Lingering questions about interactional, goal, and system tension

In my last article, I introduced three ways leaders might challenge teams to the limit of performance. Each approach requires provoking some discomfort in others, by making them aware of the gap between the status quo and an aspirational goal. The idea is that making people aware of that ‘gap’ or ‘discrepancy’ produces discomfort, which in turn generates motivation to close that gap.

In that previous article, I outlined how leaders might elicit this discomfort in three ways: a) through their interactions (e.g., by challenging, pushing, applying pressure, using different types of questioning, etc), b) in how they set goals (e.g., using bold, stretchy, difficult yet clear goals), and c) by constructing impersonal systems, structures, processes and physical environments surrounding the team that cue high performance (e.g., tight KPI metrics, accountability or tracking systems, incentive structures etc).

I labelled these three forms of challenge a) interactional tension, b) goal tension, and c) system tension.

In this article, I’d like to share some of the lingering questions that were scurrying through my mind as I wrote the previous article. I don’t have perfect answers to these questions, but I find them thought provoking, and worthwhile to consider. I'm sharing my 'not yet fully formed' thoughts with you in case they stimulate deeper thinking about your own leadership approach.

Lingering questions

Do leaders in entrepreneurial companies rely more on interactional tension, and less on system tension, to drive high performance?

I’ve been wondering if earlier stage companies, which are entrepreneurial and less saturated with processes, rely more on interactional than system tension to drive high performance. Here I’m imagining an entrepreneurial visionary who uses their sheer ‘force of will’ to reach down into the ranks of the organization, and personally encourage, cajole, challenge, push, pressure, and question others in ways that drives the company forward to a more profitable state. In this case, the leader is the initiator, the source of most challenges, since few if any processes exist that could generate a similar nudge. Building on this idea further, when those same companies grow and become more mature, when the tribal knowledge of how to do things becomes codified in processes and structures and systems, do leaders then start to rely less on interactional tension, and more on system tension to drive high performance? Furthermore, when the founder/entrepreneur/leader reaches this inflection point where their business becomes more robust in its processes, can they adapt to relying more on system tension? They would have grown up in the business exerting a relatively authoritative, perhaps even at times authoritarian posture. They might have been using interactional tension for years, successfully. And perhaps they associate being the initiator or source of the challenge as ‘entrepreneurial,’ and any notion of relying on system tension as ‘bureaucratic’ and undesirable. As the company grows, I can imagine it might be hard for a leader to pivot, to turn off the interactional tension, to allow the system of rewards/incentives, accountability mechanisms, and processes to become the source of the challenge. It might be hard for them to trust that people can be pushed by something other than them, that they – as the leader - don’t have to be responsible for challenging others all the time.

Does system tension – in addition to stretching people to do more - also contain and channel intrateam competitive energy?

One way that I’ve thought about system tension is as an impersonal force that compels teams or individuals to stretch themselves further to reach a high performance goal. For example, knowing there’s a recurring accountability meeting every Monday to discuss progress on the change management plan, might help motivate you to work harder at making progress against your goals related to the plan. At the same time, high performance teams often contain intense competitive energy, which can sometimes express itself as seething internal rivalries. How do you channel all that energy? How do you nudge, or shunt it in the right direction, instead of allowing it to turn inward at other team members, in a destructive, fratricidal way? I started to wonder if perhaps system tension is not just important for stretching the team and its horizons, and challenging, pushing, and pulling them to do more than they think they’re capable of. But maybe another function of system tension – and I don’t know if this is system tension or just system variables – is to contain, shape, or channel that ‘wild’ competitive energy towards constructive, goal directed activity, so that it doesn’t degrade the inner workings of the team.

Do goals, once set and formalized, become forces of system tension?

When I created this ‘tripartite’ structure of interactional, goal, and system tension, I spent time thinking about whether a goal is a unique form of tension, different and separable from system tension. I tend to think about system tension as more durable structures, processes, policies, and physical environmental features that cue high performance – independent of anything the leader says or does. These forces sit in the background, are less overt or perceptible, and encourage high performance, in an ambient way. But once a goal is set, accepted, and committed to, does that goal become part of that same ambient environment? In the end, I decided to define goal tension and system tension as separate ‘things’ in part because goal setting is a complex task for leaders that involves many considerations, like how much difficulty to infuse into the goal, whether to set a ‘goal’ or a ‘rule,’ and how much to break down the goal into smaller pieces/parts (sometimes called ‘atomization’). By defining it as a separate step, perhaps this helps leaders to focus on the nuances involved in it. Once the goal is set, and everyone agrees to it, then it may become a form of system tension, an impersonal force, independent of the leader, that is just ‘there’ but nonetheless challenges the team members to higher performance.

Are challenging, pushing and pressure all the same thing?

They all sound pretty similar. 😊 I tend to think of challenging, pushing, and pressure – all facets of interactional tension – as existing on a continuum. Challenging is a gentler, more autonomy-preserving form of nudging people towards high performance; pushing involves slightly more assertion; and pressure is the most top down version in that it infringes on the autonomy of the receiver, and involves minimal or no consideration of the needs of the other person. The labels may be confusing but hopefully the progressive continuum of assertion and forcefulness are clear. One other point - as I’ve developed this model, I’ve found myself using the terms ‘hard’ vs ‘soft’ to categorize different ways leaders can challenge, push or pull, and I think these can be helpful to keep in mind. ‘Hard’ approaches tend to involve either a) more intensity, assertion, and forcefulness, or b) less mixing of the challenge with warm, relational, supportive behaviours. In other words, a ‘hard’ approach is really high on assertiveness, or it doesn’t include the buffering influence of relational behaviours. By contrast, a ‘soft’ approach might involve less assertiveness or intensity, or it might contain a higher ratio of relational behaviours. My point is that challenging, as I defined it in my last article, is ‘soft’ and more relational in tone. Pressure, by contrast, is more on the ‘hard’ end of the spectrum. Pushing may sit somewhere in between, combining both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ elements.

Do ‘softer’ challenges work better when stimulating thinking, and ‘harder’ challenges work better when encouraging action?

I tend to think leaders can use their challenges to animate two general kinds of behaviours in others: action or thinking. Another pair of words that works here is deliberation vs implementation. For example, in some cases, maybe the leader wants to encourage the team to stop ‘spinning’ (i.e., ruminating) in an analytical mode, and take more tangible steps to create progress. Yet in other cases, the leader might want the team to engage in a more rigorous, thoughtful, deeper debate of critical issues. Maybe there’s a sense that the team is only giving superficial coverage to key issues, and that they need to question assumptions and perspectives more pointedly. As I thought about challenging for action/implementation vs thinking/deliberation, I started to wonder if ‘harder’ approaches – i.e., more assertive, more top down, less collaborative, less relational – might be useful for encouraging people to ‘do’ something, but less useful when contributing to deeper thinking. For instance, if a leader uses a ‘hard’ approach when asking people to think differently, does that produce a stress response, narrow thinking, and reduce the likelihood of surfacing creative perspectives? Would a ‘soft’ approach be a better fit when challenging thinking, since it provides some nudge to stimulate a change, but not so much that stress interferes with clarity of thought? (It’s interesting to note that ‘Intellectual Stimulation,’ which I’ve described in my last article, and which encourages creative and deeper thinking, is a relatively ‘soft’ approach). In contrast, does a more forceful, ‘hard’ approach help people take action? Since taking action may be somewhat mechanical, and doesn’t require deep or creative thinking, perhaps a strong or even stressful stimulus helps jolt people out of complacency, and facilitates them doing ‘something.’

What does system tension look like in the world of sports?

In early 2024, I had the opportunity to present this ‘tripartite’ framework to a high performance sport organization in western Canada. The audience included athletes, coaches, and sport administrators. In the run up to that presentation, I had many conversations with stakeholders, about how these concepts might apply to the world of sport. In one dialogue, I remember talking about sport related examples of system tension – a concept that some of the stakeholders found particularly interesting, I think because they felt it could be more powerful than interactional tension. In that discussion I gave one example of how system tension might work in professional sport, namely the pro rugby leagues I followed in Europe. Often those competitions use a points system to rank teams. Of course, teams that win games earn more points. However, even losing teams are incentivized to earn points by a) scoring a certain number of ‘tries’ (similar to touchdowns in American football), or b) by keeping the game close (i.e., losing by less than 7 points). This ‘structural’ design creates some interesting incentives. I’ve watched some games that reach the dying minutes, and are no longer competitive (e.g., the winning team leads by more than 20 points). And yet in those same games, the losing team drives themselves – frenetically, almost maniacally - to their limit, to score one additional ‘try’ in the hopes of securing a ‘losing’ bonus point. There’s no chance they will win the game. The stadium is empty. No one is left cheering. Yet the team continues to push themselves in a maximalist way, and summon incredible reserves of energy. To me this is an example of system tension, where the structures and incentives of the tournament push the losing team to higher levels of achievement than they otherwise would strive for.

Tim Jackson, Ph.D. is the President of Jackson Leadership Inc., and a leadership expert with 18 years of experience assessing and coaching executives in service of increasing their effectiveness. He has worked with leaders across a variety of sectors, including agriculture, chemicals, consumer products, finance, logistics, manufacturing, media, not-for-profit, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and utilities and power generation, including multiple private-equity owned businesses. He has also worked with leaders across numerous functional areas, including sales, marketing, supply chain, finance, information technology, operations, sustainability, charitable, general management, health and safety, and quality control, and across hierarchical levels from individual contributors to CEOs. Tim has also worked with leaders across Canada, the US, Western Europe, and China.

Tim has published his research and ideas on leadership in various outlets, including Forbes.com, The Globe and Mail, peer-reviewed journals, and several HR trade magazines. He also writes about leadership topics often in his newsletter at www.timjacksonphd.com. He has also shared details of his coaching practice at leading conferences like the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP).

He has a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from The University of Western Ontario, and is based in Toronto, ON.

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