Marlene Troidl and Martin Zierold:
Love Your Dilemmas! Leadership as the Art of Navigating Conflicting Goals

Marlene Troidl and Martin Zierold, from the Institute for Culture and Media Management at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre, have been exploring how those in leadership positions can navigate decisions under conditions of uncertainty. In their contribution, they set out a three-part understanding of leadership — learning, communicating, deciding — and introduce a practical conceptual toolkit: the distinction between problems, constraints, and dilemmas. Their central argument is that dilemmas are not a burden to be done away with, but rather the productive tension from which the shape of tomorrow can emerge. What it means to embrace your own dilemmas as a core competency of effective cultural leadership — and what a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York has to do with it — Troidl and Zierold explain in the videos.