Aspiration

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Aspiration

Written by Ray Jorgensen, Ph.D.

Leaders design, implement and steward an active environment where individuals and teams
within the organization can realize and achieve their full potential. People will feel motivated
when two conditions exist in the system almost simultaneously: current reality and the
desired future reality. Peter Senge speaks about this idea as an “integrating principle” in
almost all of his publications dealing with the five disciplines.
Once an adult clearly understand how his/her performance contributes to the
accomplishment of specific results, a current performance reality is established. To establish
creative tension, the team member must be able to compare and contrast the current reality
with the desired outcome. Exactly what must I do differently to help move my team in the
preferred direction? As the leader, you must enable a type of tension between the results
which the current performance is generating now and that which is mutually agreed to be the
expected and possible performance result. For example, a dentist is dissatisfied with his new
assistant’s performance in supporting the insertion of a “crown.” The assistant will never
develop the desired technique until he first recognizes how he is currently performing the
job and contrasts that with the specific behaviors he could adopt to help the dentist more
effectively. The assistant who holds both concepts as mental tension will self-monitor,
correct mistakes, and in other ways move from the current reality to the desired
performance. And whose job is it to provide that creative tension? The dentist’s—the leader
who will ultimately benefit from the assistant’s improved performance, making patient care
and satisfaction better and moving the entire team toward a better dental practice.
This unfolding tension presents the condition of aspiration for the individual and also for the
team. Focusing solely on the desired future condition or current reality removes the tension
you are interested in developing. How well parents of small children would do to heed that
notion! We have all heard the demand to “clean up this mess,” but a four-year-old is
incapable of envisioning the desired result. She can see only the current reality: the toys
strewn here and there, the overwhelming heap of items to be “cleaned up.” The frustrated
parent knows exactly what a “cleaned up room” looks like. It is now the parent’s role, as
leader, to help the child recognize and hold both realities in mind simultaneously. Adult
learners, with their vastly extended life experience, will do this more easily, but it is still the
job of the leader to patiently help them create the mental tension.
Creative tension enables motivation in teams and individuals. A few guiding ideas help keep
this practice on the radar screen.

A. Establishing creative tension enables personal and team aspiration.

B. Aspiring to continuous improvement must be modeled by the leader and all on the
leadership team.

C. The leader must initiate and maintain creative tension by holding both the current
reality results and the desired future reality results simultaneously with individuals
and teams.

D. Once desired future reality results are being attained, new creative tension must be
designed.

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