How Much Creative Tension Can You Tolerate?

I got so much joy out of this article – an interview with the Mayor of Johannesburg, Amos Masondo, about Johannesburg’s readiness for the World Cup Soccer in June 2010.

Give it a quick read and notice what thoughts and feelings come to mind for you first…

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What are your first thoughts and feelings about this situation?

I know, 2 or 3 years ago, my first thoughts would have been something along the lines of, “What incompetent schmucks! They should never have taken on such a huge, important project if they were so unprepared and incompetent. They’re going to mess this up and that’s unacceptable!” I would have felt angry and frustrated and I would probably have gone and ranted to friends and family about it and wound myself up into a bit of a frenzy.

I say that I got joy out of reading this article, partly because some of his answers are just plain hilarious (“We take public transport every October so we can encourage the public to use the public transport”), but mostly because I just love how Amos takes it on the chin and keeps going with his seemingly impossible vision. I found myself chuckling and saying, “Hell, yeah!” to a city willing to grab a big opportunity to make a contribution and be seen, even though they know they have plenty of imperfections, and even with all the massive pressure and criticism that the opportunity would attract.

I love that kind of fighting spirit and boldness and willingness to tolerate creative tension.

How much creative tension can you tolerate?

Every change or goal you set out to achieve has two points: your vision of where you want to be and your current reality, where you stand right now. And there’s a tension between these two points – what Peter Senge calls “creative tension.” The greater the gap between your vision and your reality, the greater the tension that will build up when you articulate both your vision and your reality.

We all know that feeling when you’re starting a new venture – a business perhaps, or a new relationship, or a study course, and you tell someone about it, and about the success and rewards you’re expecting to reap. If you’ve had success with business or relationships or studies in the past, then there’s very little gap between your reality and your vision and very little tension. You’ll probably feel pretty confident telling people about it and they’ll smile and wish you well. But if you’ve just folded a business failure or you’re sitting in a disasterous relationship, or you’ve just flunked your current studies, there’s a much greater gap between your vision and your reality and there’s much more tension.

Creative tension feels a lot like anxiety, and because it feels bad, most of us try to avoid it. Sometimes we avoid it by not telling other people about our vision (which can be a good thing to do sometimes), sometimes we avoid it by not admitting to ourselves what we really want and then we walk around with a very vague vision and no sense of purpose and direction, and sometimes we avoid it by lowering our vision to a vision that seems more do-able, reasonable and realistic than what we really want.

The reason why it’s called creative tension is because that gap between your vision and your current reality is an incredible source of creative power. The greater the gap, the more creative tension there is, and the more creative and productive we become. When there’s a big gap between where we are and where you want to be, you’ll find that your left-brain is more willing to hand over the problem to your right-brain, and you employ your whole mind and come up with less linear, more creative, unique solutions.

Creative tension has to be managed

I’d hate you to think that creative tension is just about articulating a ridiculously impossible vision and then fumbling your way through it, hoping that the big gap between your vision and your reality will produce awesome results by magic or the Law of Attraction or some other bollocks. Creative tension has to be managed and channeled, so I want to give you an example of what creative tension can look like in reality, when it’s managed and channeled well.

I’ve been in the mindset of preparing the Bottom-line on Invictus – the story about Nelson Mandela’s leadership of South Africa, and I’m loving the leadership lessons I’m mining out of this book and my interview with the author and an ex-freedom fighter and political prisoner (more about that coming up over the next few weeks). Nelson Mandela was an absolute wizard with the use of creative tension:

• As a child living in a rural area in a country where Black people were sent through a low-quality education system that prepared them to do hard labor in the mines or to work as a low-level government administrator, Mandela set a vision to become a lawyer. Not only did he become a lawyer, but he also started the first Black-owned legal practice in Johannesburg.
• As an adult in a country where he didn’t even have a vote and it was illegal for him to voice his political views or form a political party, he set a vision to lead the country as our next president. He didn’t drop that vision when he was imprisoned under a life sentence. We all know how that turned out.
• In a country where everyone expected violence and civil war to break out when a Black leader was given power for the first time, Mandela set a vision for democratic negotiations and a peaceful transition to power. Again, it was a huge gap between his vision and reality. At a time when the country was on the brink of civil war, the Afrikaner right-wing factions were planning a military coup, and major political leaders were being assassinated, the idea of peace seemed pretty impossible to the average South African. But he didn’t drop his vision. Instead, he held the vision of peace even more strongly and brought reality up to meet his vision.

How do you handle creative tension?

When you’re faced with cool opportunities to do big stuff that you’re not sure you can do, do you take them up or turn them down until you’re sure you can do it?

How big is your vision? Do you articulate what you really want, or do you talk about the stuff that seems reasonable and achievable?

Are you living all-out and doing your thing even though it’s not perfect and you know there are gaps you still need to get to, or are you holding back and trying to fill in all the gaps before you’re willing to be seen?

Perfectionists: yes, I’m talking to you

I know a lot of you aspire to competence and mastery in everything you do. So do I, so I really get that. And I know for myself certainly, my perfectionism can be a sneaky form of resistance that prevents me from creating what I really love, by asking me to hold off until I feel certain that I can handle it all perfectly. Does that day ever come? Nope.

If you’re a slacker and you do everything half-assed, then ignore this article. But for the rest of you (and I’m going to bet that’s most of you), my message is that doing your thing is a form of leadership and leadership means being seen, and that’s scary for us perfectionists because we’re afraid of being seen making mistakes. Fear makes us drop the vision, and then we lose that powerful creative tension, and we never get to see what we’re really capable of. And that’s pretty sad, don’t you think?

On the other hand, when we hold to our vision, in spite of all the risks and potential obstacles, we’re more likely to engage our whole minds and all our resourcefulness in solving the problem and creating what we love, and this will open you up to discovering what you’re really capable of – and it’s always more than you think.