Five Questions with Margaret Seidler

Our expert author this week is Margaret Seidler, author of Power Surge: A Conduit for Enlightened Leadership. Margaret is a long-time consultant whose life took a drastic turn when she learned about Polarity Management® from Dr. Barry Johnson, in 2001. She promptly changed the way she approached her consulting and personal life.

Margaret, tell us about your experience with Polarity Management.

As you stated, it completely changed my life outlook. You see, I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where we hold independence and freedom above all other values. This can lead to an either/or mentality. It plays out as a tendency to look at all situations as having one solution, so mine must be correct, making any other alternatives “wrong”.

Barry Johnson, father of Polarity Management, opened my eyes about how many (indeed, most) chronic situations in life require more “ands” than “buts” and if you can identify a higher purpose, then tap into seemingly contradictory solutions at once, you can expand the solutions for everyone and get a better, more sustainable result. This is a fundamental paradigm shift.

This was like a blast of insight for me. Suddenly I could see that solutions or options may be very divergent, and essential.

How did this realization play out for you?

It made me into one of the most astute consultants in the region where I live and do most of my client work. Suddenly I could draw a Polarity Map and show them the whole picture. They thought I was a genius. Of course, I am not a genius, I was just able to bring clarity to otherwise murky and often frustrating situations that leaders in organizations have to manage.

Even when I am working with a client where I’m not explicitly teaching them about Polarity Management, such as communication skills or conflict resolution, it is always an underlying theme because it provides a lens for me to teach those skills and have them more fully understood and appreciated.

Can you give me a quick summary of Polarity Management?

Polarities exist within all of us. Polarity Management helps us handle them more effectively. It brings to the forefront things that we may know about ourselves intuitively or that we don’t see at all. Becoming aware of the polarities within you helps you see a more complete picture of yourself, and subsequently, you have the ability to see a more complete picture of others and the world in which you exist.

How about walking us through a practical example?

Sure! Let’s take the polarity of activity and rest. This interdependent pair needs each other over time to create positive results, and they are connected and inseparable. If we neglect one, the positive benefits of the other deteriorate into a negative. The body says that you need to supplement activity with rest, or if you prefer rest, you need to supplement it with activity. The beauty is that our body’s biofeedback system tells us we need to shift from activity to rest or from rest to activity in order to maintain healthy living.

When it comes to leadership or polarities between nations, states, organizations or people, the forces are still there, we just don’t have that automatic biofeedback system to alert us when to shift. It’s much more subtle if apparent at all. Polarity Mapping™ gives us a chance to recognize the polarities and when to shift focus from one to the other. Some more intriguing examples of polarities are: task and relationship, candor and diplomacy, control and empowerment, and my department and your department. Does that help clarify how the concept works?

Absolutely. In your book, you talk about the timelessness of these concepts.

Yes, I like to describe it this way: The ancient Chinese concept of the yin and yang refers to two contradictory, yet complementary elements of any one complex phenomenon. Together, the two elements create something larger or better than the two individual parts. Polarity Management takes this same idea and brings it into our world today. It creates a simpler way for us to grasp and talk about these ongoing, complex issues we face in our human experience on earth.

Thanks for your time, Margaret. To learn more about Margaret Seidler’s book, research and work, visit www.mypowersurge.com.