"Confident humility," "courageous vulnerability" and "constructive paranoia" win in leadership

Are best leaders ambivalent, as opposed to decisive?

Excerpt: "If you’re asked to picture a successful leader, what do you see? If you’re like most people, you imagine somebody who is decisive and in control. Somebody who seems to have little doubts about his or her actions.

In fact, that is why decisive people are often promoted into leadership positions in the first place.

But that kind of thinking has it backward.

In more than two decades of research into how leaders’ decision-making has an impact on organizational success, I’ve uncovered a surprising insight:

The most effective leaders aren’t the ones who seem to have all the answers. The most-effective leaders are those who question themselves.

They are, in other words, ambivalent. They feel and exhibit conflicting emotions—and are tolerant of them—and can hold two contradictory thoughts or feelings in their head."