Both/And Strategic Leadership: Turning Paradoxes into Sources of Innovation featuring Wendy Smith

Leadership Expert, Management Professor & Bestselling Author

Today's leaders face constant competing demands: drive innovation while managing daily
operations, integrate AI while keeping the human touch, and boost productivity without
burning out teams. Under pressure, most people default to binary "either/or" choices, which
often leads to strategic whiplash, workplace conflict, and leadership fatigue.

In this webinar, global leadership expert Dr. Wendy K. Smith introduces a practical approach for
navigating modern workplace pressures: Both/And Thinking. Drawing from two decades of
research on how decisions get made under stress, Wendy shows managers how to reframe
trade-offs into powerful opportunities for growth and creative problem-solving.

Participants will learn the ABCD Paradox System—a step-by-step model focused on
Assumptions, Boundaries, Comfort, and Dynamics—to break free from rigid, black-and-white
habits. Whether you are balancing team dynamics or leading through organizational change,
this webinar provides straightforward tools to help you make smarter decisions, defuse
tension, and lead with lasting confidence.

Key Takeaways

● Shift from Either/Or to Both/And: How to treat strategic tensions as opportunities
rather than problems to eliminate.

● Uncover the Hidden Costs of Binary Thinking: How to recognize and prevent strategic
whiplash, overfocus, and team polarization.

● Deploy the ABCD Paradox System: How to apply a step-by-step framework
(Assumptions, Boundaries, Comfort, Dynamics) to resolve daily workplace trade-offs.

About the Speaker

Wendy K. Smith, PhD, is a globally recognized leadership expert and a Fellow of the Academy of
Management. Recognized as one of the Thinkers50 Top 50 Management Thinkers and recipient
of the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award, her research ranks among the top 1% most cited
worldwide. She is the co-author, with Marianne Lewis, of the bestselling book Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems. Wendy has spent
over two decades advising Fortune 500 executives and global organizations on how to
navigate complexity and strategic trade-offs.