the board, but she is universally respected, and I will be stepping into that chair role in January. So, I am exquisitely sensitive to her leadership style because her ability to be decisive when you've got a lot of competing opinions and perspectives has been my growth edge. And it's been my growth edge for a long time because I've built my identity around being not my dad. My dad's very disagreeable, not friendly. So, I have built this identity about being agreeable, and kind, and accommodating. So, I really struggle to find that true north when I've got a lot of people who have different opinions because my inclination is to want to please these other people. In the whole fight, flight, freeze, fun, I am a total fauna, and I've known it for a long time. This is not new information to me, and I'm so exquisitely sensitive to this issue because I know I will be pushed into this zone of growth very, very soon. In fact, my husband, he knows this much about me. We joke. I don't know if you've ever watched that Key and Peele skit where they've got Obama and then they've got Luther, his anger translator. Oh, it's hilarious. If you haven't seen it, anyone who's listening, go find Key and Peele and look for ‘Luther the anger translator.’ It is absolutely hilarious. My husband is my anger translator because he'll stand up for me in a way that I won't. So, unlike Janine, I did not swing when I realized that I was in the overuse of this agreeableness; I did not swing to the other direction. No, I clung to my desire to be agreeable because I'm terrified of being like my father. My aversion to the overuse of his gift for disruption and disagreeableness is such a strong aversion that I really double click and hang on to the agreeable side. And so, my leadership is going to have to get comfortable with the discomfort of letting people down, of disappointing other people, and that's going to be a really acute, painful point. And so, this is the final three polarity principles I want to introduce. Strong pull preferences are frequently connected to a strength or identity. Harmonizing polls, or ‘both and’ thinking, may necessitate facing your fears. I'm going to have to face some really uncomfortable fears when I step into this role, and I'm ready for the task and prepared for it. It's going to push my buttons. 

 

Scott Allen 22:16  

Oh, I love it.

 

Cathy Carroll  23:04  

Yeah. And then the last one is, the greater the desire for the benefits of one pole, the greater the tolerance for its overuses because these overusers are considered less bad than the overuses of the other pole. So, I am more willing to tolerate the overuses of being accommodating and agreeable because I think the overuses of being disagreeable are worse. That makes sense?

 

Scott Allen  22:41 

Yeah. Well, you're moving into this. It's so admirable, it's inspiring. You're moving into this role. You're entering it knowing there's intentionality, there's going to be an opportunity for practice. And you're seeing this, and I have great respect for that. Now, speaking of the word respect, you mentioned ‘liked and respected.’ Can we be both?

 

Cathy Carroll  23:04 

Absolutely.

 

Scott Allen  23:07 

Yes. I think you're going to be navigating that space of being liked and respected. And how do we, in some cases, thread that needle? And, of course, there's going to be individuals, at times, where we're not in harmony, and there's going to be a different back to your seesaw metaphor. But, in a general sense, I think you can come out of that being liked and respected.

 

Cathy Carroll  23:21

Wholeheartedly agree. 

 

Scott Allen  23:22

Yeah. And I always hated that interview question. I think I didn't get a job once because I said, “Both.” The person said, “No, it should always be liked. It should always be respected.” And that was kind of their frame, but I said I think you probably can be both. But I love the fact that you're walking into this experience with a mindset of, “Okay, I'm going to practice, and I'm going to push on this growth edge, and pay very close attention to my own pole at times, and pushing back on that when it's appropriate, and just being intentional about how we're intervening.”

 

Cathy Carroll  24:04 

Well, as an Enneagram 9, disharmony is not a comfortable place for me. And I've gotten really good at engaging in constructive conflict. I have built my skills, and I see the value of engaging in conflict. So, I'm no longer anxious about conflict, I'm kind of actually excited about it now. I think we get the better ideas when we engage in constructive conflict, so I'm excited about that. The other thing that I'm doing intentionally is, as I step into the role, I'm going to tell this board who I've now worked with now for quite a while, “Look, this is going to be a growing edge for me, and it's going to make me uncomfortable, but I'd like you to hold me accountable. So, when you see me tempted to capitulate to someone else's idea because I want to please them, bring it to my attention because this is a growth edge for me and I'm going to really be trying, and consciously, to lead with a stronger true north that is about the needs of the organization and not about placating the emotional needs of people around me.” 

 

Scott Allen  24:57 

Wow. Bam. That’s the only thing I can say. (Laughs) Well, okay, power-packed episode just locked in. I love it. As we begin to wind down our time together today, what's caught your attention recently? What have you been reading? What have you been listening to? Again, it could have something to do with what we just discussed, it could have nothing to do with it. But what might listeners be interested in?

 

Cathy Carroll  25:22 

This has absolutely nothing to do with what we've discussed. I have been reading an utterly delightful book. The title is ‘Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm.’ The author is Stephen Harrod Buhner, I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name. But it is such a witty, clever book. It is a delightful read. And it's about how we humans think we are the most intelligent species on the planet, and we have this sort of apex ideal that, “Oh, we have opposable thumbs, therefore we must be so much more. We have the ability to reason, we can be so much smarter.” But he goes into such exquisitely beautiful detail about the organisms and plants that have so much innate intelligence that we as humans don't even recognize, or appreciate, or see. And I'm only partially through the book, and I am loving every minute of it. 

 

Scott Allen  26:14

Oh, is it fiction or nonfiction? 

 

Cathy Carroll  26:16

It would be, I think, technically, non-fiction. It's not a story at all, and it's just so much fun to read. It's witty. The way he describes things, I giggle throughout the entire book. It's just so fun.

 

Scott Allen  26:28 

You look at a tardigrade, or sometimes they're called a water bear, where you can freeze these things. You can shoot them into space. You can shoot them out of guns, and they live. The superpowers of this little organism called the tardigrade. I imagine you will stumble upon the tardigrade in this book because it just has these superpowers. You can dry it out, and then, 10 years later, put water on it, and it will come alive again. So, I love what you're saying because, whether it's, what is it? The blue whale lives 400 years, or just some of the superpowers of some of these organisms, it's just not to be believed. And, yes, so cool.

 

Cathy Carroll  27:10 

It's humbling. It's humbling and a reminder of how, as humans, we really need to stay humble.

 

Scott Allen  27:17 

I love your hack. Every time I hear ‘or,’ now, it's a ping for me to… Because, yes, we have to stay humble because we are limited, we are limited, we are limited. Cathy, so excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you for coming back. Thank you for helping us better understand this place of polarities. I think the four stories you shared were just incredible. They were awesome. They really help us make sense. Listeners, buy this book, download the audiobook, and tap into Cathy's wisdom because it's there and it's awesome. And, you know what? I look forward to our next conversation.

 

 

[End Of Recording]