Leadership Undefined : The Paradoxes of Future Military Leadership

This article is about a paradox approach to leadership. Our purpose is to contribute to raising awareness that paradoxes are inextricably linked to military leadership. We expect paradoxes to play an even more prominent role in military practice. Military academies will therefore have to prepare officer candidates as well as possible for those paradoxes. A paradox approach to leadership can assist to ensure that leaders are as responsive as possible to what the context requires and maximize both their own leadership potential and that of their teams. Implementing this approach is no easy task. A first step is to make context the central focus and abandon the notion that leadership can be defined and understood in simple terms. On the basis of theoretical insights, we provide direction to facilitate the development of a paradox mindset among officer candidates. This article’s key added value is the introduction of a usable tool for training programs, namely the adaptive paradox framework. Our aim is to make the complex world of paradoxes more manageable for officer candidates and their immediate environments and to build a bridge between theory and practice. The question is whether we are willing and able to recognize paradoxes, and how we deal with them