Problems, Polarities and Possibilities

Many of the issues children, families and communities face do not have one simple solution.

Effective leadership requires understanding the difference between solving a problem and managing a polarity. Within the WKKF Community Leadership Network with the Center for Creative Leadership, a problem is defined as a situation with one answer and a definable end point. A polarity is a situation where two or more right answers are interdependent with no identifiable end point that must be managed over time.

Leveraging polarities is an ongoing practice of holding multiple realities and perspectives at the same time, even when they appear to be in opposition. During the class three gathering in New Orleans, fellows were encouraged to explore the polarities active in their communities and apply new tools and strategies for leading through polarity management.

We facilitated a roundtable conversation with Caitlin Brooking of Jackson, Mississippi; Shay Everitt of New Mexico; Dr. Allisyn Swift of New Orleans; and Kamilah Henderson of Michigan on how polarities are showing up in their work and how their learnings from this fellowship have changed their approaches to these challenging situations.

What is an insight you have gained through the fellowship around managing polarities in your work?

Caitlin: As a new executive director, I’ve been grappling with unsolvable problems. Through my work at Refill Jackson Initiative, we help prepare, equip and empower youth ages 18-24 who have been traditionally locked out of employment.

The challenge has been to hold multiple realities at one time. Holding the truth of systemic racism as the reason our young people have been pushed out of employment opportunities, while at the same time balancing the need to teach our young people how to navigate and succeed in these fundamentally flawed systems.

This fellowship has helped shift my mindset in realizing my job isn’t to solve or eliminate this polarity. These two realities exist and oppose each other, but my job is to acknowledge this fact and balance our work in ways where our young people can maintain authenticity and a positive self-image, while becoming fully prepared to exist in an unjust system and move into self-sustainability.

Kamilah: I struggled at the beginning to make sense of the difference between polarity and conflict. I appreciate what you said, Caitlin, because polarities are a both/and situation where both things are true in the realities of the work.

Within my practice as a clinical therapist and social worker working within an infant mental health lens, my task is not to “fix” the polarities, but to acknowledge them and bring context and a cohesive sensibility around how we can turn towards each other within our polarities.

What’s a new approach you’re eager to use in managing polarities?

Shay: I focused a lot on the polarities in leadership qualities, and what stuck with me was the polarity of candor versus diplomacy.

Candor is my go-to, being very authentic and honest, while still being respectful. However, that hasn’t always served me. I have found myself in situations, particularly in male-dominated spaces, where no one’s listening to me unless I’m being very diplomatic. If I’m part of this system, or even when I’m fighting back against the system, I do need diplomacy to get to my goal.

As I move forward, I am now equipped to leverage both of these qualities, as they both are true and both have value. I don’t need to fully embody one or the other.

Dr. Allisyn: I love what Kamilah said about bringing context to the polarities. With my orientation and belief system, it’s hard to always say that both sides are true, but what I can always acknowledge is that both sides hold deep meaning for the people there.

In my work in equitable education, the challenge is how to get folks who believe the problem is strictly systemic and folks who believe the problem lies with the individual to speak to each other. Because in the middle of these two extremes, our children are suffering.

However, both sides do want equitable education. So the question is how to identify that unified truth and goal, root ourselves in a shared understanding of the objective realities, and move forward together.

How might you gain positive results when managing polarities, in relation to racial equity for children and families?

Shay: Going back to Caitlin’s work with young people, I wonder if having conversations with these young professionals about polarities is a place to start. We need to have conversations where we acknowledge two things can be true, that you can be truly brilliant and authentic, even while understanding the system is unjust.

Caitlin: I agree. I deeply disagree with respectability politics and these made up norms that people enforce in the workplace. But I also know that I don’t have the power to change that truth for them.

I think the messaging we tell our young people is, in many ways, this is a game you play. Here are the rules, these are the tools you have, this is your mission; but none of this reflects on your inherent goodness.

Kamilah: I believe a lot of our work as fellows is to create new and different realities for our children and families to be just as they are.

We are all committed to creating a world that is richer, more fruitful and more promising for them. If I can do that with just five babies and their mothers, that’s golden in countering what they are getting in other more dangerous spaces.

Dr. Allisyn: I love that, our job isn’t to fix these polarities, it’s to name them for what they are and create alternative universes. After all, these young people are the future and their orientations and experiences are influenced by what we are doing now. Our real job is to plant those seeds.