What if the discomfort you're trying to avoid is the very thing that could grow you?
In her PhD research, leadership scholar and coach Alis Anagnostakis introduced a powerful concept: the Contrasting Emotions Space (CES). It describes the developmental zone where leaders feel multiple, often opposing emotions at once, courage and fear, hope and grief, clarity and confusion, and instead of trying to resolve or escape them, they learn to hold them.
This space, Anagnostakis found, is where vertical growth, the deep, identity-level kind, takes root. But it's not easy to stay there.
In fact, many leaders never do. Because discomfort often feels like danger. Especially in high-stakes environments where performance pressure is intense, there's a strong pull to default to habit, control, and certainty. But those habits can keep leaders stuck in old operating systems, repeating the same behaviours, even when they know something needs to shift.
Discomfort ≠ Danger
Neuroscience helps explain why CES is so hard to stay in. According to Rick Hanson, psychologist and author, the human brain is 'like Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good.' We're wired to notice threat, and to avoid what's uncomfortable. Hanson's work on distress tolerance, our ability to stay with difficult emotions without reacting or shutting down, is key here. It's not just mindset. It's nervous system regulation.
For many leaders, low distress tolerance translates into:
- Avoiding hard conversations
- Defaulting to control
- Withdrawing from feedback
- Projecting confidence while internally panicking
When this becomes habitual, leaders miss the opportunity to grow. And their teams feel it.
From reactive to reflective: what CES enables
When leaders develop the capacity to stay in CES, to be present with their discomfort rather than fix it, they begin to move from reactive to reflective.
They gain the ability to:
- Observe their emotions without being hijacked by them
- Inquire into the deeper beliefs behind their discomfort
- Choose responses that align with their values, not their fears
This is where vertical growth happens. Not just learning new skills, but upgrading the operating system that runs those skills.
At Alteva, we work with leaders to build this capacity, often through practices that invite them into CES, gently but intentionally:
- Real-time coaching in high-stakes conversations
- Leadership reviews where direct reports give structured feedback
- Team rituals that surface emotional truth, not just intellectual alignment
Over time, leaders learn to stay in the discomfort long enough to find the deeper meaning, and the new pattern.
What enables CES?
According to Anagnostakis' research and Alteva's fieldwork, four conditions help leaders access and benefit from CES:
- Emotional literacy. The ability to name and feel complex emotions, rather than bypass or suppress them.
- Psychological safety. Especially in peer groups or coaching contexts, this creates the container for truth-telling and risk-taking.
- Meta-awareness. The capacity to notice thoughts, feelings, and somatic cues in real time, and respond with intention.
- Inner permission. A mindset that allows the leader to not know, to pause, and to be seen in the process of change.
These are not soft skills. They are strategic assets, especially in a world where complexity outpaces certainty, and where leadership isn't just about expertise but about adaptability.
The risk of skipping CES
When leaders bypass CES, the cost isn't just personal, it's cultural. Here's what we see:
- Feedback loops close down
- Teams become more performative, less honest
- Innovation flattens
- Trust erodes subtly, then sharply
All because discomfort got mistaken for danger.
Staying with the shift
Vertical growth is not a linear climb, it's a series of pauses in the middle of tension. CES is where the old story meets the emerging one.
It's not always comfortable. But it is where transformation begins.
And the best leaders, the ones whose presence elevates everyone around them, are the ones who learn not to escape it, but to stay with it.
That's the work. That's the space. That's where leadership grows.
