Epic founder and CEO Judy Faulkner says effective leadership teams typically consist of people who balance each other out.
She pointed to the definition of "yin and yang" as "complementary and at the same time opposing forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts and the parts are important for cohesion of the whole," she wrote in a Nov. 4 blog post.
Ms. Faulkner has often noticed that two people in leadership roles have great success together because they're so different.
"The surprise comes when one leaves and the other takes over," she noted. "People think it will just be a continuation, but usually it's quite different because the yin is gone and only the yang remains, who is good but needs a yin for balance. It happens a lot."