Creative Tension

Creative Tension and Leadership Development

The English verb “lead” comes from an Indo-European root, leith, which means “to cross a threshold,” an image also often associated with dying. Leaders such as Mieko Nishimizu and Roger Saillant also tell deep personal stories of moments of awakening, when some old part of them died and a new part emerged. Interestingly, a widely used but poorly understood term, “charisma,” conveys a related idea.

The word “charismatic” typically suggests a strong and forceful, even magnetic, personality, someone who commands attention. Unfortunately, this is usually taken to be a result of certain idiosyncratic features that make the person “special,” like striking looks and a deep voice. But most of the outstanding leaders I have had the privilege to know possess neither striking physical appearance nor forceful personality. What distinguishes them is the clarity and persuasiveness of their ideas, the depth of their commitment, and the extent of their openness to continually learning more. They do not “have the answer,” but they seem to instill confidence in those around them that, together, “we can learn whatever we need to learn in order to achieve the results we truly desire.”

In fact, the word charism comes from the Catholic church, where it means one’s distinctive personal “gifts,” given by the Holy Spirit. This meaning suggests a view of leadership development as discovering and developing one’s gifts.

Watching what this has meant to different leaders, I’ve been struck by the variety of their developmental aims and approaches. Some work to develop conceptual and communication skills. Others strive to listen to and appreciate others and their ideas. Some use the five disciplines as a developmental framework. Some use other approaches. But all are committed to working on their own development, to “struggling to become a human being,” as Saillant says.

There also seems to be one commonality that transcends differences in how these leaders go about their work and their development. This is the principle of creative tension. Despite all their many differences, truly effective leaders seem to come to a shared appreciation of the power of holding a vision and concurrently looking deeply and honestly at current reality. I have never seen an effective leader who did not recognize this principle, whether he or she had thought about it consciously or not.

We did not invent the principle of creative tension through the organizational learning work; indeed, many others have described it in the past. Imprisoned in the Birmingham, Alabama, jail after a historic antisegregation protest march, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind, so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths … so must we … create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism.”14 While Dr. King is famous for his “dream” of equality, his leadership, like Gandhi’s before him, was grounded in helping people see current reality, “to dramatize the present situation,” as he put it. He knew that the juxtaposition of the two, the dream and the present reality, was the real force for change.

I’ve been surprised to discover that the term “leader” is generally an assessment made by others. People who are truly leading seem rarely to think of themselves in that way. Their focus is invariably on what needs to be done, the larger system in which they are operating, and the people with whom they are creating—not on themselves as “leaders.” Indeed, if it is otherwise, there is probably a problem. For there is always the danger, especially for those in leadership positions, of becoming “heroes in their own minds,” as longtime colleague and co-author Bryan Smith puts it.

A Hewlett-Packard employee studying the company’s history once asked co-founder David Packard about his theory of leadership. She reported that after a long pause, he said simply, “I don’t know about theories of leadership. Bill [Hewlett, the co-founder] and I were just doing what we loved and were so delighted that people wanted to join us.”

Systems Citizens

In the fall of 2002, Mieko Nishimizu of the World Bank was asked to deliver a keynote address in her home country, as part of a celebration of the fifty-year anniversary of Japan entering the “Bretton Woods Accord,” the post-World War II international monetary regime. In the speech, Nishimizu shared her personal story of coming to terms with the reality of poverty and her perspective on our global situation. Near the end, she described the global connections shaping that future:

The future appears alien to us. It differs from the past most notably in that the earth itself is the relevant unit with which to frame and measure that future. Discriminating issues that shape the future are all fundamentally global. We belong to one inescapable network of mutuality: mutuality of ecosystems; mutuality of freer movement of information, ideas, people, capital, goods and services; and mutuality of peace and security. We are tied, indeed, in a single fabric of destiny on Planet Earth.

The impetus for building organizational learning capabilities has traditionally come from people who want to find more effective approaches to organizational change; who want to build more adaptive enterprises; and who believe in growing human and social capital in order to grow financial capital. But today, a new set of external motivations are starting to form, as we wake up to our “single fabric of destiny” and realize that we face profound societal and organizational learning challenges. Today I believe that the real possibilities for creating learning organizations may arise from the intertwining of these two forces for change.

All organizations sit within larger systems—industries, communities, and larger living systems. In one sense, it is illogical to think that the well-being of a company can be advanced independent of the well-being of its industry, its society, and the natural systems upon which it depends. For a long time, businesses have taken these larger systems mostly for granted, but it is now increasingly evident that businesses, individually and collectively, influence these systems and that the consequences of that relationship are becoming significant. Some of these influences are clear, such as when a manufacturing facility relocates, leaving half of a town unemployed, or when a power plant discharges nitrogen and sulfur oxides into the air. But many of the influences arise through larger systemic connections that remain invisible to most.

As I am writing this, yet another devastating hurricane has just hit the Gulf Coast in the southeastern United States. Like many other people, I am concerned for the safety and well-being of those affected—but I am also worried that we will not focus on more than emergency relief: once the immediate crisis has passed, the deeper systemic issues will remain. The pictures of entrenched poverty that the hurricanes have revealed have shocked many. But in fact many people in the United States live in Third World conditions. At the time of this account, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana were reported to have, respectively, the first-, third-, and fifth-highest percentages of residents living below the poverty line in the United States.1 Warm ocean waters supply energy to tropical storms, and warming can increase their intensity. That mechanism connects storm risk to a larger system; it does not by itself explain the cause of an individual storm or the number of storms in a season.

I believe climate change and entrenched poverty coexisting with economic prosperity are as much the icons of our age as are the Internet and global markets. As individuals and as businesses, we have never had to be concerned about how day-to-day decisions like the products we buy and the energy we use affect people who live thousands of miles away, or on the other side of the planet. This is the human side of globalization, and it is, indeed, an alien place for all of us. We’ve never been here before—and the future is watching.