Welcome to episode 176 with Michelle Troseth and Tracy Christopherson. They have known each other and worked together for many years in their business they’ve called Missing Logic.

This is based on an interesting series of observations they’ve made together whilst working with various businesses including the healthcare sector where they both met. Both have observed that whilst leaders wanted to get things done and delegate well to their teams, there was often a risk of burn out. This wasn’t just during Covid although that put considerable pressure on people but felt an issue at other times too.

Essentially, leaders like to problem solve as a response to any challenge, but this drive can result in burn out if someone doesn’t realise that perpetual issues that don’t get resolved, might not actually be solvable. Instead, Michelle and Tracy feel the answer might lie in recognising this and living with the tension this creates! They refer to these perpetual, unsolvable problems as polarities. One example might be an opposing viewpoint but when this happens, we often adopt either/ or thinking and try to go one way or the other. The reality is that we might be better to understand both viewpoints and not make us or them, choose.

Why do this?

We are living in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous times or VUCA for short. This requires a different approach and a different type of thinking to succeed. This resulted in a great piece of work they’ve completed where they developed a framework called the Polarity Intelligence Framework and its this approach they use to help leaders recognise what they need to do differently to not only survive, but thrive.

I found this an interesting interview because we discussed the cultural pressures we feel too. Many of us are conditioned from a young age to put other people before ourselves. Not just women where you might expect that as mothers but both sexes and all ages because when we run businesses we’re still driving all our decisions for and with other people.

This can encourage us to unknowingly put other people first and put ourselves much further down the list. This might be ok for the short term, but inevitably leads to stress and possible burn out if we don’t prioritise our own needs too.

I hope you find this a valuable interview. Michelle and Tracy were very informative and knowledgeable.

I recommend that if you enjoyed our conversation you get hold of the book they’re written of the same name on Amazon.

Also, why not connect with them on Linkedin