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.
Ep02
===
[00:00:00]
Phillip Weiss: Welcome to Noble Metal, where we explore leadership in business and life through the lens of bow and family systems theory. Complete this sentence with me when my leader's not happy. Blank. When my leader's not happy, no one's happy as much as we might chuckle or maybe even cringe. This illustrates what Murray Bowen called [00:01:00] the togetherness force, a key element of systems theory that we want to cover to.
This togetherness is a drive to connect, to be with each other, to be like each other, to think the same, and to get others to think like you. On the flip side, there's also what you could call a, a companion force, the pull toward individuality. So you've got this sort of gloomy togetherness, but then at the same time, we feel this, this force to be more of a separate self.
This is the drive that we have, which is. To define our own thoughts, our own principles, our own behaviors. So think of these two togetherness in individuality as if they were almost intention or maybe even a continuum. You see this played out. A great example, and Kathleen Smith notes this in her book called True to You.
I strongly recommend it true to you. You see this tension in teenagers where [00:02:00] they're really working at independence, but at the same time they so want to be part of the group. It's a great example of that tug, that push and pull. But for right now, let's focus on this togetherness force from the leader's perspective.
We've got Justin. Justin is leading the highest performing division in a company and his team is known for its cohesion. So when an HR complaint surfaced an accusation that one of his senior managers had crossed an ethical line, Justin's first reaction wasn't curiosity, it was actual defense.
That's not who we are. He said to hr. I would say that in that moment, what some people call loyalty. Became his filter. He stopped asking what's true and started asking, how do I protect my people? How do I preserve these relationships? Weeks later, the facts emerged. The complaint was valid. The behavior had been going on, and the manager left to his credit, I will say Justin finally saw it that this so-called [00:03:00] loyalty without accountability really is not a strength that he had put relationships over ethics.
This is a classic example of togetherness gone too far, and it really illustrates the concept that is at the heart of Bowen Theory, which is that the system or the family or team is an emotional unit held together by the glue of this togetherness pole. In fact, in groups or families, we come together so strongly.
That one person's presence and behaviors can impact others. Man, I think about the impact as it relates to us as leaders. This is not bad. It's normal. This is kind of really the baseline for how we roll. We pull toward this togetherness. The question really isn't whether individuals respond to one another, but how they respond.
As Dan Papa says, family [00:04:00] members or team members act sometimes as if they are attached to each other. That's how strong this is. My presence and my behaviors can impact others for better or worse. So let's talk about what I, I tend to talk about togetherness in terms of a more productive togetherness versus a more unproductive togetherness.
So let's talk about this productive togetherness first. So why, why is this even part of our, of us as humans? And not to mention just us as humans, but other species. Why is it we are prone to this togetherness? There are things that we get out of it. First of all, survival. Secondly in supportive survival is safety.
We want to feel safe and we feel safer in groups, in numbers. We get more done by cooperating. We have more fun comradery. Sometimes the group is smarter than some of the individuals inside of it. And [00:05:00] ultimately our goal is to thrive. So we wanna survive. But man, as a team, as a group, as a family, we want to thrive.
So this togetherness, think of it, like I said, as normal, productive. This is the, tends to be the baseline of human behavior. It's where we typically go. We love to connect, even the most introverted person wants to know that they're part of the group. So what's an example of this productive togetherness? And I'd like to pull from, actually from business. There are so many examples we could use here. Pixar to name one for example, that I was kind of, exploring, but I wanna actually select HubSpot.
This is a company that many of you may be aware of a software company often cited as a benchmark in the tech industry. So what are some of the key aspects of this culture that create what I call this productive togetherness? First of all is transparency. [00:06:00] They really promote the open sharing of information to all employees.
It's central to the culture. Secondly is this idea of ownership and accountability. We hear that word accountability, especially a lot in organizations, but they really take it seriously. Employees are given the ownership over their work. They're held accountable for it, and they also support others along the way in their work.
They really promote the idea of, of providing feedback. And again, that's a tough one in any setting, but they really seem to make a strong effort and create a culture of giving and receiving feedback, especially in the product development area, which you could imagine why.
They have a concept that they also call alignment over individualism. So when strong disagreements happen, the culture promotes a disagree, then commit mindset to avoid gridlock. They strongly promote and encourage fun and community. There's so much to be said. In fact, I might do a podcast just around humor and how it [00:07:00] loosens up anxious groups.
Lastly, they really encourage this idea of team bonding, which we all are familiar with, but they strongly promote the idea of celebrating and connecting socially. So how's this working? For HubSpot, they consistently rank as a top employer for culture, employee satisfaction, and workplace happiness, and their product is very, very successful.
Here's the challenge with this togetherness. It can quickly go too far. It can kind of move into a lot of elements, but I'm gonna really kind of focus along one line, which is this idea of going along to get along or conformity or sometimes what we would call group think. So what happens?
We get close. We feel the closeness and then an anxiety starts to go up. Tension increases we feel the pressure in some [00:08:00] cases. That anxiousness. That closeness. I don't wanna rock the boat. So if issues come up, I'm not gonna agree with, and I don't want to agree with the group I, but I still am gonna go along to get along.
I simply don't want to deal with the reaction if I push back or dissent from the closeness of this group. There's a really uh, notable example of this going back a little bit historically. On January 28th, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart after 73 seconds from launch in Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing all seven crew members, including a woman, Christa McAuliffe, who was the first teacher ever to go into space.
The disaster began when a rubber O-ring seal in the right solid rocket booster failed in the cold temperatures. So the temperatures were around 31 degrees, so free at freezing in Florida the problem with these O-rings is that they were not able to [00:09:00] seal properly which allowed hot gases to escape and damage the external fuel tank causing the explosion.
Engineers at the booster manufacturer had been warning NASA that the low temperatures could cause these O-rings to lose their flexibility. But management overrode these concerns under pressure. So they did an investigation and there are a couple things they found about the culture.
First of all, there was a normalization of safety variations. NASA apparently had a history of encountering these issues with these O-Rings specifically. But they were kind of became accepted as normal. There was pressure on the senior leaders at NASA getting pressure, as I understand, from Washington to meet certain schedules.
So lots of this pressure, and this only works if there is this strong sense of togetherness, force in play. When I say works, that pressure can only be really felt if I'm feeling. The, closeness or the [00:10:00] stickiness of this group. And the last point that I want to note, which is probably most important here, one of them kind of, they all connect really is the culture actually discouraged, dissent.
Engineers who expressed concerns about the O-Rings performance in cold weather were not listened to, and they were under direct pressure to agree with the launch decision. So you can see how this heavy togetherness force to go along to get along can have serious consequences in organizations and with leaders.
Lemme give you a couple more examples that are maybe a little more familiar to you. We're in that time of year where in performance review season, actually a lot of organizations are right in the thick of it right now. There are some behaviors that I've seen as a longtime HR guy that are very typical in my opinion of this togetherness force in play.
One is the pressure for SIN leaders to give everybody positive [00:11:00] evaluations. Everybody gets, you know, the five or the A, whatever, the, or most everyone. The, the second thing I see that I would. Attribute to kind of that togetherness, force pressure is the inability to give negative feedback, necessary feedback, constructive feedback.
That pressure to not upset the apple cart and to not receive the reaction from the person in front of you is so strong. Another area where we're familiar with this and where we're gonna be going with it as we come into the holiday season as well, is just the whole family dynamics.
We want to connect, we want to come together, and again, we sometimes maybe experience too much closeness and then there's that force for distancing and getting away. Or there's that avoiding of others and difficult conversations that might come up. Again, I would attribute that to the power of that togetherness force.
So, where does this take us [00:12:00] really as leaders? There's, again, so much I could say around this, but let's just, let's kinda bring this back to, you know, where, what do we do with this? How do we think about this togetherness? This is where I think we begin to apply our thinking to making moves toward a well thought out individuality, that togetherness and individuality.
Force, how can I still be connected and stay with important stakeholders even when the heat is up in the kitchen, but still be so, still be enough of a separate self where I'm charting my own path for myself where I'm saying, here's what I believe, here's what I think, here's what I'll do. Here's what I'll say.
So lemme give you an example. And many of you can relate to stories like this. So in an organization, you've got a, group, a division that's needing to select a new IT platform. Very common people have [00:13:00] opinions about which ones to choose. So in this particular organization, the VP who was a very strong personality, had a very strong preference, a key director, a key player in this, had a different preference for a different product.
So the, but the, it was well known that this vp did not like to be crossed and didn't really like to be pushed back. The, so pushed back on. So the director feels this, he feels it strongly. And that feeling I would suggest is that kind of, that pull toward togetherness. I feel what this person's doing and I don't want to push back on it.
So what does this director do? And I'm, talking here now about what I would consider a more productive sort of individuality. First of all, he works to get objective about the data. He gets his facts in order. He builds the case. Then he musters the courage. And why would he have to have courage?[00:14:00]
Because he most likely is fearing the reaction, the response from this higher up. But he goes ahead. He musters the courage, he meets with the senior leader. He works to have what we call, and you'll hear me use this term, a less anxious conversation. Can he kind of tone it down with this idea of objective data and facts?
This, in my opinion. That is a great example of someone grounding themself, which we talked about in the last episode. This idea of this noble metal like substance. So he stays connected to his boss. He has the conversation and he grounds himself in his beliefs. So I want to be clear though, this individuality is not a my, I'm not advocating for a my way or a highway mindset, you know, like, you know, this is my opinion.
You go jump on the lake. [00:15:00] In this case, he was, like I said, less anxious. He was having a fact-based conversation and he was not being really a jerk. He was stating the case.
So as we come to a wrap, let's, let's summarize where we are. We've got this idea of the system, the team, the family and the benefits of that. And this togetherness pull, that's the glue, but there's a challenge with the stickiness sometimes, and anxiousness enters in and creates problems. People start reacting and the challenge then becomes making moves toward a more well thought out response.
How can I still stay in contact, not just blow everybody off? Can I still stay in contact, be connected, and B, still more of a, what I call a self. [00:16:00] A way to think about this is where are you leading from? Are you leading from the eye of the storm, that calm center of the storm? Or are you getting swept up in everybody else's weather?
What I like about bone theory is that it gives us handles to hold onto. What I mean by that is these concepts that I'm describing, these, these are all familiar to you. There's nothing new, but it's, I think it's really helpful to have a paradigm that maybe that helps to describe it and explain it as well as some terminology.
And so when we have some theory and some ways of thinking about it. We're then able to, I believe, more effectively, navigate these dynamics. So I want to challenge you with something to do as you think about this concept of togetherness. So For one or two weeks, what specific togetherness behaviors do you think you're seeing in the systems that you're in?
[00:17:00] We're gonna cover these more in, in later episodes. What do you think you're saying? What togetherness behaviors do you think you are engaging in? And all I'm asking simply observe, watch, look, stop. Pause. There is incredible power in observation. So in our next episode, we are going to be covering, I'm gonna actually spend a little time talking.
A little in a little more length about performance reviews and holidays with the family, given the time of year that it is. If you're liking this podcast, we would love to hear your thinking. What are you thinking about some of these concepts? Leave us a review and refer your friends. Thank you so much for listening.
I would just say in closing, see the storm. Feel the pull stand firm in the eye.