Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: The “Yes, And” Mindset To Unlock Better Decision Making, Leadership and Relationships with Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis
23 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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When we think about both and thinking, we think about a couple of things. One is we start with saying you've got to change the kind of questions you ask. If you're always saying, should I be brave or should I be vulnerable? You're missing the point because they go together.
How do I build confidence by putting myself out there in uncomfortable situations, by learning through my successes and failures? So to us, changing the question is absolutely vital. How do you take those opposing sides and dive deeply into each one of them? How do you really understand where, what are your fears coming from?
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So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with me this week and ready to meet two amazing guests. Wendy Smith is the academic director of the Women's Leadership Initiative at the University of Delaware and a professor of management.
Marianne Lewis is dean of the University of Cincinnati's Linder School of Business and professor of management. They are the co-authors of the book, Both and Thinking. Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems. Ladies, thank you so much for being here with me today. Heather, thank you for having me.
All right, so let's get right into this because I know everyone listening is thinking, what the heck, paradox? Can you break down, Wendy, what is this all about? What is a paradox?
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Chapter 2: How can changing the questions we ask lead to better decision-making?
And part of how we got to this idea was that as we were exploring these kinds of competing demands. So in our lives, it was work and life. In our careers, it was thinking about being a researcher, but also thinking about being a teacher or institution builder or leader.
And the research that I was doing and that Marianne was doing, it was about thinking about companies navigating for today and tomorrow. We realize that what often happens in these cases is that people look at these as an either or competing demand, seeing the opposition between them. But what we don't see is we don't see the ways in which these opposing forces are also interdependent.
And by seeing them as interdependent opposites, as ways in which these things are both contradictory, but also synergistic and mutually reinforcing, it invites us to think about dealing with them in a totally different way, in a both and way.
And so underlying so many of the dilemmas that we face are these paradoxes, these contradictory oppositional intention dualities that are also defining and intertwining interdependent with one another.
Can you give us an example so that I can process this better?
Absolutely. So this shows up for us, for example, in navigating work and life. When I was a new mom, there was always this frustration, this tension about how to spend my time, even now with my teenage kids, how to spend my time, how to think of my identity. Am I thinking about myself in terms of my identity? parental identity? Am I thinking about myself in terms of my work identity?
Am I spending time right now, right here doing work? Am I spending time with my kids that are in the other room? These tensions come up. And I was always in conversation with colleagues or friends who are thinking, I don't know how to see myself. I don't know how to make these decisions. But what we weren't thinking about was how is it
that the more that I engage with my work, the more passionate I am about it, the more successful I am about it, the more effectively I can show up for my family and really be there to demonstrate to my kids my success, to inform how I think about my parenting.
And the more that I feel confident and secure with everything that was happening at home, in my life, with my family, with my partner, the better that I could then be able to show up at work. And so we weren't thinking about the relationship between the two of those. We were just thinking about the ways these are in conflicts. But Mary, I'm going to turn it over to you for some examples too.
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Chapter 3: What is 'both/and' thinking and how does it apply to leadership?
I was still working in corporate America. And he was like, listen, if you want to start expanding into possibilities in your life,
step into uncomfortable that you know you just made a face you don't want to go to stand-up comedy class go and so I made myself go and one of the exercises that they put you through it's this and game I call it a game I don't think they call it a game but you can't you can't stop you can't say you know okay it wasn't the right thing that's over you you have to run with it by saying and and
And so it was this really interesting exercise for me to continue the thoughts, join things together instead of the normal way for a lot of us, right? Which is like, I don't like that. No, it's over. And so that was a really interesting exercise. And then when I gave my TEDx talk, I had a speaker coach that I was working with. And my TEDx talk is called
The Me Too movement, misstep or mistake or something like that. And she was saying, listen, you're going to alienate a lot of people here if you don't make this an and moment. And I said, what do you mean by that? And she said, people are going to think that you're just vilifying the Me Too movement. Instead, why don't you make it more about me?
the Me Too movement was great and there's more we can look at. And when she said that powerful moment, just put a, the light switch went on and I got it. And thankfully she gave me that adjustment to change the top. So I personally love what you guys are doing. Believe in it.
Heather, I love that. We talk about this idea of yes and in the book because it is such a crucial and basic practice that we can do to shift our mindsets. One of the key things in the book, we talk about how we move into both and, and one of the key pieces is shifting our mindset. By the way, another key piece is shifting our emotions, which we can talk about.
So I think that that language is such a great way to shift our mindsets
And what I love about your example about your TED Talk is that, as Marianne said, what we say in the book is that the first practice, as she said, is that whenever we come into these either-ors, you know, misstep or mistake or possibility, that we sort of tune our brains to recognizing that it's an either-or and just stop and shift the question of what's the and question?
How could the Me Too movement change? enable possibilities rather than restrict it? How can our vulnerability enable our confidence? How can, as another example, how can our acceptance of who we are exactly as we are right now enable our growth rather than us having to make a choice between the two of those? And what we say in the book and what we talk a lot about is that
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