Skip to main content

Creative Tension

Bring on the Tension!
Dr. Shawn Wolf | Outside-Force BDF 

Leaders actively create tension for and with their team by consistently holding before them a new/better future. Good leaders accomplish this by creating and sharing a compelling vision. It’s not enough to simply share the vision of the organization with the team; the leader also creates the vision of a change initiative that paves the way towards the overall vision.

People have to become comfortable in discomfort.

For many of a leader’s followers their own internal IOS (Internal Operating System), or mental models desire to set in stone how things are done now and they find comfort in sustaining the current state. Yet, all organizations must continue to improve to meet the needs of their customers and stay ahead of the competition. To improve something calls for some kind of change, which means people have to figure out how to be comfortable in discomfort, or creative tension. To effectively initiate and sustain a change effort, great leaders skillfully drive change by tapping into this very concept of creative tension.


So what is this thing called creative tension? It’s the tension created by solidly understanding the current state (current reality) and boldly communicating the compelling future. More than that, it’s the full awareness of the critical space between the two points that represent the somewhat unknown journey all must be willing to experience to reach the future state. The journey will hold successes, failures, learning, applying, and sustaining the desired changes long enough so new habits and paradigms are shaped.

Be bold…….Create Tension!

Learning, growing, developing, and achieving are products of creative tension.

 Inspiring others to risk leaving their comfort zone and step into creative tension takes work and commitment, and a leader that believes in the change and has the skill to passionately champion the process and share how the changes lead to a better organization. When the journey and destination can come alive in the minds of followers, it’s a shorter journey to capture their hearts. To change one person’s IOS can be difficult; changing a team’s IOS takes bold leadership! Be bold… Create Tension!

www.outside-force.com
team@outside-force.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fostering a Lean Culture Through Your Employees

Fostering a Lean Culture Through Your Employees Andrea Vaughan | Outside-Force BDF   While working for a traditional batch manufacturer in the early 2000’s we faced many of the typical challenges - bloated inventory, many interruptions in flow, frustrated team members, missed shipments, cash flow challenges, and so much more. Then we saw lean in action and it changed our paradigm. Be careful not to encourage quality over quantity; and, competitiveness over teamwork. Challenges are inevitable when you begin such a significant transformational journey. The first major impact was to the employees, and it was a doozy; how we paid our team had by using a piece rate system. When we implemented one of the first major changes, it was eliminating piece rate and moving to hourly rates. The team loved piece rate and was not happy to see it go, yet we realized as we learned Lean, that such a structure was adverse to Lean. Piece Rate encouraged quantity over quality and...

The Value of Interim Leadership

Loss of the leader does not have to be a CRISIS! Shawn Wolf, DSL | Outside-Force BDF The burgeoning field of interim leader has emerged to fill the gap created by the loss of the key leader in organizations. The loss of a key leader can be devastating, especially if the leader is the founder or has been an inspirational leader for a significant length of time. A planned succession is, of course, preferable but not always the way things go; utilizing an Intentional Interim Leader may be an effective solution even within a planned succession. The most vulnerable organizations are small to mid-size businesses and non-profits. These organizations may not have the depth to have a solid succession plan, or personnel in place (enough people or the right skills) to successfully manage the void left when the primary leader departs. For many years there have been CFO’s for hire, Marketing specialists for hire, and other roles, which could temporarily fill gaps but the President or CEO...
Interviewing without "Interviewing" So, what CAN we ask potential candidates without possibly stepping into the forbidden zone? It is becoming more challenging to enter into a reciprocal dialog without unintentionally opening a can of legal worms. What can make it more challenging is when an interviewee begins offering off-limits information. I have been in this very position and think, “NOOOOOOOO……..”. All right, that’s a slight exaggeration, and I certainly do not react that way. Instead, I direct the conversation back to more appropriate information. The traditional interview questions can be boring and lend themselves to a mechanical “my turn, your turn” exchange of questions and answers.   With a little effort, anyone can prep their answers in anticipation of these standard questions. They are also fertile ground for those awkward seconds of silence that feel like minutes between questions. They may be predictable, but they are so prescribed that the flow...