I had a good laugh to myself a while back when an old colleague messaged me to say that I was right after all! Who doesn’t love that?

A few years back, there was a Health & Safety campaign at the organization I was working at. One of the key recommendations was the use of hand rails while walking the stairs, as this would prevent falls. But I hesitated to follow those instructions because of my training as a former medical professional – for me, contact equals contamination. Much more worrisome to me than the risk of a fall! And I said as much to my colleagues, explaining that my background created a certain kind of lens that determined my behaviour, just as my Operations/Health & Safety colleagues would have their particular lens. 

So you can see how this turns out now. Looking back on that from where we are in the middle of the pandemic, what seemed rebellious at that time seems sensible or ‘wise’. 

So who’s right?

I don’t know… and I’m not sure that the answer matters. But here’s what’s I’ve learnt:

• Never be so convinced by binary categories of good/bad or right/wrong. Even if we had done all the data analysis to prove that Falls on stairs are more common or harmful than getting sick from holding hand rails, would that necessarily hold true in the current times? Or if I had a bad back injury or broken leg from a fall, would I feel differently about holding that handrail? Maybe or maybe not, but the point is that in holding to our views, we close off to other possible truths or the changing nature of what might be best at any point in time. We also lose connection and empathy for the other, for the diversity of perspectives and experiences of those around us. 
• This is why “I don’t know it all” or being more generalist can be a blessing and support for innovation – when we look at things through specialised lenses, our conclusions tend to be exclusive and tethered to our areas of concern. And often this means that we find ourselves in mutually exclusive camps, we stop listening and miss the opportunity to look across disciplines to find compromise or better solutions! 
• In leadership, this can show up when you are faced with two conflicting facts, options or priorities. Without the ability to sit with the tension, to listen deeply and widely, to explore rather than answer and act, true innovation and effective actions are unlikely. Without this ability, I’ve seen too often how we fall back to our comfort zones, or fall prey to the loudest voice or most recent/compelling argument, or waver in indecision. 
• And so, it certainly didn’t dawn on me or my colleagues to integrate rather than stubbornly debate our views. What if both perspectives were right? How could we have minimised the risks of falls AND the risk of spreading germs? It wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist to come up with a simple solution such as putting hand sanitiser at the top and bottom of those stairs and encouraging our colleagues to hold the hand rails AND improve hand hygiene practices at the same time! 

And so, the next time when you find yourself in a position to which you’re holding stubbornly, or a position that you’re resisting… if you’re thinking only in either/or terms… stop and think again. Is what you are holding to absolutely true?  Is the opposite true? Is it possible that both your view and the opposite view are concurrently true, or in varying shades of ‘true’ or ‘best’?

In a complex and fast evolving world with so many challenges facing us, we cannot afford to be closed off to all our possible ‘truths’, to deprive ourselves of all the wisdom from different disciplines or cultures or experiences or voices. Might we learn to consider them all together and see the power of ‘both-and’ rather than ‘either-or’.