From Seesaw to We-Saw - Why Eclectic Leadership Is the Only Way Out of Binary Balance

We have a balance problem.

Not the kind you fix with yoga, mindfulness apps, or standing desks — but a far more stubborn one: how we think about balance itself.

We’ve been conditioned to see balance as a contest. Two sides. Two weights. One must go down for the other to go up. A seesaw.

It’s tidy. It’s intuitive. It’s also wildly inadequate for the world we’re trying to lead today.

If you ever want proof of how deeply this metaphor runs, just look at the symbols we use. Justice is depicted holding scales — two sides again — and a sword, just in case the weighing exercise needs a sharp conclusion. Fairness, apparently, is about deciding who wins.

Even our playgrounds reinforce it. The classic two-seater seesaw teaches children early: your joy depends on someone else losing altitude.

And then, the other day, I saw something that quietly ruined that entire mental model.

A three-seater seesaw.

Suddenly, balance wasn’t opposition. It was coordination. Nobody could dominate without destabilising everyone else. Movement required adjustment, awareness, and cooperation — not victory.

Which is when it hit me: the world we’re still trying to govern with seesaw logic stopped being a two-seater decades ago.

The Cold War Is Over. The Seesaw Isn’t

For much of the 20th century, the world genuinely was organised around a bipolar structure. US versus USSR. Capitalism versus Communism. NATO versus Warsaw Pact.

That wasn’t just geopolitics — it was cognitive training.

Political scientists even formalised it. In the 1960s, bipolarity was argued to be relatively “stable” because two dominant powers could keep each other in check. And to be fair, that framework made sense then.

But here’s the issue: we never upgraded the mental model.

Today, power is distributed across states, blocs, corporations, media ecosystems, technology platforms, financial institutions, armed groups, and public opinion — all interacting simultaneously. According to the World Economic Forum, global risks are now overwhelmingly interconnected, not isolated or bilateral.

Yet our public debates still sound like playground arguments:

• “Which side are you on?”

• “You’re either with us or against us.”

• “If you criticise them, you must support the other lot.”

It’s geopolitics by seesaw. And it’s intellectually lazy.

Choosing Between the Evil and the Devil

This binary obsession becomes most dangerous when real human suffering is involved.

Increasingly, we are presented with situations where both major actors in a conflict are credibly accused of serious human rights violations. Civilians suffer. Laws are breached. Atrocities are documented.

And yet the discourse insists: choose.

So we find ourselves choosing between the evil and the devil — pretty much both sides of the same coin, separated only by the letter D.

Evil.

Devil.

Different branding. Same moral stench.

This is where the seesaw metaphor collapses completely. Because picking one over the other doesn’t restore balance — it just shifts the weight of justification.

And let’s be honest: very often, the pressure to choose isn’t about ethics at all. It’s about allegiance, identity, geopolitics, or optics. Binary framing makes mobilisation easier. Nuance doesn’t trend well.

But here’s the key point we need to say out loud:

This dichotomy is biased by default and by design.

By default, because our brains prefer simple stories.

By design, because binary narratives are easier to weaponise.

Once you accept the frame, you’re no longer debating morality — you’re just choosing a team.

“Both Sides Are Bad” Is Not the Mic Drop People Think It Is

Some try to escape the trap by saying, “Well, both sides are bad.”

On the surface, that sounds sophisticated. Balanced. Almost enlightened.

But often it’s just the seesaw in disguise.

Because it still assumes:

• There are only two meaningful sides.

• Moral weight is symmetrical.

• The best we can do is compare who’s worse.

Psychologists call this false equivalence — treating unequal actions or evidence as if they carry equal moral or factual weight. Media studies repeatedly show that “both-sidesism” can actively distort public understanding, especially in complex conflicts.

In other words, declaring both sides bad doesn’t automatically make you wise. Sometimes it just means you’ve opted out of responsibility.

The better question is not who is worse?

It’s why does the system keep producing these outcomes at all?

From Seesaw to We-Saw

This is where we need a genuine shift — not in opinions, but in orientation.

From seesaw thinking to we-saw thinking.

Not:

I versus you.

But:

We saw the system.

We saw the incentives.

We saw the narratives.

We saw the structures that reward escalation and punish restraint.

We saw how binary framing keeps everyone locked into reaction mode.

Balance, in this view, is not a verdict you deliver after choosing sides. It’s something you maintain continuously through design, accountability, and shared constraints.

That’s harder work. Which is precisely why it matters.

Why Eclectic Leadership Is Built for This Moment

This is exactly where eclectic leadership stops being an abstract idea and becomes urgently practical.

Eclectic leadership begins with a refusal:

the refusal to believe that one discipline, one ideology, one narrative, or one axis of good-versus-bad can explain — let alone steward — a complex world.

Instead, it draws deliberately and coherently from multiple domains:

• Linguistics, to understand how framing shapes reality

• Psychology, to recognise bias, fear, identity, and projection

• Political science, to analyse power, incentives, and institutions

• Leadership wisdom, drawn from diverse cultures, histories, and traditions

Not as a buffet.

As a system.

That’s why eclectic leaders are more comfortable operating beyond binaries. They don’t confuse clarity with simplicity. And they don’t mistake decisiveness for moral shortcuts.

The Triad That Breaks the Binary

This is where Clarity, Connection, and Confluence do real work — not as buzzwords, but as a practical antidote to seesaw thinking.

1. Clarity: Seeing the System, Not Just the Sides

Clarity is the discipline of zooming out.

Instead of asking, “Who’s right?”, clarity asks:

• What incentives are driving behaviour?

• Who benefits from escalation?

• What narratives are amplifying fear or certainty?

• What history is being selectively remembered — or conveniently forgotten?

Research in decision science shows that framing alone can radically change how people judge risk, responsibility, and morality. If leaders don’t actively interrogate frames, they become prisoners of them.

Clarity doesn’t excuse harm.

It locates it properly.

2. Connection: More Than Two Points of Accountability

Binary systems concentrate power. And concentrated power loves moral theatre.

Connection breaks that by multiplying accountability.

When you introduce more actors — independent monitors, civil society, multilateral institutions, economic interdependence, cultural ties — the system becomes harder to hijack by any single narrative.

This is why governance research increasingly favours polycentric systems: multiple centres of authority operating with overlap and mutual constraint. These systems are empirically shown to be more resilient than rigid, centralised ones.

Connection, in leadership terms, is about building webs instead of lines.

3. Confluence: Shared Thresholds, Not Shared Camps

Confluence is what stops this from dissolving into relativism.

It’s not about everyone agreeing. It’s about agreeing on non-negotiables.

• Civilian lives matter — regardless of who fires the weapon.

• Human dignity is not conditional on nationality.

• Some actions remain unacceptable, even when they’re strategically convenient.

This aligns with moral pluralism: the idea that values are multiple and sometimes conflicting — but not meaningless.

Confluence creates a moral floor, not a moral monopoly.

Balance Reimagined

So let’s redefine balance properly:

Balance is not choosing between two forces.

Balance is designing a multi-actor equilibrium where no actor can violate shared human values without triggering stabilising pressure from the rest of the system.

Mapped to the triad:

• Clarity identifies the variables.

• Connection creates distributed restraint.

• Confluence anchors shared thresholds.

That’s not idealism. That’s systems realism.

Why This Matters Now (More Than Ever)

According to global risk assessments, today’s crises are increasingly:

• Transnational

• Multi-actor

• Accelerated by misinformation

• Emotionally polarised

Binary thinking doesn’t just fail here — it actively worsens outcomes.

It fuels polarisation.

It rewards absolutism.

It turns leadership into performance art.

Eclectic leadership offers something rarer and more valuable: the capacity to hold complexity without paralysis.

A Better Question for Leaders

So perhaps it’s time we retire the question:

“Which side are you on?”

And replace it with something far more demanding:

“What equilibrium are you helping to build — and what values are you refusing to compromise while doing so?”

That is the move from seesaw to we-saw.

From opposition to awareness.

From binaries to balance.

From reaction to responsibility.

And in a world that is no longer two-seated — politically, morally, or culturally — it may be the only kind of leadership that actually holds.

Shehzaad Shams