How Leaders Can Identify, Engage And Leverage Nuance

Gregory P. Crawford is President of Miami University of Ohio.

In the 1971 film Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye’s friend rebukes him for affirming both sides of an argument on engaging the outside world: “He’s right, and he’s right? They cannot both be right.” “You know,” Tevye admits, “You are also right.” Tevye is on to something that many people miss: Life is too complex to sort into simple categories of right or wrong, good or evil, positive or negative. Deep understanding, fruitful decision-making and effective leadership require attention to nuances beneath the surface of conversations, problems, opportunities, actions, events and more. That includes paying close attention to people, organizations, ideas, opinions and many other elements.

As a university president, I oversee an organization with some 1,000 faculty, leaders in their disciplines with broad research and teaching interests, ambitious goals and infrastructure, along with several thousand staff who support our student-centered mission. Faculty and student interests span the liberal arts, sciences, engineering, research and entrepreneurial translation. Four generations, from Boomer to Z, engage with one another. Leading such complexity, and uniting such diverse interests, requires close attention to nuance. Leaders of most organizations likely experience similar circumstances.

By “nuance,” I mean more than a particular static feature of a complex system, a detail to be discovered and manipulated. Nuance is part of a system’s dynamism; it’s present in diverse perspectives at a team meeting, individual personalities in a division, shades of meaning in a speech and the unspoken subtleties of human interactions. What appears monolithic from the outside is likely teeming with movement, exchange, friction and often synergy.

Efforts to assert simple binary choices, whether through media spin, political polarization, straw-man arguments or the logical either-or fallacy, will exacerbate rather than solve problems. Even artificial intelligence and the results of data analysis require nuanced attention to input assumptions and technological reliability. As the journalist and social critic, H.L. Mencken is known to have warned: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Effective leadership includes identifying nuance, engaging nuance and leveraging nuance.

Identifying Nuance

Leaders can often resolve conflict by identifying nuances at the heart of disagreements. Each side might need to pay more attention to the problem’s complexity before proposing solutions. Here, the philosophical maxim applies: “Never deny, seldom affirm, always distinguish.”

Such a practice requires active critical thinking. When a leader, rather than taking sides, can illuminate the nuances in the issue, each side can step back from a passionate defense of their position and consider alternatives. This can be a powerful tool for conflict management that heightens everyone’s critical thinking, empathy and unity. It might reveal unconscious biases to correct. It is an opportunity for growth in humility, openness and self-awareness.

Identifying nuance can mitigate the appearance of disagreement. A study found that media stories highlighting conflict among scientists, without including caveats that the scientists explained, can impact trust and sway public opinion on science. As the complexity of emerging technologies increases, such as AI, nanotechnology, genetically modified crops and climate change mitigation, public understanding requires nuanced rather than oversimplified information.

Engaging Nuance

Leaders who engage in nuance with their team can avoid faulty solutions. For example, when researchers in Germany trained a neural network to diagnose melanomas and moles from clinical images, AI proved more accurate than professional dermatologists. However, more than 95% of the images used to train the AI were white skin, which raised questions about whether patients with darker skin would receive accurate diagnoses. From my perspective, a diverse team attentive to nuance can question imbalances such as these early.

Engaging nuance involves asking a host of open-ended questions and getting comfortable with the uncertainty that comes between ignorance and understanding. I often seek solutions by asking questions, questioning the answers and imagining the opposite of my arguments. In doing so, team members can learn more about evaluating evidence, considering context, articulating conclusions and embracing change. They see that their contributions are valued and often part of the complex solution that addresses the complex problem. They recognize that others’ input is not a threat to their ideas but can enhance them.

Leveraging Nuance

Leaders can leverage nuance to strengthen a team and propel an organization to ahead-of-the-curve decision-making and action. Nuance removes barriers among colleagues, stimulates deeper thinking from different perspectives and generates innovation.

An organization’s system is too complicated for one leader to notice all the important nuances, so they should foster an environment where team members are alert to the possibilities. They can model attentive listening, careful questioning, imagining alternatives and weighing evidence that can lead to nuanced solutions. Leaders need clear communication skills to help the whole team participate in the discussion and buy into its conclusion, no matter who offers the ideas.

For people who are more accustomed to seeking the single “right” answer, attending to nuance requires a shift in mindset. Fortunately, nuance involves observation, critical thinking and communication skills and habits that anyone can practice and apply to gain deeper insight. Consider the reflexive awareness of nuance when reading a novel, watching a movie, playing a video game or having a conversation. Discovering nuance can be a delightful, rewarding experience that accelerates growth in leadership skills.

In Nuance: Why Some Leaders Succeed, and Others Fail, Michael Fullan wrote, “Our positive future depends on nuance because the solution will be collective and because only nuance is capable of sorting out complex dilemmas under conditions of adversity and diversity.” Leadership requires recognizing nuance—the complete picture beneath the surface—and helping others identify, engage and leverage it.

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