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Today's successful business leaders will be those who are most flexible of mind. An ability to embrace new ideas, routinely challenge old ones, and live with paradox will be the effective leader's premier trait. Further, the challenge is for a lifetime. New truths will not emerge easily. Leaders have to guide the ship while simultaneously putting everything up for grabs, which is itself a fundamental paradox. -Tom Peters

You are doomed to make choices. This is life's greatest paradox. - Wayne Dyer

In my Reading List on Change Makers and Decision Leadership there is one book, ‘Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems’ (Harvard Business Review Press, August 2022) by Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis that I found particularly useful for thinking about tensions, dilemmas and paradoxes.

Smith and Lewis examine using "both/and" thinking to make more creative, flexible, and impactful decisions in a world of competing demands. For many of us, these competing and interwoven demands are a source of conflict. Since our brains love to make either-or choices, we choose one option over the other. We deal with the uncertainty by asserting certainty.

Diving deeper they give us a language, a system and a framework to understand both our mindset and our options.

Source: Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems (Harvard Business Review Press, August 2022) by Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis.

Here is what they have to say:

We need to understand tensions, dilemmas, and, most vitally, paradoxes. Let's start by defining these terms.
Tensions include all types of situations where alternative expectations and demands are in opposition. We feel an internal tug-of-war. The word tensions offers an overarching term to describe both presenting dilemmas and their underlying paradoxes. Tensions are neither good nor bad; they can drive creativity and sustainability or lead to defensiveness and destruction. Their impact depends on how we respond.
Dilemmas present opposing alternatives, each option offering a logical solution on its own. Our problems and challenges often show up for us as a dilemma, where we feel pressure to choose between alternative options. Yet as we try weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each, we find ourselves stuck. The pros of one option define the cons of the other, and vice versa. We chase our tails looking for the clear, right, and lasting solution, but it often doesn't appear. Moreover, when we decide between options, we can, over time, become stuck in a rut that leads to a vicious cycle.
Paradoxes are interdependent, persistent contradictions that lurk within our presenting dilemmas. Diving into a dilemma, exploring the options at a deeper level, we find opposing forces interlocked in a circular ebb and flow. Paradoxes may seem absurd at first as they integrate contradictions, yet a more thorough investigation can unveil a logic to the holistic synergies of competing demands. Other researchers use words like polarity or dialectics in similar ways. In our own studies, we adopt the word paradox to align with a rich research tradition, and to reflect their often complex and mysterious ways.