It was Late August and we were deep into our school planning process having the kind of conversations that start with optimism and end with more questions than answers.
Our staff had gathered to articulate our priorities for the year ahead: student engagement, attendance, and discipline. These weren’t new issues, but the patterns had become hard to ignore. Engagement had slipped; attendance was uneven; classroom discipline was taking more time and energy than anyone wanted to admit.
As we talked, two themes began to surface. Some staff emphasized the need for higher expectations such as clearer consequence, more accountability, stronger standards for discipline. Others spoke passionately about connection, relationships, and understanding what was driving student disengagement in the first place.
Both perspectives were deeply rooted in care for students. Yet the conversation grew tense, as though we were trying to manage two equally important priorities pulling in different directions. This planning process helped me realize that maybe our challenge wasn’t to pick a side, but to learn how to balance them effectively.
The Productive Discomfort of Creative Tension
Peter Senge (1990) describes creative tension as the energy that emerges when we hold two realities in view: the truth of where we are and the vision of where we want to be. The space between those two isn’t a gap to close in frustration. Rather, it’s the engine of learning and change.
I first explored this concept with Terry Taylor at a meeting with Kootenay-Boundary Compassionate Systems Leadership Network, where we practiced holding organizational tension with curiosity and care. In our school planing meetings, the staff were living inside that tension. We knew our vision: a school where students feel connected, challenged, and proud of their learning. We also knew our current reality: many students were disengaged, drifting, or absent.
The discomfort was palpable. Could we make it productive? Creative tension asks leaders to resist the urge to collapse the gap too quickly and instead hold honesty and hope, reality and possibility, simultaneously. Like a piano string, tension is what allows the vibration necessary to make music. In school leadership, tension is an energy that can fuels insight and progress to our edging closer to our vision of a thriving learning community.
Naming What Can’t Be Solved
Reflecting later, it became clear that some challenges weren’t problems to fix but polarities to manage. Barry Johnson (1996) describes polarities as ongoing, interdependent pairs that both hold value. Some examples in education are: compliance v. restorative (discipline); inclusion v. segregation; and teacher centric v. student-centred instruction.
I learned about polarity management from Andrea McComb in the BCPVPA course, Navigating Difficult Conversations, where polarity mapping was presented as a practical tool for sustaining dialogue amidst competing priorities. In our school plan session, we weren’t debating which approach was “right.” We were naming a polarity that has been with education forever: the need for both firmness and compassion.
Too much structure without empathy breeds compliance and resentment. Too much empathy without structure leads to inconsistency and frustration. Polarity management helps leaders make that balance explicit, shifting the conversation from “you’re wrong” to “what would it look like if we held both?” This shift could transform our discussions. Tension could become productive.
How the Theories Complement Each Other
Creative Tension and Polarity Management describe two layers of the same leadership reality:
- Creative Tension provides direction. It’s the pull between vision and current reality that motivates progress.
- Polarity Management provides balance. It’s the awareness that sustaining progress requires managing interdependent values.
Without creative tension, schools risk stagnation. Without polarity thinking, they risk fragmentation. Together, they can form a system that moves forward with purpose while maintaining coherence.
Creative tension keeps our eyes on what matters. We all want schools where students are engaged, challenged, and cared for. Polarity management helps us navigate the reality that engagement and discipline must coexist as complementary values. The two frameworks become inseparable: one fueling movement, the other sustaining equilibrium.
Leadership as the Discipline of Balance
Both Creative Tension and Polarity Management encourage curiosity. They remind us that discomfort is a signal of learning, not failure. When school leaders can maintain balance while honoring tension, they create space for new understanding.
Leading a school often feels like walking a line between competing truths. How do we balance academic rigor and well-being, innovation and stability, student voice and adult responsibility? It can be tempting to simplify these tensions into either/or choices. The longer I lead, the more I see that leadership could be less about solving problems and more about balancing them wisely.
References
Johnson, B. (1998, June). Polarity management: A summary introduction. Polarity Management Associates. https://pearsfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Polarity-Management-Barry-Johnson-summary.pdf
Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday.
