In a do-or-die situation with your boss, what should you do?

Angela, a former beauty queen and anchorwoman, was in a terrible fix. Should see obey her boss or stand up against him?

Click here to learn more about Angela's dilemma before you read on.

Quick recap. Angela's boss, the company chairman, has demanded Angela to charge companies top advertising dollars whenever she interviews the CEOs who appear as guests on her TV show. The ad dollars would turn her program into a revenue generating machine. The media company would be back in the black. And Angela's division would get a huge bonus which she can parcel out as she wishes (wink-wink).

Should Angela fight for journalistic ethics (and kill her career) or should she charge her guests ad dollars (and kill her credibility)?

Three days later, Angela bolted straight up in bed. Lightbulb moment! She realized she could do both.

Next morning, she marched up to the chairman's office.

"Let's ask the CEOs of each company to sponsor the next company that would be featured on my show," she said. "This way, the companies wouldn't be paying ad money to appear. And I am still free to choose which company I want to interview regardless of whether they pay for ads. We can create a virtuous cycle for making money."

That aroused the curiosity of her boss, who cared only for the bottom line. "Please explain," he said.

"Imagine you're CEO of a steel factory. You'd feel insulted if I were to ask you to pay advertising dollars just to appear on my show. Whereas you'd be delighted to come to my show if I invited you to talk about, say, corporate excellence in the steel industry. And you'd be even more flattered if you learned that a previous company has offered to sponsor the cost of your appearance on this show," Angela explained.

Then Angela would explain that one condition for appearing on her show would be for the CEO to sponsor the next company. Bing bada boom.

When Angela told me her solution over dinner, I was blown away. It was brilliant. Angela was now free to choose the best companies to appear on her show because the previous guest-CEOs would want to ensure that their sponsorship dollars were spent on deserving companies.

Roger Martin, a leadership professor, says that integrative leaders "have the predisposition and the capacity to hold in their heads two opposing ideas at once. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they're able to creatively resolve the tension between those two ideas by generating a new one that contains elements of the others but is superior to both."

Angela is an integrative thinker. Are you? Do share with me any personal examples or stories of how people were able to solve a no-win issue through integrative thinking.

And come back tomorrow to learn five great tips from Angela on how she took her soul to work during this crisis.