This study aims at increasing our knowledge about the national school leadership program in Norway by investigating how school leaders describe new tensions they experience in their day-to-day practices after they have finished the program. Through analyses of focus group interviews and e-mail interviews with previous school leader students, three areas of tension are identified. These tensions are in this article described as balancing exercises. The first balancing exercise is situated between expectations and new demands, the second one is described as balancing between being close to and being distant from the teachers, and the third balancing exercise focuses on the situation where some