I wanted to write about something I've been chewing on for several months - it's something I've faced in my own leadership, and I'm guessing you face in your leadership, too.
Leadership isn’t about choosing sides. It’s about learning to live in the space between them.
Our brains are wired to hate that space. They crave certainty, closure, and completion. Neuroscientists have found that while the brain makes up only about two percent of our body weight, it consumes nearly twenty percent of our body’s energy (Raichle & Gusnard, 2002). Because of that, it’s constantly looking for shortcuts to conserve energy.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this our brain’s preference for fast, automatic thinking - mental shortcuts that feel efficient but often keep us from deeper wisdom (Kahneman, 2011). Add to that our built-in “need for cognitive closure,” the drive to resolve uncertainty as quickly as possible (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996), and it’s no wonder tension feels so uncomfortable.
That wiring works fine for solving problems.
It doesn’t work for leading people.
The Brain’s Bias Toward Resolution
When two values appear to be in conflict - truth and grace, speed and quality, stability and innovation - your brain wants to resolve the tension quickly. It wants to pick a side because that feels safer.
But leadership is full of paradoxes.
If you lean too far toward truth, you lose grace.
If you favor grace too much, you lose truth.
If you cling to stability, you’ll never innovate.
If you chase innovation, you risk losing the stability your people need.
So what do great leaders do?
They learn to hold the tension between both.
The Maturity Shift
Immature leaders want resolution. Mature leaders learn to live in the unresolved.
Growth doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you have the courage to stay curious when everything in you wants to close the loop.
Maturity isn’t the absence of tension; it’s the capacity to hold it without losing clarity or compassion.
The best leaders pause before reacting. They say, “Both of these things are true.” They stay curious instead of defensive.
They discern what the moment requires, not just what their ego prefers.
That’s the difference between being a problem-solver and being a wise, transformational leader.
How to Grow Your Tension Tolerance
I want to make this practical - therehasto be a way for us as leaders to grow in this space. Here are five things we can do to grow in our capacity to hold two competing values in tension:
- Name the tension. You can’t navigate what you won’t acknowledge. Simply saying, “I feel pulled between X and Y,” creates space for awareness.
- Reflect before you resolve.Give tension time to breathe before deciding.
- Seek wisdom, not just data.Numbers matter, but they rarely tell the whole story.
- Use “both/and” language.Replace “either/or” with “both/and.” It trains your brain to expand instead of collapse.
- Strengthen your inner world.The more grounded you are internally, the more tension you can hold externally.
Where This Fits in the LeadBuildLive Framework
In my work as an executive coach and within my LeadBuildLive framework, I often talk about leading from your full self. This idea of holding tension sits right at that intersection.
To Lead Whole, you have to manage your inner world enough to stay present in discomfort.
To Build What Matters, you have to balance competing demands—vision and reality, people and performance.
To Live a Life You Don’t Want to Escape From, you have to make peace with the tensions that come with growth, relationships, and purpose.
This is what mature leadership looks like.
Not avoiding tension, but transforming it into wisdom.
The Payoff
But here's the payoff: The leaders who change organizations and shape culture aren’t the ones who rush to easy answers. They’re the ones who can stand in the middle long enough for something new to emerge.
The tension you’re avoiding might be the very place your next level of leadership is born.
So - how are you doing at holding two ideas or values in tension? What step or steps might you take to grow in your tension tolerance?
References
- Raichle, M. E., & Gusnard, D. A. (2002).Appraising the brain’s energy budget.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(16), 10237–10239.
- Kahneman, D. (2011).Thinking, Fast and Slow.Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996).Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.”Psychological Review, 103(2), 263–283.
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