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Michael Anderson: Planfulness is about seeing the path, having the plan, and holding the focus there, being really clear on where we’re going, and being determined to stay on that path. So sometimes that looks like or sounds like organizations that have firm strategic plans with detailed plans laid out over multiple years and very sophisticated reporting structures against those plans and really clear and specific accountability towards those plans—those are attributes of an organization that is skilled in planning and likely has a mindset that favors planfulness.

“The power of ambivalence is that it makes us seek more information before coming to a conclusion.”

Oftentimes, it can make us feel really confident and assured and really clear and determined on where we’re going. Let’s think about that in the context of also being responsive. So this is about knowing when we let go of things. It’s being able to hold a feeling, potentially, of untetheredness. It’s being able to hold a feeling of letting go. And it’s about our own as individual leaders and our collective teams’ ability to navigate and tolerate change, potentially significant change. So those conversations of “but I thought we were going to do this,” are the kinds of challenges oftentimes that come up in cultures that are highly, highly responsive….We do really see a significant leadership challenge in the organizational leaders we’re working with and talking with right now holding both planfulness and responsiveness.

I want to talk a little bit about what I’ll call the power of ambivalence. My team tires of me, probably on a weekly basis, quoting and referencing the last Hidden Brain episode that I listened to or re-listened to, but this one’s a really good one, so…I have to cite it. It was an episode from November 2024 with a psychologist named Naomi Rothman that was on the power of mixed emotions and mixed feelings and the power of ambivalence.…Oftentimes, we resist ambivalence because we haven’t embraced the humility, or maybe the vulnerability, that ambivalence requires. And leaders see this as a risk, because they might be concerned about being perceived as less confident or not in control.

[But] when we experience mixed emotional reactions to things, it makes us more open to advice. Emotions can lead to bias. Multiple or mixed emotions can actually help cancel out the bias that comes into our thinking when we’re experiencing heightened states of emotions. So this the power of ambivalence, really, is it makes us seek more information before coming to a conclusion. It makes us often seek more information from those closest to a problem or a potential solution and navigating our own ambivalence. And we’re seeing this a lot in nonprofit sector leaders right now, feeling urgency to be responsive and also wanting to feel anchored in identity, in who we are, and determined on our purpose and where we’re going.