Time Under Tension

I first heard this phrase during my workout classes with FightCamp. The instructors are super-motivating, especially at 7 am in my garage with only the cobwebs to keep me company. Along with the phrases “showing up is the hardest part”, “last round, best round”, and “the pursuit is the reward”, I keep coming back to “time under tension.” This is used for strength workouts where the emphasis is on perfecting form and moving fluidly through the exercises, not on number of reps or speed.

There are so many other applications I found for this phrase. Whenever I’ve hit a bump in the road, whether personally or professionally, my instinct is to try to move past it as quickly as possible. I’m always trying to skip to the good part, telling myself, “Yes, this sucks. Now let’s move on and see what’s next.” I thought that was a strong mindset, not dwelling on the negative but pushing toward the positive. But that’s not how it works and more importantly, it’s to my detriment to maintain that mindset.

Tension has two definitions – the state of being stretched tight and mental or emotional strain. I think of it as a rubber band and I’m forever negotiating how to manage the tension before the rubber band snaps.

Right now, I have a super cool opportunity to create a course from scratch on any topic of my choosing for my alma mater. It’s really exciting and there are endless possibilities, but once I put pen to paper, I realize this is a big task and start asking myself, am I qualified and how do I know what topic will be the best for the target audience and what if I fail and…. there’s the tension. That’s when my daydreaming kicks in, imagining myself at the finish line instead of focusing on the present and that work that needs to get done. But this is exactly where time under tension is so critical. Of course I won’t get it perfect the first time. Of course it’s going to take a lot of work. But it’s this moment where I’m at my growing edge, under tension, that I can strengthen my skills.

More often, we experience time under tension in less positive situations. Undergoing a massive organizational restructuring creates a lot of tension, and not just for me or the other owners. Every employee is effected by the decisions we make, good and bad, and the number of times I need to course-correct. We pride ourselves on being a very agile and adaptive organization but what that means for every employee is that their expectations change frequently, and as the organization grows, the way we communicate internally needs to also grow. This make for a tense environment, but it also presents an enormous opportunity for growth and discovery.

While an organization spends time under tension, individuals within the organization find out what they do and don’t like about their performance expectations. Perhaps this tension is pushing them out of what they’ve always done and into what they’d like to be doing instead. I have a lot of friends and family that are experiencing prolonged time under tension at their workplaces, specifically two of my sisters-in-law. Despite the negative aspects of downsizing departments and departing leadership, they’ve remained at their organizations instead of looking for new opportunities. Why? Because the time under tension has strengthened their focus and they have had to weigh, almost daily, the pros and cons of how they fit into that organization. And so far, the pros have won out. If they had left their positions once the tension started, they acknowledge they wouldn’t have been in a better place. They’ve spent years at their current organizations, built relationships, proven their competency to leadership, and have been rewarded with autonomy and flexibility in return, which suit their lifestyle needs at this moment in time. Having to learn a new job, new organization, new leadership, along with proving competency and building trust, just to be able to say to their manager, “Hey, my kid needs to get picked up from school. I’ve got to log off now but I’ll have this project finished by the end of the day” may not be worth it if they have that already at their current job. It takes a lot of time to build up that relationship with an organization and it’s worth spending the time under tension to hone your own individual skills and priorities, and come out the other side with a better perspective of what you’re capable of and what matters the most to you. If after that time under tension, you’re no longer aligned with your organization, then you have the answers you need to move forward. But as long as your organization is ethical and the tension has a purpose to move towards better positioning, you won’t be detrimentally effected by this time under tension.

For me, time under tension makes me a better leader. I’m getting better at fighting the immediate urge to put my head down and plow through the tension, instead sitting in the uncomfortable environments I’ve created for the end goal of growth. It’s made me, already a chronic over-thinker, think even more about every single change I’m trying to push my organization towards. Every goal I have in mind, how it benefits the company now and how it will benefit it years down the road. How it will benefit myself and my contributions to the organization. And after experiencing so much time under tension, I have had the most clarity about the future path of my organization than ever before. Because I’ve sat in that tension for so long, and questioned every single thing, I am more confident than ever that the decisions are the right ones.

If you’re lacking that clarity, I invite you to spend some time under tension. Push yourself and others in your organization to evaluate expectations, put in place long term goals and a path to achieve them, and consider how your personal goals align with those organizational objectives. If everyone is a little uncomfortable with whether or not they can handle these new goals, you’ve made it to time under tension. Now the real work starts towards growth and change management.