Paradoxical entanglements: Leaders navigating (post-)heroic leadership, gender and power

Despite over two decades of discussion, leadership’s paradoxical entanglement with gender and power prevails. The existing status quo is stabilised and possibilities for transformative change are rendered impossible. Mobilising recent discussions on paradox in organizational research, this paper elaborates on a paradox perspective on transformative change. We analyse 15 group discussions with 101 middle and top managers, both men and women, from five companies in Switzerland actively advocating for gender equality. Our examination focuses on how these leaders navigate tensions arising when discussing (post-)heroic leadership and gender equality. We demonstrate that leaders reinforce the dominant position of heroic leadership through responses to these paradoxes that either ignore, neglect, or accept power. However, through what we term dissimilation, they also facilitate the emergence of post-heroic leadership. By exploring leader’s perspective on navigating paradox, our study provides insights into the necessity for addressing gender and power while transcending the binary of either/or approaches to paradox. Only by recognizing that heroic leadership still predominates over post-heroic leadership can the latter emerge as a credible alternative.