Polarities and Paradoxes
This is the 3rd installment of a 4 part series on Kurt Lewin’s influence on understanding leadership.
In this 3-minute piece Earl Braxton takes a look at polarities. For those of you who follow my posts and the work on this subject, you might find it interesting how he defines and addresses polarities: “What seems like two separate and opposite phenomenon, are separate manifestations of the same continuum.” Examples include love and hate, up and down, individual and group, strong and weak, hot and cold.
Earl thinks of polarities as gifts from the universe. However, one of the risks contained within this gift is that we can “…get sucked in one or the other and lose track of the other.” We might forget that we have choices that include the full range on the continuum. For example, Earl argues that when you are angry or hurt, that is a choice and there are other options sitting there, waiting for us. We might get so focused on hate, that we forget we have a choice and can embrace the other side of the polarity, which is love.
