Episode Summary
Have you ever wondered why certain relationships or team dynamics feel draining—no matter how hard you try to fix them or avoid them?
If you’ve been feeling pulled between competing demands—your mission and your margin, your masculine drive and your feminine flow, your desire for harmony and your fear of conflict—this episode reveals why those tensions keep repeating and what’s actually underneath them. Most women assume these friction points mean something is wrong… but what if they’re pointing to something essential you’ve never been taught to see?
In this conversation, you’ll discover:
• How to recognize the invisible tensions shaping your relationships, leadership, and decisions
• A new way of working with conflict that feels grounded, empowering, and surprisingly clarifying
• The mindset shift that helps you navigate home and workplace dynamics without overworking or overriding yourself
Press play to learn the polarity intelligence that makes confrontation easier, leadership clearer, and your relationships exponentially more satisfying.
The Uncommon Way is your go-to resource for mindset mastery, strategy, and power moves tailored to ambitious women entrepreneurs and leaders ready to break the mold and lead with confidence. This top female business coaches podcast covers leadership coaching for women, business growth strategies, and the female entrepreneur mindset to help you craft magnetic messaging, attract your ideal clients, clarify irresistible offers, and leverage your secret sauce to stand out authentically.
Each episode from top-ranked women’s business coach Jenna Harrison addresses common pain points like overwhelm, decision fatigue, entrepreneur burnout solutions, and the guilt of stepping back from hustle culture. Jenna shares tools to streamline your business systems, cultivate powerful habits, and delegate with intention—all designed to help you reclaim work-life balance and boost your freedom.
Dive into transformational mindset shifts and energetic alignment that empower you to become the powerful force you were meant to be—creating aligned growth, breakthrough clarity, and unapologetic success. Whether you’re a female entrepreneur building impact, a leader navigating change, a woman founder scaling your organization, or a business coach for women entrepreneurs, The Uncommon Way equips you to design a business and life that reflect your true vision. Leave behind imposter syndrome, overworking, and people pleasing. Embrace clarity, confidence, and unapologetic success.
Work with Jenna
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Social Media
Find Jenna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theuncommonway/
MissingLogic® Website:
Burnout Proof Leadership Podcast:
https://www.missinglogic.com/burnout-proof-leadership
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/missinglogic-llc/
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https://www.instagram.com/missinglogic_llc/
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YouTube:
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Michelle Troseth – LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelletroseth
Dr. Tracy Christopherson – LinkedIn:
Https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-tracy-christopherson
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome, welcome back to The Uncommon Way.
I had another one of those great conversations the other day that I just knew I had to bring
back to the podcast.
By the end of this episode, you'll be thinking about your most frustrating relationships
entirely differently and feeling much more comfortable with both confrontation and tension,
which is something that almost every woman I know can benefit from, myself included.
You will learn how to apply polarity intelligence to navigate home and workplace tensions with
confidence, build leadership skills that drive success without overworking, so definitely
speaking my language here, and you'll also get a deeper understanding of what keeps us
from leaning into tension and confrontation in the first place.
My guests this week are Tracy Christopherson and Michelle Troseth, co-founders of Missing
Logic, which is a coaching and consulting company dedicated to helping teams combat
burnout and transform from the inside out by using polarity intelligence in order to
navigate all these workplace tensions.
Tracy is coach leaders across North America for over 20 years, and Michelle was recently
the president of the National Academies of Practice, which represents 14 different health
professions, and is also a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.
Both of them live in Michigan.
And now, let's dive in.
Welcome to The Uncommon Way, where high-achieving women entrepreneurs and leaders pitch the
rule book and design success on their own terms.
I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, a top-ranked business coach sharing business growth strategies,
mindset mastery, and power boost to help you attract ideal clients, leverage your unique
genius, and scale with freedom.
Let's dive in.
All right.
Michelle and Tracy, thank you so much for being here.
We're so glad to be here, Jenna.
Yeah, thank you for the invitation.
We're excited.
Yeah.
We had a really interesting conversation when we bumped into each other before, and I thought
we should bring on here because I know that it's something every woman can relate to,
and you have such an amazing way of thinking about it and also working with it.
So we're just going to dive in.
And I think the best place to start is how your work is really based on the idea that
we often feel pulled between two different things.
So can you give us some examples of that?
Well, certainly the first thing that comes to my mind as entrepreneurs is we are tied
or torn between our work and our passion of what we're bringing to the world, but we're
also torn with our family life.
Many of us are raising children.
We have the sandwich generation going on for many of us, and that's definitely a tug of
war that many of us feel.
Yes, yes, yes.
So of course, the wanting to work more hours, but then also the wanting to be there for
everyone that needs you, needs your hours, needs your time.
Well, I think too, as women, we're torn between caring for others and caring for ourselves.
Good one.
That's a big one too.
And as an entrepreneur, I find as a woman, I'm torn between the mission, what I'm here
to do and who I'm here to serve, and the margin, because I need to make the money
but I also want to have a specific impact.
I'm here to serve in a certain way or to serve a certain group.
So those are some tensions that show up from an entrepreneur or solopreneur perspective.
Yes, yes, I know, and all different levels, right?
All the way from I've seen some people come and say, well, I couldn't work with that group
of people that I really want to work with or I couldn't do that thing because there's
just no money in it, right?
And this is the people that want to pay.
But then sometimes they're really small kind of micro compromises.
Have you noticed this with yourself?
That you kind of catch yourself in hindsight making, and then you finally see it for yourself.
Yeah, well, that can happen, I think, when you're not mindful that you have to have a
good balance between these things, right?
And you get pulled by the margin because you have to pay the bills, right?
And you need to have a living.
And so sometimes it's like the shiny object, right?
It's the thing that, oh, I could bring in all that money, right?
And then you deviate from your greater purpose or the thing that you really want to be from
that mission because you're feeling the need to fill the bucket with the money, right?
And so you're pulled that way.
And that's life.
Life is like that.
You're going to get pulled in certain directions at different times due to different reasons.
And you're going to feel that tension between that.
Yeah.
You know, another one I'm thinking of for people in kind of standard heterosexual relationships
for women the way we've grown up, there's this like polarity between wanting to be able
to do everything on your own and I can do everything a man can do.
But then at the same time, you want the strong man who can really take the lead and sweep
you off your feet, right?
It's like you can't win.
It's a both and.
It's a both and.
That's another great example, right?
Yeah.
Another thing that comes up too, and I think especially for women, is the energy, the masculine
energy and the feminine energy, especially when you're a business owner or you're working
with others, right?
There's that drive, that masculine energy that you need to put into your work.
But at the same time, there's that nurturing, right, collaborative connection energy that's
more feminine energy.
And we hold both.
And so, you know, but sometimes we're pulled one way more than the other.
Michelle and I have to manage this all the time with each other, right?
We tend to have a preference.
Each of us has a preference for the other aspect.
And so, you know, that can create tension when you're working with somebody that is
maybe more of a masculine energy and you're more of a feminine energy can feel like, you
know, like you're in conflict with each other all the time.
And many, many women entrepreneurs falsely believe that they need to be more masculine
to be successful.
And they have sometimes learned the hard way, no, I need to lean into my feminine side too
for this really to turn out the way I really want it to and to be successful and not compromise
too much.
Yeah.
And if we're going there with the feminine energetic, I also think receiving is a big
piece that we aren't taught, right?
We were taught to go out and make it happen.
And so receiving just feels like, oh, nails on a chalkboard to so many of us.
I have my mom visiting right now, as a matter of fact, and I watch us play this game of
like, oh, no, let me do that.
Oh, no, let me do that.
Oh, no, no, I don't need that.
I can do that.
And it's just ridiculous, right?
We both love giving to each other.
We both love doing for each other, but it's this like knee jerk reaction that I'm trying
to be so mindful of, like you said, because it isn't really serving us.
But anyway, and then of course, we haven't really even touched on how this shows up in
business.
So you both mentioned right now with your team, and we talked about receiving versus
going out and getting, but what other ways, because I know that you work with a lot of
teams in corporations and also, how else do you see that coming up?
Well, the one way it shows up is just individual and team, just that simplicity.
And Tracy and I, we base our business on core values.
And one of them, we take a look at how are we bringing up the best of every individual
team member?
And how are we also being the best team on how we work together?
And again, it's not an either or, it's an and and both.
So just calling that out and recognizing that that is a tension you always have to deal
with as well is one of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So good.
Yeah.
So I remember something you all said that I loved, which is we don't necessarily know
that this is what's going on, this like contrast and polarity, but we feel the tension.
So how does that tension manifest for your clients?
Well, it can come up in a lot of different ways.
Sometimes it feels like conflict, like you're in conflict with another because oftentimes
these are values, right?
And it can be conflict with another person.
Like I mentioned, you know, if you hold a certain perspective that appears opposing
to the other perspective, like the feminine energy and masculine energy, and you have
two individuals that are working together and one is more masculine, the other is more
feminine energy driven, it can feel like conflict between each other, like especially
if you're really holding on to your point of view or your perspective, right?
And you're at what we would say the extremes, then it feels like conflict, right?
It can show up that way.
It also sometimes shows up, I think, when people want to move from something and to
something else, because we're problem solvers, right?
So if I'm experiencing some kind of negative consequence, I want to move to the opposite
because I feel like, okay, the answer's got to be over there.
And so you're feeling that tension, that loss of something, and you want to move towards
it.
So those are a couple of ways that it can show up for people.
Michelle, do you have something else to add?
Well, I was just going to say, and you can feel it in your body.
You know, when that tension is pulling at you, you know, you can actually feel the tension.
And we often have been taught, or just how we have become who we are, we want to run
away from it.
We're not comfortable with tension.
So we think there's something wrong, and we want to avoid it.
But it's actually telling us something.
That tension's there to tell us maybe that we are over focused on one of those aspects
over the other one.
And so we need to learn how to really pay attention to that, to listen to our bodies
and feel that tension as well.
Resistance is another way it shows up when we experience resistance.
And well, oftentimes people think resistance is bad if you're trying to move something
forward or you're trying to make a change.
Can be just a personal change, and you're just feeling a lot of resistance.
Sometimes there's wisdom.
Most of the time there's wisdom in that.
There's some kind of fear driving the resistance, a loss of something that you value, right?
Or concern that you won't be able to maintain what you value most if you make the adjustment
or you make a change.
So resistance is another way that these tensions show up.
Get it.
Okay, so you're feeling this tension often in your body, right?
There's these two different polarities, these contrasts that are pulling you back and forth.
And they're showing up in all different ways in your life.
So then I'm curious, how do you begin to, I don't know, work with that, lessen that?
You've kind of hinted at it in some of the things you've been talking about.
But what would be kind of your overview of it and your diagnosis if you were talking
to someone that was experiencing that?
Well, the first thing is to recognize that polarities are interdependent pairs of values
or perspectives or points of view that need each other over time.
So I think it's understanding that concept and that they actually do need each other.
The feminine needs the masculine.
So that concept is really important.
And then understanding that they're ongoing.
They never go away.
And that's a gift when you realize that.
Because then you can learn how to leverage them and develop that polarity mindset.
Now the first step in developing a polarity mindset is being able to differentiate between
a problem, a true problem, and a polarity.
Yeah.
I love that.
Okay, tell me more.
Problems have endpoints, right?
We always like to use the analogy, right?
In households all over the country in the evening, the biggest problem is what are we
having for dinner, right?
Yes.
And we're going to make, you know, we might have three options.
Let's go out to eat, you know, let's just have something light or let's, it's warm night,
let's cook on the grill, right?
Like we got three options.
We're not going to do all three of them to solve that problem.
We're going to pick one, we're going to apply it, and we're going to solve the problem.
It'll be over.
As soon as we eat dinner, we're done, right?
Until the next night.
But the problem goes away when you apply the solution, right?
But with a polarity, it's never one.
It's always a both and.
And so there's two alternatives, but you can't apply only one.
You have to apply both, and you have to do so in a way that helps you get the benefits
of both.
And that's because polarities are ongoing, as Michelle said, they never end.
So that's another indicator when we're talking to somebody, we'll say, have you dealt with
this before?
Oh, multiple times.
Then that's an indicator that you have a polarity, not a problem to solve.
And when you think about it, for the time we were kids, we're taught to problem solve,
right?
Even when it comes to just when we were little, like, what's this?
They point to your nose, right?
And you say, oh, that's my nose.
And everybody cheers.
So, yeah, right.
That's so awesome.
Right.
What's this?
You know, you point to your ear and they say my chin, you go, no, no, no, no, that's
not right.
Right.
So we're taught if this is right, that's wrong.
If this is the correct answer, that's the wrong answer.
And we're taught this problem solving thinking, right?
Either or, pick the right answer, apply it in your golden, right?
And as leaders, we grow up, like we learn to problem solve, the bigger the problem we
can solve, the higher we climb the ladder.
As a business owner, the bigger problems you can solve, the better off your business will
be, right?
But most of the things that we deal with are not problems.
They're these polarities.
They're both ands.
And we're trying to make false choices by choosing one over the other.
If we over-focus on mission to the neglect of margin, we're always going to have a negative
consequence because to have a successful, thriving business, you have to serve both
your mission and your margin, right?
To have a strong organization, you need the strength of the individual and the strength
of the team to leverage your, to get the outcomes that you truly want.
I love it.
Yes.
So good.
So good.
So if they're ongoing and if there is a way forward, what changes for your clients after
they work with you and after they develop this polarity mindset?
Well, there's several.
One of them, I had mentioned work-life balance in the very beginning because most people
don't believe it's possible.
We've worked with leaders.
We worked with this one leader and she actually thought you had to retire before you could
even step a foot into work-life balance.
And she realized that, you know, that's not true.
And it is a dynamic balance.
And there are ways that we teach people how to take action on both their professional
life and their personal life, how to really tap into things that fill their bucket and
how that shows up for them.
And so that really changed a lot for her.
And we've had other leaders we've worked with too, that even their husbands are like, isn't
it time you talked to Michelle and Tracy again because their lives had become so much more
balanced on a personal, professional perspective.
So that's one way we have helped a lot of leaders.
Tracy has some other examples.
I think the other I would say is it improves their performance.
So when you're not managing the same problems over and over and over, right, you can put
your attention on the things that matter most.
So it really helps you, especially, you know, when it comes to planning and executing as
a business owner or a leader.
So you can really to act your performance when you can manage the tensions that you
face on an ongoing basis.
And I think the other thing is that for leaders, it gives them a language to describe what
they're experiencing in a way, a methodology, a strategy.
So they actually, you know, we map these out.
We make that we take this concept and we make it very concrete and actionable.
Right. So there's a strategy that they follow.
And because they have that knowledge and that wisdom and they're monitoring all the time,
they can tell when they're over focusing in one area and neglecting another.
They know when they get pulled towards one area more than another.
If they're experiencing some challenges at home, maybe a parent is ill or they get ill
and they have to give their attention more to their personal life, they know they can't
just drop what's happening in their professional life that they have.
But they also know they can prioritize the actions that will get them the biggest outcome
and they have a way to navigate this.
And so they prevents burnout, helps improve their performance, makes them a more effective
leader because it's not just the polarity.
These are tensions.
Right.
And you're in tension with other people or even with yourself.
So it's important to be in healthy relationship with yourself and with others and to have
meaningful dialogue around what you're experiencing and what perspectives other people hold and
what their values are.
Because that's where the tension is sitting between interdependent values or points of
view or perspective.
So those other aspects are a part of it as well.
So it makes you a more well-rounded, productive, resilient leader or business owner.
I love it.
I remember once I was speaking with a client who really wanted to grow her team, but she
was feeling so much conflict, I guess, but also like a sense of closing in on herself.
Like it really felt like she didn't want any kind of confrontation happening between the
team.
And we started visualizing a scenario where everyone was like actively sitting around
a table and giving all of this great input.
And then together they would be able to come up with something that was so much better
than one person alone could have come up with.
But I think what I love in our conversation talking about was just how difficult that
is for so many women and that we aren't taught to deal with tension or to deal with conflict
or deal with differing opinions.
It automatically means it's bad.
So can you talk about that specifically?
Well, that's kind of the norms, Trace and I call it the norms we grew up with, right?
And so it just is your default that that's wrong and that you shouldn't oppose another
person's perspective.
You shouldn't put yourself first.
Many of us have been indoctrinated into servant leadership and serving our family first.
So that's a lot of where it comes from.
And it's recognizing there is just this gift of recognizing that there's so much wisdom
out there that can be tapped and that everyone has a wisdom that we don't have.
And that's where understanding how the polarities work, knowing how to engage in meaningful
dialogue, how to, you know, not being afraid of it, but like going into it and knowing
that there's going to be much more uncovered than if I just hold everything close to myself
and continue to not empower myself, basically.
I think the whole concept gives people hope.
Because they know now what it is that they're experiencing and they understand we teach
them how it works.
There's a way that this tension and this energy works.
And when you understand that, you can more readily recognize what you're sitting in,
what you're experiencing.
And it gives you hope because you don't have to choose.
And it doesn't have to be one or the other.
It can be a both and.
And when you know that, then you can sit with others in a different way, more open and feel
less tension around it and just start to use inquiry and really deeply be curious and understand
what's informing the other person and seeing that resistance or tension isn't bad.
And there's actually wisdom in it that there may be something they know or they've experienced
that you have not had the benefit of.
And we have been in groups where one person brought their voice in opposition to what
was happening and it totally changed the trajectory of where this group went because they were
open to hearing a different perspective.
And when you think about the tensions and the conflict and the polarization we're experiencing
today, right, it just in our country alone, in our communities, you know, it is so hopeful
to know it doesn't have to be your way or my way.
And I don't have to give up what I value to embody and embrace and welcome what you value
that there can be a benefit to both.
And if we can instill this in ourselves and be leaders and demonstrate it with others,
then then we'll start to create that ripple effect, right.
And it just is so freeing because it takes the pressure off of you and opens you up in
a way that makes it feel less.
There's just less tension around it.
You just understand it in a way other people haven't understood.
I always like to say, like, we don't believe in gravity, right?
We don't believe in it.
We have an experience of it every day.
It holds us to the ground, right?
Like it keeps us here on Earth.
And polarities are the same way.
Once you have an understanding of it, it's the same way.
It just feels like a natural, oh, this is what's happening.
How did you all get started with this work?
Well, we worked for many years with leaders across North America and we're like many other
people.
From something to something else, we were watching them trying to navigate major change
and keep coming up with the same issues over and over again.
And so along our path, we met Barry Johnson, who wrote the book Polarity Management and
he started working with us and we really began to really understand this concept and applying
it to our lives and helping other leaders apply it to.
And then in 2018, when we started Missing Logic, we started it around the concept originally
around the importance of bringing polarities to the world because it is so misunderstood.
There's the lack of awareness of it.
And that's why we even named our company the Missing Logic, because it's missing.
So that's how we started, but then eventually we evolved it to the concept.
It's not just understanding how polarities work.
It's really being able to develop and sustain healthy relationships when you're dealing
with these polarities and tensions.
It's being able to engage in meaningful dialogue and ask questions and create that shared understanding
through how we communicate with each other.
And it's really those three elements, polarity mindset, healthy relationships, and meaningful
dialogue that comprise polarity intelligence.
Yeah, some of the initial work that we did was around creating healthy cultures, healthy
workplaces that were engaging, that brought all members of the team together.
Everybody's voice was heard.
And that's where we really developed the skills around healthy relationships and meaningful
dialogue.
And we worked with individuals and organizations to embed these principles into how they operated.
Like it was just woven into the fabric of the organization and to the way that leaders
led.
And it was so powerful.
So we knew that in order to sit in these tensions, if you don't have those skills, you're not
going to be able to navigate it well.
So that's why all three of them are so essential.
Thank you so much for coming on today.
I think it's just going to change the way that all the listeners and me too, as I just
walk through my day tomorrow, it's just going to be different because of this conversation.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
We like to say, you know, it's like that Sixth Sense movie, you know, I see dead people.
It's like you see polarities.
Once you know what they are, you see them everywhere.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where can people find you?
Well, our website is thesignalogic.com, so you can check us out there.
But we also have a podcast ourselves called Burnout Proof Leadership.
Tracy and I really uncover many of the polarities that can help us become burnout proof if we
leverage them very well.
And every Friday, we do a 10 minute polarity spotlight, shining a spotlight on a key polarity
in the world today.
So you can find us there.
And then we also are on LinkedIn, both personally and we have a Missing Logic LinkedIn as well.
Yeah.
And we have a polarity intelligence website too, so you can find us there too.
And our book.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
The name of the book is Polarity Intelligence, The Missing Logic and Leadership.
Wonderful.
Okay.
Well, I'll put links to all of that in the show notes.
Thank you so much for coming on.
You're so welcome.
Thank you.
It was a wonderful conversation.
Thank you.