Navigating Tension

When Tension Finds You

Every leader who’s flown a kite understands the paradox: grip the string too tightly and you’ll snap it; let it go slack and the kite plummets. The same delicate equilibrium defines every thriving professional services firm. Too much internal tension creates rigid hierarchies, excessive oversight, competing agendas left to fester which result in your best people burn out or break away. Too little, and your firm drifts into complacency, missed deadlines, and a culture where accountability disappears. The firms that soar are those whose leaders have mastered the art of calibrating tension: enough to keep everyone leaning forward, not so much that the whole system fractures. The question isn’t whether tension exists in your organization because it always does. The question is whether you’re managing it intentionally or simply hoping the string holds.

The Hard Moments That Sparked It All

For us, the breaking point came from my executive team itself. As our sales leader began missing growth targets, the pressure manifested not as honest dialogue or shared problem solving, but as deflection. Delivery teams found themselves under constant attack when sometime not warranted (watch out for the times it was, oof). The approach was abrasive, the finger-pointing relentless, and self-accountability nowhere to be found. Meetings became minefields. Trust evaporated between departments. Eventually, the tension exceeded what the organization could bear, and the executive departed.

What followed was necessary but exhausting: months of relationship repair, rebuilding bridges between teams that had been pitted against each other, and reestablishing a culture where collaboration didn’t feel like walking on eggshells. We succeeded but perhaps too well. In our collective relief to be past the dysfunction, we may have overcorrected. The kite is no longer threatening to snap, but I worry we’ve let the string go slack.

Today, the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. The tension isn’t explosive anymore and has become hidden, unspoken, carefully avoided. Our team has become conflict averse. Challenging conversations don’t happen because people fear triggering the kind of toxicity we barely survived. Some team members carry deep scars from those earlier battles and shut down at even constructive criticism. In this environment, accountability has become optional, sales remain flat, and extra effort for the ambitious reach has diminished. We’ve traded one form of dysfunction for another. Where we once had too much friction, we now have too much comfort. And comfort, we’re learning, is just another word for stagnant. The firm isn’t breaking apart anymore, but it isn’t growing either. The kite isn’t crashing—it’s simply hovering low, never catching the wind that could lift it higher.

What I learned:

1. Tension isn’t the enemy, toxicity is. The goal isn’t to eliminate tension but to distinguish between productive friction (healthy debate, accountability, high standards) and destructive conflict (personal attacks, blame-shifting, fear). One propels growth; the other poisons culture. Name the difference explicitly with your team.

2. Psychological safety and high expectations must coexist. People need to feel safe enough to be challenged and challenge others. This means modeling vulnerability as a leader by admitting your own misses, inviting feedback on your decisions, and showing that criticism of work isn’t criticism of worth. You can’t ask for accountability if people fear career consequences for honest dialogue.

3. Create structured forums for tension. Waiting for organic conflict resolution doesn’t work, especially in a scarred culture. Build it into your rhythms: quarterly business reviews where tough questions are expected, post-mortems that examine what went wrong without blame, peer feedback sessions with clear protocols. Make discomfort predictable and contained.

4. Calibrate constantly, don’t set-and-forget. What feels like the right amount of tension in January may be suffocating by June. Regular one-on-ones should include explicit questions: “Are we pushing hard enough? Are we pushing in ways that feel sustainable?” Treat tension like the strategic variable it is.

5. Address the scars directly. You can’t move forward pretending the past didn’t happen. Have honest conversations with those still carrying trauma from the previous dysfunction. Acknowledge what happened, clarify what’s different now, and give permission for the team to hold you accountable if old patterns resurface. Healing requires acknowledgment, not avoidance.

Finding Your Altitude

I won’t pretend we’ve mastered this. In fact, we are working hard to figure it out. The truth is, there’s no perfect calibration, no moment when you nail the balance and get to walk away. Flying the kite requires constant attention to the wind, the string, the altitude. What worked last quarter might not work next quarter. What one team needs might suffocate another.

But here’s what I know now that I didn’t know before: you can’t outsource this work, and you can’t avoid it. The tension will exist whether you manage it or not. Left unattended, it will either snap your organization apart or let it drift into irrelevance. Somewhere in between, where the work is challenging, the expectations are clear, and your best people want to stay because they’re growing, not just surviving.

That’s the altitude we’re aiming for. The string is in our hands. Time to fly.