Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
You know your business needs to change, but you’re caught in the emotional and relational dynamics that are holding you back. Welcome to Noble Metal, the podcast that helps you forge a new kind of leadership. Host Phillip Weiss, a seasoned executive coach and organizational consultant, reveals how to become a more resilient, deliberate, and less-anxious leader.
Through powerful insights based on Bowen Theory and systems thinking, you’ll learn to navigate complex workplace relationships, manage challenging strategic issues, and lead your team to sustainable change. Get the clarity and tools you need to forge a new path for your business.
Ep04_v2
===
[00:00:00]
Phillip Weiss: Welcome to Noble Metal, where we look at leadership at work and life through the lens of Bowen Family Systems theory. One of the core assumptions of Bowen theory is simple, but not necessarily easy, and that is that people do not operate as isolated individuals. To quote John Dunn, the famous British poet, no Man is an island.
We function as part of [00:01:00] larger emotional systems. Families are systems leadership teams are systems, churches and other non-family groups are systems. And these systems carry tension and anxiety. And so today we're gonna talk about what happens to those systems under stress, specifically how anxiety shows up, how it spreads, and why so many of our reactions may actually make sense even when they're not always helpful.
So two ideas I really want you to hold onto as we get into this. First is that anxious reactivity is often an attempt to find relief when we're anxious. When we're not al we're not always looking for wisdom, and when tension is high, we're not always thinking about a strategy. When anxiety is in the air, sometimes all we can think about is how can I get relief from this?
Because in some ways it's kind of painful. Just like a headache. I take an aspirin, I want quick relief. The other thing to be thinking about is that [00:02:00] anxiousness is very contagious. It moves through systems whether we acknowledge it or not. So we're gonna explore these dynamics and more through a typical organizational event.
Then we're gonna identify the five predictable relationship patterns under stress, which can be really actually helpful to, to get a sense of those. And finally, we're gonna begin just kind of slightly talk about what leaders can actually begin to do when anxiety is more or less running the show. I wanna make a quick comment about theory as we get going here.
With this theory or really any concept that we might present. My objective as a facilitator is to literally encourage you, the listener, to do your own best thinking on these topics. It's not necessarily what I tell you, but it's really about what you tell yourself. And so I would ask, you know, what makes sense to you?
What doesn't? What could you explore [00:03:00] more? What's helpful, what's not? So as they say, take what you like and leave the rest. There's no obligation to own any of this, but if the concepts are useful, get curious. Illuminations Corporation, a super successful lighting manufacturing company. They built several notable global products.
They've earned a strong reputation in the marketplace, but like many companies, their success rests on a fragile reality, and that is that they are highly dependent on three key suppliers. Ryan is ACEC, EO. He's pretty new to the role, but not new to leadership. He's experienced, he's. Pretty confident and generally well-liked.
In fact, there's actually kind of an era of excitement in the company. People are feeling really hopeful. One defining feature of Ryan's leadership style is his emphasis on closeness. That whole togetherness thing, if you remember, he strongly encourages almost in a way, kind of [00:04:00] insists that his executive team be pretty tight.
He wants collaboration, harmony, alignment, et cetera. All good sounding things. Open disagreement isn't really forbidden, but it is kind of subtly discouraged. Getting along clearly is valued and then the pressure hits, things hit the fan, the cost in particular, the cost of materials begin to skyrocket.
Rocket and a near perfect storm forms one critical material becomes scarce. At the same time as a new, as new government regulations start driving up supply costs. Ryan's instinctive response is to bring people even closer together. He pulls the executive team into an offsite meeting for a couple days, hoping that concentrated this time together will generate solutions.
But something interesting happens, people start holding back. No one wants to rock the boat. There's a lot of polite agreement, cautious language, [00:05:00] and even some half-formed ideas that never quite land. Everybody is feeling the pressure, but nobody is really naming it. By the morning of the second day, Sean, the EVP of operations, can't hold it anymore, and frustrated.
He blurts out his concerns and throws several ideas onto the table declaring Here's what we need to do. Very definitive. The room reacts immediately. Amanda and Alex visibly shut down. They retreat emotionally. Pulling back from conversation. Blake, the VP of supply chain grows. Very uncomfortable and quietly excuses himself to quote unquote take a call leaving the room.
But then Alicia, the CFO jumps into action as she's kind of prone to do. She moves up to the whiteboard and starts outlining next steps, trying to bring some order and clarity. Interestingly, Ryan, who's usually decisive, sits back. He lets Alicia lead what kind of really is a sort of semi productive discussion.
And then later during the break, Amanda and Alex, they [00:06:00] peel off and talk about just what happened or what just happened, and they wonder out loud why Ryan didn't actually step up. What we're seeing here is not necessarily a leadership failure in the moral sense. It's, it is, this is actually, in some sense, a system under stress doing exactly what systems tend to do, get reactive.
So let's, let's slow this down a little bit. Let's step back. In Bowen theory, anxiety is not a diagnosis. It's not a pathology, it's, it's not weakness. The anxiety that I'm speaking about here, and we use the term, you'll notice I've used the term tension, anxiousness, anxiety, stress. I use those interchangeably.
I'm speaking of a natural emotional attention tension that arises in response to real or imagined threats. That's a key element in this theory, the idea, the presence, the reality [00:07:00] of either real or imagined threats and our reactivity to them. Here's a key. Anxiety is relational. It rarely stays contained inside of individuals. It typically is throwing, flowing through systems. And the more emotionally connected we are, the faster it spreads. And this is why anxiety and anxiousness are so contagious.
Take for example, a typical holiday table. Everybody, or I shouldn't say typical, but a holiday table. Everybody kinda, in this case notices that Mom is really quiet. No one asks her directly what's wrong. Instead, dad, in this case starts telling louder jokes. One sister snaps at her kids to behave, and the other sister retreats to her phone by dessert time.
There's tension in the air, but no one can really name it. The anxiety never belonged really to one person. It [00:08:00] spread, and in a sense, it kinda reorganized the whole table when one person becomes reactive. Others feel it. They may not consciously know what's happening, but their bodies and behaviors respond.
Tone changes, postures, shift thinking narrows. That's an important one. Thinking often gets really limited. As you might recall, a quick refresher. We talked about external and internal threats. To systems, to organizations, to families. And remember, the external threats for those organizations could include regulatory changes, supply chain shortages, shifts in customer demands for families.
Financial pressures, school stress, politics, et cetera, internal threats. Again, I'm noting those things that kind of induce those anxious responses inside of us. Internal threats are sometimes actually even more [00:09:00] destabilizing for organizations that can be leadership changes, reorgs, it's new systems, implementations in families.
We talked about births, deaths, illnesses. Marriages, divorces, all of these things amp us as individuals up and hence the system. The common thread here is the threat of change, real or perceived threats to survival and wellbeing. And our reactions to these threats are quick and they're automatic. They're emotional.
And they're painful and we, when we're in pain, as I mentioned, we want relief and we want it really fast. So we start doing those things that we think are gonna kind of fix and relieve. So when tensions arise, our nervous systems look for ways to lower it again. Now, it could be speaking forcefully. It could be going for somebody's jugular.
It could be withdrawing, [00:10:00] rescuing, blaming, gossiping, the, these aren't necessarily strategic well thought out moves. There are attempts for us to feel better. So here's the good news in in this, is that our reactions as humans are actually really pretty predictable. And when we see them, they're telling us something important.
They're telling us that tension is up, and usually that thinking is down. So here's what I want go through. I wanna look at five common. Reactions under stress that we as humans, and Ps other species as well, kinda like these too. And you're gonna recognize these. You will recognize these. And then what I want to suggest to you as we walk through these patterns, resist the temptation to diagnose others.
But really be thinking about, which one do you most reliably default to? Which one or two? do you most reliably default to when stress arises? Alright, let's take a look at the [00:11:00] first one. Number one, increased togetherness. We talked about how togetherness is sort of that baseline and we need it as humans in order to survive.
It's, we've gotta be working together. There's, there's got to be a certain level of connectivity going on in order for us to survive. But under stress, many people move even closer together. And this is normal. I see it all the time. But under pressure it can intensify and it can get even greater and become unproductive.
Things like the pressure to think alike, agree quickly, avoid differences, agree, increase those tendencies. Harmony becomes more important in some ways than clarity. And this often masquerades as teamed teamwork. Just as recent as today, I was talking to a client who has walked into a brand new team where there is just this intense togetherness to the extent that all the members of the team are texting.
There's a big group text, everybody's [00:12:00] texting each other all week long and through the weekend. So you get these pressures in organizations too, in a sense. What I might call over team I would actually refer to this in a sense as sort of team too much. It just goes over the top and gets counterproductive.
The second thing that we see happening, under stress for some individuals, is they engage in visible conflict. Again, you recognize these as the flight or fight responses. So for some people. Under stress, they move toward others. Conflict becomes a way for them to discharge their tension, and there's often an agenda enforcing, conformity, asserting control, or relieving internal pressure.
Conflict also creates drama. And while costly drama can for some be regulating and it can actually kind of regulate systems, it kind of has a [00:13:00] place for some, and I want to be clear here. I am not against conflict. I'm not against healthy conflict. One of the things I like to say is, can you differ successfully with somebody?
What we're talking about is that tendency to always pick up the hammer and move toward whether it's the right move or not. The third predictable response that we see for some under stress is distancing and to go to the further extreme emotional cutoff, distance and cutoff. For some, they manage their anxiousness by moving away, sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally.
And this can look like so many things, and we have so many tools today to help us with this distancing. It can look like disengagement, silence, looking at our phones silos. Classic really a, a classic distancing move of organizations. It's incredibly common and oftentimes [00:14:00] actually very acceptable socially.
Distance creates relief, but it actually might also decrease our ability to be resilient. In the face of pressures. I have so much to sort to say in this topic, but right now all I'm trying to do today is to introduce you to these five patterns. So that was the third pattern. Our fourth pattern is a really interesting one, over-functioning and under-functioning, a sort of over and under-functioning reciprocity for some people.
When stress hits or tension hits, hits the fan responsibility sometimes becomes uneven and one person does more while another does less think, for example, of the helicopter parent Kuhn, or consider like the classic micromanager or organizations that do workarounds for struggling employees.
Overfunctioners, a couple characteristics of these folks. [00:15:00] Overfunctioners, they tend to have all the answers, tell others what to do and want to help too much. And on the flip side, under functions, rely on others for what to do, asking for unnecessary advice and appearing sometimes helpless. It's interesting an example in a family system is where one spouse, you might find one spouse managing everything kind of the schedules, the money, the decisions, and the others seem sort of disengaged and indecisive. Both are frustrated. Underneath. Anxiety is shaping the pattern, but one's working to manage things and take over and reduce the anxiety while the other is kind of letting go and letting them do that.
The relationship stays stuck, and not necessarily because there's a lack of love, but because in some ways anxiousness has come to define their roles. In a sense, over-functioning brings relief through control. Under functioning brings relief through dependency. So our last pattern in this cycle, if you [00:16:00] will, is Triangling Marie Bowen noted that a two person system is fairly unstable.
So when even just a little bit of tension starts to build between two. People, one or both will often pull in a third party. So an example of this is like our is gossip or just simply complaining to others, escalating to hr, roping in that third person or entity talking about somebody instead of talking with them, triangles actually stabilize anxiety in some way.
They, because they spread it. They, it kind of dilutes it by spreading it to others. Triangles actually, in a sense, stabilize the system and they have a way of spreading the anxiety through it. Every one of these patterns that I just named is adaptive. [00:17:00] They have their place, they're there, they're programmed into our brains for a reason. They've come about to help us as humans survive, but under sustained stress, they can quickly take over and become unproductive. So let's step back and revisit our story with Illuminations with now the lens of these five reactive patterns. First of all, we see fusion in some sense, masquerading as teamwork. Harmony, valued over individuality. There's that increased togetherness. We see emotional cutoff, people shutting down distancing.
You see some over-functioning with Alicia stepping in for where Ryan most likely should have stepped in and up to rescue. Kind of the, the dynamics. You also see some triangling where Amanda and Alex process at the break their frustration with each other instead of with Ryan. The core issue in this moment with a team isn't the materials shortage per [00:18:00] se?
It's the systems in ability to stay thoughtful. Under pressure. A systems informed leader in this case would notice that increasing closeness is actually reducing each person's ability to think for themselves in some measure and or to put out their own thinking and make constructive moves. In this case, the team doesn't need more bonding.
It needs in some measure, more capacity to tolerate the discomfort without reacting to it. Tension. Stress are not necessarily pathology. They're information. Anxiousness is contagious. Anxious reactivity is an attempt to find relief for leaders.
The work is not necessarily, in my opinion, to eliminate this anxiousness, but to better manage yourself in its presence and possibly [00:19:00] to be what we like to call a slightly less anxious presence, which we're gonna really get into that over time. So as we come to a wrap. A couple things to think about and a possible assignment here before you move into any kind of action.
As you think about your own systems, let me just pose this question, where are you maybe seeking relief rather than clarity? Right now, in previous assignments on the podcast, I've given you more generic assignments around observation, but this time I'm gonna be more specific because we have the specifics to do.
To do it with. Start watching in yourself. Just start with yourself for the five anxious responses under stressed, the increased togetherness. Conflict distancing, maybe even cutting off over-functioning and under-functioning triangling where I'm roping others in that I maybe don't necessarily need to.
So in our next [00:20:00] episode, we're gonna talk more about making deliberate. More differentiated moves in the face of these anxious dynamics. We are gonna be exploring the the core Bowen theory concept of differentiation of self. It's a mouthful, but it is a core key concept and I look forward to covering it with you.
So for today, thank you for listening to Noble Metal. If you found this helpful, please refer us or leave a review. In the meantime, get curious, watch for patterns in yourself and work toward objectivity.