Counterintuitive Leadership — Start Messy, Grow Faster

Most leaders wait for clarity before they act.

But what if that’s the very thing holding you back?

In this episode, Nathan, Brian, and Dr. Linda explore counterintuitive leadership—why growth often requires starting before you feel ready, unlearning old habits, and trusting that action creates clarity.

Quote

“Movement creates momentum. Momentum builds confidence.”

Reflection

What’s one small step you could take this week—before you feel ready?

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. To learn more about what we do, you can click the link in the show notes or visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg, and today on the show, we are continuing a conversation that Brian and Linda recently had with a group of executives, one that centers on a leadership reality that many teams are facing right now. Now, in times of disruption and uncertainty, leaders often feel pressure to wait, to wait for clarity, certainty, or confidence before acting. But leadership growth doesn't always work that way. Maybe it rarely works that way. What feels awkward, uncomfortable, or even risky at first can actually become easier and accelerate once leaders begin. Now, Linda and Brian use the metaphor of unfolding in origami crane. Early on, the folds feel confusing and counterintuitive. You can't yet see form, but as you stay with it, the shape emerges, confidence grows, and momentum builds. Today's conversation is about counterintuition, the courage to begin before things maybe feel clear, the patience to unlearn habits that no longer serve us, and the trust that movement, even messy movement, creates the clarity that leaders are often waiting for. This is the Leadership Vision Podcast. Enjoy. Brian and Linda, welcome back to the Leadership Vision Podcast. Why does leadership today require doing things that feel so uncomfortable at first? And maybe it always has felt that way. But what is it about this topic of counterintuition that you're trying to challenge us with?

SPEAKER_02 1:49

This challenge arose from a very interesting conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

And this was a conversation that was held with the CEO, and she was gathering her executive leaders and board together. And her need, which was a recurring theme month to month, was the need to accelerate. Accelerate the way they were doing business, accelerate innovation, accelerate relationships. And the reason why is because she had this clear vision and clear goals. As we began to talk, it became very clear to Linda and I that many executives that we talked to, they have the same concern. How do we accelerate learning about each other? Accelerate how we navigate change and accelerate and just fill in the blank. And what we discovered is that in order to accelerate in ways to meet the demands of what's new, we need to think counterintuitively on how it is that we grow together as a team, how we take risks together as a team, and most importantly, how to think counterintuitively. Meaning the ways that brought us here are probably not necessarily the ways that are going to get us to the future. So to accelerate, how is it that we use counterintuition to get us to that next place?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

So here's a good example.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Please.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Great.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Gold.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Or he would just say, Well, we'll run faster. And the intuitive response is we'll just go faster. And I thought, no, listen, I'm asking about mechanics and I'm asking about details and I'm asking about pace. What to wear? Yeah. So there were there were well, I didn't ask what to wear, but in in those places, the intuitive response to acceleration is to just do more of the same thing. To to how do you accelerate a car? You step on the gas, you pedal faster, you you do all the things that create the kind of acceleration that you want. But with change and challenges that are being faced in the workplace right now, it is not just doing more of the same thing. We all know that that is the definition of insanity. And we began to interrupt the thinking with some counterintuition and counterintuitive moves.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

So, Linda, if we think about this counterintuition idea and your desire to become a faster runner, I myself had that desire, and there's things that I realized that I was doing wrong, and so I had to almost unlearn how to do that. One of those things was I would go out and do every run like I was racing. And one of the counterintuitive approaches was you want to do most of your runs at a pretty slow pace, and that helps you get faster. So I had to unlearn, I had to kind of get rid of what no longer was working. Why is that so hard for people to do? Like running, leading, it's really hard to unlearn habits, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Yes, because they became habits for a reason. We call them habits for a reason.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

They didn't work. But yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Our brain loves to find some of the habits. We as much as our brains like surprise and novelty, there is this habitual ritual way that we show up. So we assume that if we just keep doing what we're doing, refining it a little bit, that we'll get new and different results. And so what I hear for you, Nathan, is you had to unlearn a complete mindset or unlearn a different way of being and showing up in the world.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Do you see any common leadership habits, we'll call them, that leaders are struggling to unlearn right now in this sort of post-pandemic, post-whatever world that we're living in?

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, so many.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Most of them. Could we narrow it leaders or most of them habits or two? Most of them leaders unlearn most of them habits.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But is there like, yeah, like a philosophy or something that's like, oh yeah, this particular author's ideas were really in, but not anymore. Let's unlearn all that.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

I believe that when leaders are facing some type of counterintuitive approach, just in that equation is the necessity to unlearn something. And depending on what your desired outcome is, will determine what is needed to be unlearned. I also think that leaders get stuck in some of the ways that they relate to their people. Sometimes the history of a leader, the what brought me here, is something that that individual is going to tend to repeat because it is known. Ways of how they think of themselves as a leader. Sometimes the role of a leader is to be the one that is out front, but counterintuitively, the situation may then require to be a leader alongside your team members or a leader stabilizing someone from behind. And so there's something about thinking about your role and relationship. And I also want to bring up this idea that we may need to unlearn the ways that we act politically, what kinds of relationships that that we forge and and why.

Starting Messy Without Breaking Trust

SPEAKER_00 7:56

A very tangible example of some of the patterns to unlearn could be meeting cadence or the kind of meetings that you're having. Where it's like, oh, well, we need more time to talk about it, so we'll just add another half hour. Or you could have practice a little more uh hygiene in your meetings and hygiene. And that's a good clean it up a little bit, or make it focused, or make sure people are prepared, or they're coming with questions, or they're coming with curiosity, or there's a different expectation that is placed on a okay, these are the three questions I'm supposed to ask you, and people just once again get in routine, and the intuition says just make more of those meetings and have less think time or focus time, and that's one of the ways that we are like, well, what what part of those do you want to try again? Or what do you want to unlearn in order to try something new?

SPEAKER_01 8:55

One of the counterintuitive approaches that you've talked about is starting messy. And the idea that leaders need to jump in and do stuff before everything is clear, before everything is like laid out before them. What does that look like? We're not talking about like some cowboy just jumping in and going crazy with stuff. Like, what does that actually look like without tanking things? Oh my gosh. Um What does that mean? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

What it doesn't mean is you dump everything out from the cupboards and then just live in a mess.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Actually, I was actually thinking that. Yeah. I was actually thinking about this is not to go out like when I first met you. Dumping your purse out?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Oh, I dump out my purse. Yeah. To order everything. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Because my approach to cleaning out your purse is just take out what's not necessary. And then your approach to empty cleaning your purse is to dump it all out on the bed.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Okay, but what does it mean organizationally?

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Starting messy means oftentimes the first few steps may feel slippery. The the first few attempts may not work the way you want. I mean, you're trying to maybe take something apart and you put it back together, there are more pieces there than you thought. There's something about the process that feels messy, meaning it's just it's not familiar. It's it's not known. It is a new type of practice. And when you begin something in a counterintuitive way, expect it to not go as you planned. And you may need to then reorganize or clean up the way you're thinking and feeling your way into the new situation.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Because starting messy is the willingness to act before clarity arrives. You're some the you know, the leaders that we work with are high expectation, really driven, excited about what they are doing, or trying, or ways that they are being in the world. And so they want to have perfect knowledge, perfect wisdom. Totally. And we're just saying, just try it. Yeah, just try something, just try it, run an experiment. Starting messy is clarity is not gonna arrive until you get into motion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

And starting messy is not a judgment on who you are as a professional. Trust the process. Because there are many people that we know that are afraid to think counterintuitively because they're afraid of what the mess might say about them. And like any mess in the kitchen, it can be cleaned up and everything's gonna be back to where it was.

Cognitive Flexibility In Real Meetings

SPEAKER_01 11:31

You know, it sounds like you're talking about is cognitive flexibility, which I think you know, that's the ability to like shift perspectives, adapt strategies. By way of an example, can you maybe talk about a leader who has successfully adapted their style in this kind of counterintuitive, unlearning sort of a way?

SPEAKER_02 11:51

I'm working with an executive and this individual is really demonstrating cognitive flexibility, which starts with a new way of thinking or simply being in conversations that are unlike the conversations you normally have. And there's a practice to cognitive flexibility at the beginning of understanding how plastic your mind and your imaginations and your emotions are before you begin to apply what you're learning through that practice. I believe that some people try to think new ways while they're in the midst of the way. And cognitive flexibility is an invitation to begin to think beyond what you normally do. Think more creatively than you normally do before you get in the situation because it's in this ability to have a conversation and in dialogue with someone where you realize how you can actually be more flexible in the way that you think and problem solve and communicate than you actually imagine. We are more adaptable than we believe we are, and cognitive flexibility is a way of thinking of how you navigate counterintuition.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Cognitive flexibility is not always being extrovertedly so, meaning cognitive flexibility for some of the clients that we're working with. We invite them to sit on their hands in their next one-to-one meeting that they host and do a lot more listening than they do talking. And the the whole sitting on your hands piece is a reminder to them to really begin to listen to what is being said, listen to what's not being said, not trying to problem solve and fix everyone's issue, but creating the kind of space that perhaps their one of their team members needs to even find the the their own answers inside them. It takes some of the pressure off the leader, it takes some of the pressure off of the trying to be so cognitively flexible for someone else that they lose the cognitive flexibility of learning the new habits so that they can lead in new ways.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

And oftentimes it isn't as difficult as one would imagine because just the term cognitive flexibility could make some people shudder about how they may have to rethink everything. And all we're asking is an awareness that as we're moving in a direction towards an objective or towards some specific goal, even towards the end of a meeting or difficult conversation, cognitive flexibility is just an awareness that there is more than one lane to get there. And sometimes that flexibility is simply shifting to another lane or maybe just two lanes over, which and that mentality lowers the risk for us to be able to think in a different way or just take a little bit different angle on something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

And that kind of flexibility opens up pathways and different ways to understand, so that all of a sudden the leaders will say, Oh, we could step on the gas and go that way. That acceleration will happen now that I've had a little bit more time to focus, reflect, and notice so that I can.

How To Measure Progress In Ambiguity

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah, it sounds like it's really about being intentional with experimentation. Like I'm gonna do this, try this, see what happens, try that. One of the things I like about running is that you have some very real markers of whether or not I'm doing a good job. So you can experiment with all kinds of things and know pretty quickly, yes, this is working, no, this is not working. In this sort of counterintuitive ambiguity, what are maybe some examples of how leaders can measure their progress? Whether they know this little experiment is the right way to go when there's so much ambiguity and like a true like success marker not might not come for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Right. That long-term success marker may not come right away. Yeah, but new ways of doing things will come right away. So you you can measure that. Like we're trying something new. What are you trying new? Who are you asking for help from? That's another way to market. Just ask people to navigate the types of progress that they're making and not tell them what progress you're actually looking for and just watching what they're doing because counterintuitive thinking leads to counterintuitive navigating. And when people just begin to observe what resources they're tapping into, who they're asking for help, how it is that they're progressing, sometimes the measurement is also counterintuitive. And sometimes we need to ask our people how it is that they're seeing themselves change, and that in and of itself is the measurement we're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

And the demands for acceleration are beyond measure now. So we have also worked with clients where their competitors have hit the gas and gone around them that have found the innovative breakthrough. And so, yes, it takes time. We are trying to find a way to amplify, to accelerate the kind of innovative breakthrough, and and the common denominator has been leaders that are willing to make counterintuitive moves.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

I like that. In closing, something that I think is important to maybe re-emphasize is this idea of having the courage to begin and how that momentum can build more confidence and kind of keep keep going. I recently started doing little projects around my house by taking pictures, uploading it, getting the AI bots to tell me what to do. And I gotta tell you, like, what all these I was like punch lists, all these daunting projects, like, oh, I can do this now, I can do this now, I can do this now. How would you, to wrap things up, inspire a leader who might be stuck in just, I need to take that first counterintuitive step out on this ledge? Like, what would you say to them to sort of give them that push they might need to start that first project? Take a different way to work.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Start with something small. Okay. Linda oftentimes asks leaders to start their meetings in a different way. That's a counterintuitive approach. It's fascinating what types of habitual behaviors we watch as leaders conduct their meetings. And Linda will say, start with a question or start by asking something personal. I think there's something really simplistic in how we can integrate small, counterintuitive measures that begins to lead the way to something larger.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Well, Brian, thank you. I'm gonna start taking a different way to walk up to my home office here tomorrow. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. If you found value from this episode or any of our other material, we would love it if you could subscribe to all the things. Join our free email newsletter at Leadership Vision Consulting.com slash subscribe or click the link in the show notes. My name is Nathan Freeberg. I'm Linda Schubert.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

And I'm Brian Schubert.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

And on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.