

211: How to Use Both/And Thinking | Professor Wendy Smith
Jun 30, 2025
In this engaging conversation, Professor Wendy Smith, an award-winning business professor at the University of Delaware and Co-director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative, shares her insights on both/and thinking. She highlights how embracing contradictions can enhance creativity and lead to better decision-making. Wendy discusses classic paradoxes, using a mule to illustrate the power of combining different paths. Her tightrope metaphor emphasizes the importance of balance and flexibility in resolving conflicts and navigating life's complexities.
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Both/And Enhances Creativity
- Thinking in either/or terms limits our options and creativity.
- Both/and thinking opens possibilities and better solutions in challenges and relationships.
Engineer Applies Both/And to Relationships
- Engineers, used to linear thinking, found both/and thinking challenging but helpful.
- One engineer applied it to improve his relationship with his ex-wife.
Both/And Diffuses Conflict
- Either/or thinking fuels defensiveness and conflict in politics and religion.
- Both/and thinking promotes openness, connection, and creative problem solving in volatile times.