In Part 1, I introduced the concept of differentiation as a critical attribute for a leader to possess in the face of organizational anxiety. Together we defined anxiety and the problems it causes, and provided clues for you to use to assess whether you are in a highly anxious organization.
In Part 2, since all organizations contain at least some level of anxiety, we’ll dive into what you can do in order to lead most effectively in an anxious organization.
How do you lead well when you’re inside an anxious system?
To lead well within a highly anxious system, four truths are important to recognize:
- Recognize that, you too, have anxiety
- Recognize that responding in anxious ways only perpetuates the anxiety and keeps an organization or person “stuck”.
- Recognize that you cannot change others.
- Recognize that we must make room for people, organizations, leaders, members, etc. to be “in process,” not “fixed” and to “disagree” with us, even excluding us.
Recognize that, you too, have anxiety
All of us choose these ineffective strategies in order to “lower” the anxiety in our lives. It is not that “other people” are highly anxious. Rather, it is to recognize that I am responding to these anxious people/situations in ways that reflect my own navigation of anxiety. My response reflects more about me than what the situation needs. In other words, I’m negotiating my own anxiety with these strategies. While I’ve likely told myself that I make these choices in order to help others, we often are unaware of how influential is the latent anxiety within our lives that has its genesis in our families of origin.
Recognize that responding in anxious ways only perpetuates the anxiety and keeps an organization or person “stuck”.
We help others by inviting them to a process that has hopefully begun in our own lives. We must resist allowing ourselves to be the rescuing person, even when attached. We must be willing to be perceived as cruel, insensitive or harsh if we are to address the deepest hurts/wounds of others.
We must have the courage to confront someone about their deficiencies and then to stand in the moment and deal with their reaction, which may not be pleasant. It is a selfless act, one rooted in a word that I don’t use lightly in a business book: love. To hold someone accountable is to care about them enough to risk having them blame you for pointing out their deficiencies. 1
Recognize that we cannot change others.
The Man Upstairs can change others. I cannot.
His timetable is usually different than mine. Stress comes from interfering in relationships.
Recognize that we must make room for people, organizations, leaders, members, etc. to be “in process,” not “fixed” and to “disagree” with us, even excluding us.
For years, I’ve worked with families in crisis. From this work, one observation still floors me: the families we were most invested in, the ones we thought we helped the most seemed to feel the least cared for.
The Benefit of Greater Effectiveness: Practical Applications
The upshot of all of this is that my focus as a leader is not to be problem focused or even solution focused. Rather, my first responsibility is to lead myself well within a highly anxious system. Knowing and taking responsibility for self then clarifies things for an individual, it also invites others, which is empowering in its own right, to take responsibility for themselves too. This is the hard part!
There is no greater need in highly anxious systems than that of non-anxious, well-differentiated leadership, which remains calm, thoughtfully engages challenges and courageously acts to do what it thinks “right,” even when it may not be approved or appreciated by many in the system.
The leader’s responsible and enlightened behavior will influence the situation more than any other action. 2
Therefore, remaining calm, being guided by principle and having the courage to act are essential.
Break the cycle
It is important to distinguish well-differentiated leadership from autocratic leadership. We are not talking about someone who merely tells others what to do. Rather, we are talking about someone who takes well-defined, principled stands and is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can be separate while still remaining connected, and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence. I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity to the automatic reactivity of others, and therefore be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing. 3
A well defined stand is not the right stand. You just have your reasons. It’s not about trying to be right. A well defined stand is rooted in differentiation, not in values. Someone will say you are wrong and they might be right.
What’s crucial in leadership is not being right, it’s being able to be wrong yet still move forward.
Don’t harbor terrorists
In order to move forward, well-defined, non-anxious positions must be enacted and maintained by the leader(s). It is understood that taking those sorts of positions will be experienced as painful for the organization’s most anxious members. Nevertheless, avoiding that pain has the undesirable impact of holding the entire system hostage to the least mature, most anxious member(s).
Resist false peace
Clearly defined, non-anxious leadership promotes healthy differentiation throughout a system, while reactive, peace-at-all-costs, anxious leadership does the opposite. 4
Progress is through pain
There is no way out of a chronic condition unless one is willing to go through an acute, temporarily more painful, phase. This is another universal principle of emotional process…. Most individuals and most social systems, irrespective of their culture, gender, or ethnic background, will “naturally” choose or revert to chronic conditions of bearable pain rather than face the temporarily more intense anguish of acute conditions that are the gateway to become free. But what is also universally true is that over time, chronic conditions, precisely because they are more bearable, also tend to become more withering.” 5
Focus on self
There is no replacement for maintaining focus on self, which is an awareness of one’s own emotional being, reactivity and how the system is impacting your behavior. It is not the leader’s responsibility to change others, but to become a more mature self amidst the swirl of relationships.
Mature leadership begins with the leader’s capacity to take responsibility for his or her own emotional being and destiny.” 6
Stay in your lane
People cannot hear you unless they are moving toward you, which means that as long as you are in a pursuing or rescuing position, your message will never catch up, no matter how eloquently or repeatedly you articulate your ideas.” 7
Stress is due to becoming responsible for the relationships of others.
People do not start listening to us until we stop “chasing” them. When we focus on self, we not only seek to address our own anxiety, we make room for others to hear our message. Instead of responding with anxiety to “our” anxiety, they are able to process a well-defined stance. They may not like it, but they are finally listening. A focus on others keeps us stuck in a swirl of reactivity.
The immature person who won’t take care of themselves. As long as we chase them we are enabling them. When we stop we are loving them.
Conclusion
Differentiation and maintaining a non-anxious presence is always a process, which is never finally complete. Differentiation should be the direction of self that informs our leadership decisions. Since it is part of our lifelong process of growth, we are never free from these challenges and areas of growth always remain. 8
- Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012) 57)
- Peter Steinke, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Press, 2006) 7.
- Edwin Friedman, A Failure of Nerve (New York: Seabury Books, 2017), 81.
- Edwin Friedman, A Failure of Nerve (New York: Seabury Books, 2017), 203.
- Edwin Friedman, A Failure of Nerve (New York: Seabury Books, 2017), 81.
- Edwin Friedman, A Failure of Nerve (New York: Seabury Books, 2017), 81.
- Edwin Friedman, A Failure of Nerve (New York: Seabury Books, 2017), 203.
- With gratitude to Dr. Tom Gibbs, whose Doctoral dissertation on leadership, family systems, and church planting greatly inspired and informed these posts.
