Reflections on Connection-Centered Leadership - Issue 33: The Tension We Were Built to Hold
I'm realizing how much tension is a hallmark of my current season, and I think, if scrolling is any indication, much of the world may feel the same. We seem to be living with an unusual amount of uncertainty about our work, our institutions, technology, politics, finances, and what comes next.
Tension is such a part of our lives that we use it to describe all kinds of experiences. Tension in relationships. Political tension. Workplace tension. Muscular tension. Tension headaches. "I could feel the tension in the room." Apparently, we're living with a lot of tension.
If we're not careful, we give tension a bad rap. Tension isn't conflict; it isn't always the problem, and its presence doesn't necessarily mean something has gone wrong. Sometimes tension is evidence that something is being asked to hold, move, or grow. Let me be the first to offer that these growing pains can surely feel more problematic than positive.
Often, tension is held between what we want or where we want to be and the reality that requires something different from us. At its simplest, tension occurs when forces pulling in different directions have to be held at the same time.
As the picture above indicates, I'm still thinking about bridges. We can thank Dr. Rodney Cooper, my professor and advisor during my Master's program, for my fondness for metaphors. But as the Architect of Connection-Centered Leadership, I continue to find the building framework remarkably applicable to the construction of our own lives.
Structurally, tension is a pulling force transmitted through a material when forces act in opposite directions. In a suspension bridge, the roadway's load creates tension in the suspension ropes and main cables while the towers primarily experience compression. The bridge works because those forces are managed through the structure, not because they are eliminated.
We experience something similar psychologically when competing needs, beliefs, desires, demands, or uncertainties pull against one another. We feel it relationally when people carry different perspectives, expectations, needs, or values. Leaders experience it constantly while holding demands that cannot always be solved simply by choosing a side: results and relationships, accountability and empathy, confidence and humility, urgency and patience, individual needs and organizational needs, stability and change.
When a leader is incapable of holding tension between opposing forces, or views tension as something that must be won, the tension may snap what holds it all together rather than help bear the weight of what is being built.
A well-built bridge needs a firm foundation before it can carry anything across the span. The same is true of us. A foundation has to hold not only in temperate seasons but also through the harshest conditions.
Then come the connections. As I wrote last week, individual strength becomes capable of carrying more when it is connected, integrated, and securely anchored.
But connection introduces something else: tension.
The moment we connect different people, perspectives, experiences, responsibilities, hopes, and needs, we introduce forces that don't always pull in the same direction. Connection doesn't eliminate those forces. Sometimes it is what brings us close enough to finally experience them.
That is true in our vertical, inward, and outward connections.
Vertical connection can hold the tension between what we want to do and what we ought to do, between what we think should be happening and what our eyes can actually see or our minds can comprehend from our limited perspective.
Inwardly, we experience tension simply in deciding not to live by whatever feels easiest in the moment. Anyone who has wanted to become healthier while also wanting to skip the workout understands that tension. So does the person who wants an organized home but doesn't consistently do what it takes to maintain one. We can want growth and resist what growth requires from us at exactly the same time.
Then we add other people to the equation, and the tension becomes more complicated. We bring different histories, expectations, strengths, fears, perspectives, and ideas about what should happen next. Scale that across families, organizations, cities, nations, and the world, and perhaps it's no surprise that so much of life feels like opposing forces pulling at the same time.
So how do we hold tension like a well-built suspension bridge that lets us successfully cross from where we are to where we want to be?
I believe part of the answer lies in a both/and approach rather than an either/or way of thinking.
Either/or thinking can provide relief because it allows us to choose a side. One thing is right, so the other must be wrong. I can pursue results or prioritize relationships. I can hold someone accountable or extend empathy. I can be confident or admit I don't know. I can trust God or acknowledge that I'm scared. I can be grateful for where I am or want something different.
But what if both things can be true?
I can be deeply grateful and still desire change. I can trust God and wrestle with uncertainty. I can love someone and disagree with them. I can hold a boundary and remain connected. I can listen carefully to another perspective without surrendering my own. A leader can be decisive and curious, ambitious and generous, confident and humble.
These aren't necessarily contradictions requiring one side to win. They are often tensions requiring enough capacity to hold both.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me in this season because I've noticed something about my own response to tension. Sometimes my strongest temptation isn't to make the wrong decision. It's to make any decision because resolution would relieve the tension.
That has given me another question to sit with: Am I actually solving the problem, or am I trying to relieve my discomfort?
Those aren't always the same thing.
Sometimes, resolution is exactly what is needed. There are tensions that tell us a boundary has been crossed, a relationship is unhealthy, a decision has been avoided, or a structure is carrying more than it was designed to bear.
But not every tension needs to disappear. Some need to be discerned. Some need to be distributed differently. Some require a difficult conversation or decisive action, while others require patience long enough for information we don't yet possess to emerge.
Both/and thinking gives us permission to hold the tension long enough to see more than one possibility. Discernment helps us determine whether we should continue holding it.
That distinction is important.
Some tension signals growth. Some signals dysfunction. Some ask for patience. Some ask for a boundary. Some means stay. Some means move. Maturity isn't demonstrated by how much tension we can tolerate, but by our ability to discern what the tension is asking of us.
This is where the foundation and connections we've been building become important. Under pressure, I discover whether I'm actually grounded in what I say I believe. I find out whether I can remain curious when someone challenges me, whether I can access empathy when I feel threatened, whether I can be direct when belonging feels uncertain, and whether I can tolerate not knowing without grasping for control.
Pressure has a way of exposing what the structure is built on.
Connection-centered leadership doesn't ask us to avoid tension. It asks whether we are grounded and connected enough to respond to it without allowing the tension to determine who we become.
Vertically, that may mean resisting the urge to interpret uncertainty as God's absence. There are things I can see from where I stand and things I simply cannot. Trust does not require me to pretend the tension isn't there. It changes where I stand while I hold it.
Inwardly, tension gives me information. My reaction can reveal where fear, control, approval, ambition, old patterns, or competing values are exerting force. Awareness creates enough space to ask whether I am responding to what is actually happening or simply trying to relieve my own discomfort.
Outwardly, holding tension means another person's disagreement does not automatically become a threat to connection. We can remain curious enough to hear what they carry while being grounded enough not to abandon what we carry. Connection doesn't require sameness. As I wrote last week, a bridge serves no purpose if there is no divide to cross.
Perhaps this is why learning to hold healthy tension can expand our capacity.
The goal isn't to see how much pressure we can endure. A bridge has load limits, and so do we. The goal isn't to glorify stress, remain indefinitely in harmful situations, or call dysfunction growth simply because it is uncomfortable.
The goal is discernment.
I'm realizing that the tension marking this season of my life may not simply be something to get through. Some of it is showing me where I am anchored. Some is revealing connections that can bear more weight than I realized. Some is showing me where reinforcement is needed. Some is asking me to make a decision I would rather postpone. And some may simply be the natural strain of stretching between where I am and where I am trying to go.
That brings me back to the bridge.
A well-built bridge doesn't stand because no opposing forces act upon it. It stands because it was designed knowing they would.
The tension isn't automatically evidence that the structure is failing. Sometimes it is simply evidence that the structure is carrying weight.
Maybe the question isn't how quickly I can make the tension disappear.
Maybe it's whether I am anchored, connected, and discerning enough to understand what the tension is asking me to do.
Questions I'm Sitting With This Week
Where am I experiencing the most tension right now, and what might it be telling me?
Am I actually solving a problem, or am I reaching for a resolution because holding the tension is uncomfortable?
What does my response under pressure reveal about my foundation and my vertical, inward, and outward connections?
Is this tension asking me to change something, or is it asking me to grow my capacity to hold something that isn't ready to be resolved?
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