Lately I’ve been thinking about what might cause motivated leaders to contemplate stepping down from their roles.
Here’s one explanation: Leadership used to be simpler. At least it felt that way. Problems were discrete. Answers were clearer. And conditions felt more predictable.
Today’s leaders face something different—a world defined less by problems to solve and more by polarities to navigate. What do I mean by “polarities to navigate”? It’s a fancy way of describing a pair of values each of which matters over time. For example:
“I must deliver results and maintain quality.”
“Team members need autonomy and we have to stay aligned as a team.”
“I want to create a positive team culture and maintain high standards of performance.”
In my last post, I referenced a conversation Shelley and I had while discussing our Synthesis Leadership program. We were talking about how leaders can feel overwhelmed when they experience tensions as impossible either/or choices rather than as polarities. It can be overwhelming to set priorities or make effective decisions.
Before we explore what’s possible, let’s do a deeper dive into why as leaders we fall into either/or thinking in the first place. When we’re overwhelmed or depleted, our nervous systems shift into a survival response. This is often described as fight, flight, freeze, or appease. In that state, the brain defaults to simple binary choices designed to keep us alive.
That’s adaptive if a bear is charging. It’s far less helpful in a performance review or strategy discussion.
The capacity to hold polarities is not primarily intellectual—it’s physiological.
When you feel grounded and supported, your nervous system can tolerate complexity and ambiguity. Your brain can hold both/ands without collapsing into “pick one.”
But here’s an important point:
If the conditions in your system cause you to be chronically overloaded, even the most self-aware person will default to binary thinking.
This isn’t about personal failure or reframing harder. It’s about whether the surrounding conditions support the capacity for you to make nuanced choices.
Here’s a practical example of changing the conditions, not the person.
One of my coaching clients was struggling with holding her team to high performance expectations and still fostering a positive team culture.
At first, she saw this as an internal tug-of-war: Should she focus on accountability or compassion?
Once we slowed down and she found a sense of groundedness, the question shifted to:
What in my environment is making this tension unmanageable?
Together, we made specific, concrete adjustments:
She identified which expectations were true priorities vs. inherited habits no longer serving the work.
She redistributed approval authority so fewer issues bottlenecked at her desk.
She blocked focused work periods and protected them publicly.
She named the tension directly with her manager and requested agreed-upon tradeoffs.
She clarified expectations with her team so they didn’t live only in her head.
The workload didn’t magically shrink. But the system around her did redistribute pressure.
She didn’t resolve the polarity of care and accountability. She created conditions where both could coexist sustainably.
Here are some questions to reflect on: Where in your leadership are you treating a polarity like a problem to fix rather than a tension to design for? And what system changes might make space for holding both sides well?
👉 Curious what this kind of work could look like for you? Explore the Synthesis Leadership program. We’re launching a course in early 2026.