HR-Partnering with Paradox: HR-Facilitation of Leadership Paradox in Corporate Development Practice

This paper discusses a 24-hour intervention in a financial institution designed to educate HR-partners in paradox facilitation with a view to developing their capacity to assist the organization’s managers in navigating leadership/organizational paradoxes. The authors representing the case organization and the paradox research community respectively co-designed/-facilitated the intervention in collaboration with HR-leadership.
We share our experiences as “professional paradox helpers” to advance our understanding of what could be termed “corporate paradox pedagogy” - twisting the extant understanding of paradox pedagogy, “the subject of pedagogy, or how to actually teach students the art of paradoxical thinking” (Knight & Paroutis, 2017, p. 529), to include learners in professional settings outside higher education. Also, we introduce a “train-the-trainer”-perspective to paradox pedagogy and develop our understanding of pedagogical strategies for learning through paradox (Lewis and Dehler, 2000).