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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.
Ep01
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[00:00:00]
Phillip Weiss: Hi, and welcome to Noble Metal, where we explore leadership in business and life through the lens of Bowen Family Systems theory.
Who Will Benefit from This Podcast?
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Phillip Weiss: So who is this podcast really ultimately gonna benefit? Who's gonna wanna listen to this? And really it's anybody in any kind of leadership role. Whether it's at work or wherever you're gonna be interested potentially [00:01:00] in this podcast, but also individual contributors, people who aren't necessarily leading teams or have a title of manager, supervisor, director, vp, whatever.
Episode Goal and Focus
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Phillip Weiss: As for this episode, my goal really is to create awareness of the larger system context that we as humans live and work and lead in, and the importance of that system for individual leadership and job success.
Very specifically the focus of these podcasts is going to be family systems thinking through the lens, primarily a bow in theory, and we're gonna explain, I'm gonna explain more what that means, and we're gonna be a. Looking at a wide variety of topics along the way from creating personal clarity to conflict leadership, team dynamics, et cetera.
You name it. If it's showing up in the workplace or in other groups, we're gonna most likely be hitting on it. As I said, this podcast is grounded [00:02:00] specifically in the work of Murray Bowen, of Georgetown and other thought leaders who traffic in this theory. And again, I'm gonna explain a little bit more about that here shortly.
We are though gonna pull ideas from other thought leaders for sure, but a strong effort is gonna be made to consider these through the lens of family systems theory.
About the Host: Experience and Passion
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Phillip Weiss: So, who am I and why am I here talking about this with you? Well, first of all, I have 38 years of corporate experience starting with Merrill Lynch in New York.
Sarah Lee, Sony graduate school at the University of South Carolina's leading HR program, continental Airlines, where we essentially reinvented the company and the HR function on the Pepsi model. And then finally, Pearson Education. After some time I decided to jump off the corporate ladder, and that was 17 years ago.
And launch Iridium a coaching and consulting company. The other thing is I'm a [00:03:00] passionate student of human behavior and ethics, and especially in the context of leadership. And lastly, I genuinely really do care about how leaders are able to create thriving and enjoyable work environments.
Defining Leadership
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Phillip Weiss: So with that said, let's start with thinking about really what is the ultimate goal of leadership?
Or how might we actually define leadership? I like, one of the things I love to do is I want to keep things as simple as possible. And when I think of leadership, I see that the ultimate goal is really to guide and motivate one or more people. Toward achieving a shared vision by accomplishing common goals.
A leading Bowen family systems thinker, Kathy Wiseman, she, defines it very simply as the ability to initiate and maintain movement. I like that question is how do we do this? Then what can get in the way of that, of us being more successful? [00:04:00]
Groundedness in Leadership
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Phillip Weiss: So one of the directions that I want to lead us toward right away is this idea of if we're gonna guide, motivate, or initiate.
In my opinion, that really kind of implies a certain kind of clarity or solidity, gravitas or groundedness on the part of the individual leader. And in our organization, that's really where we start. We start with the leader grounding her or himself first in terms of. Was it, what is it I believe or don't believe?
What is it I will do or not do? That is really the starting place of leadership, and that's really where we're going to go first.
The Importance of Relationships in Leadership
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Phillip Weiss: The other thing is that, as I think about leadership, is that this idea of productivity, and as Dan Papero, another family systems thinker has said really so wisely, is that productivity rests squarely on the shoulders of successful.[00:05:00]
Relationships. And that is a huge part of our podcast, is we are gonna be really looking at what are more successful relationships going to look like and for us in particular as leaders. So let's go back to this idea of groundedness or solidity, especially in the context of our important relationships. And so I wanna, I wanna really kind of illustrate this with a story of my own.
A Personal Leadership Story
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Phillip Weiss: So I was in a key leadership role inside an organization. This goes back a really long time ago, and a really critical issue came up for the organization. And I was always in HR roles and I was being asked, and I kind of put air quotes around, asked or really kind of pressured to take the position of the senior leader.
The challenge was, is that I didn't agree with the position And I finally had to go to her and tell her that I [00:06:00] didn't agree and would not be supporting her on that issue in the way that she had hoped. And, and really more specifically that I felt like I needed to take a neutral, stance given my role.
I knew that my job was at risk and there was no question in my mind about that. So I went on to hold that position. I didn't lose my job. I will say that I think I lost my standing with that particular leader. And that's an example of kind of creating some groundedness or solidity, not necessarily taking a stand, although you could also call it that, but having clarity around what you will do or not do or say or not say in a given situation, there was a groundedness.
There that. Served me well. Eventually and ultimately, but sometimes when we take those positions, there's a price to pay and there is some courage that has to be mustard.
The Need for Leaders to Define Themselves
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Phillip Weiss: So a [00:07:00] key theme for this podcast is going to be the ultimate need for leaders to define or. To use Bowen theory's term, differentiate ourselves and create more conviction around the things we're gonna do or not do, so that we will actually know what actions we're gonna take in a particular situation.
Why 'Noble Metal'?
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Phillip Weiss: So why Noble Metal as the title of this podcast? Well, first of all, I love words and I also love metaphors. Metaphors are an incredibly powerful teaching tool. They help us create or they provide another way of thinking about something. So noble metals actually have these properties that, in my opinion, are really good analogies to strong leadership.
Properties of Noble Metals and Leadership
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Phillip Weiss: So let's just walk through these properties. There's six of them. First of all, noble metals do not react to [00:08:00] or contaminate their environments. They resist chemical reactions, oxidation and corrosion. They don't tarnish or rust easily and are largely unaffected by as assets. So this also means that they don't contaminate their environments.
They're not contaminated, they're not eroded by them, and they don't contaminate their environments. They actually stabilize their environments. Secondly, they're really good conductors. Of both heat and electricity. So you could say in a way, they're facilitators, they're conduits for action, things get done through them.
Noble metals are incredibly solid. In fact, Iridium, the name of our company, is considered to be the most solid substance on planet Earth. And they're just highly dense, making them obviously a, a very useful, substance for certain things. But at the same time, there [00:09:00] are some of these noble metals that can be easily shaped.
They can be hammered into thin sheets or drawn into fine wires. So there's a, there's a flexibility to them. There's a malleability to them. So there's both a solidity, but then there's this interesting flexibility. Fifthly, they accelerate chemical activity. They serve as catalysts, they can accelerate chemical reactions again without being consumed.
They, in a sense, they're inspiring to action. And lastly is they're typically found in native states of purity in nature. They are very pure. And I actually kind of equate that to authenticity. So, you know, think about that. As you think about leadership, they're not contaminating their environments, they're stabilizing them.
They conduct things get done. They're solid, but at the same time, flexible, [00:10:00] they accelerate. Activity, they're found, they're pure, they're authentic. I, I love those attributes for leadership. Now, are those the only attributes we would use to describe a leader? No, but I think they're actually very, very significant.
So Noble Metal, hence the name Iridium for our organization where we do leadership coaching, team consulting and coaching, and in-house leadership training.
Introduction to Bowen Family Systems Theory
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Phillip Weiss: So let's, shift gears here a little bit and I want to go now to bowen Theory or Family Systems Theory. I wanna start though first with a real life story based on my own experience in the past.
So this was, again, quite a while ago, and I was consulting inside an organization and specifically was inside the marketing group and the chief marketing officer. Very solid, technically, and just a really nice guy. Challenge was though, was he [00:11:00] had a really tough time holding people accountable. So, you know, I think this is something a lot of us honestly can relate to.
However, he was at a very high level and the impact of his actions were having significant repercussions, and eventually, or fairly soon, he left the organization. So I will tell you, when he left, it just kind of put the whole marketing group into a tailspin. Then a new leader was recruited in and the organization asked that new leader and said, Hey what do you want to have happen on your first day?
No job. He said, you know, I want to meet with the entire marketing group all at once. So interestingly enough, this guy was actually a pretty young looking guy for those of you, I'm gonna date myself now, but he kind of looked like Dookie Hauser. He looked kind of like he had just graduated from high school.
So it was really interesting. So, the CEO got up. Introduced this new leader, he walks up and you can kind of look at people's faces, like, what? This [00:12:00] is our new leader. But then he gets up there and, and bear in mind this organization had been really uptight and very very anxious. He gets up there and starts talking.
And you could almost just feel, you know, people just breathing a sigh of relief. Like, okay, we have got a leader here who is sharp in charge and going to make things happen. And that's exactly what did happen. But what a great example. Really with both leaders of demonstrating the power of the system, that the behaviors of one person, especially a leader, can really impact.
You know, at the beginning were negatively impacting, and then, you know, in the, in the second half, were positively impacting the organization. And that's a key element of family systems thinking is the emotional [00:13:00] connectivity of people in the groups. So who is this guy?
Murray Bowen and the Origins of the Theory
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Phillip Weiss: Murray Bowen, who really is the founder of Bowen Theory.
So Bowen Murray Bowen was he? He was a product of World War ii and he was really interested in psychiatry. And specifically at the beginning of his career was really focused on working with schizophrenic patients. His first job was at Menger clinic leading institution in the us and then he had a really key assignment at the National Institute of Mental Health from 1954 to 59.
And while there, he had the opportunity to work with entire families where there was an identified schizophrenic patient in the family. And so the Freudian model focuses very heavily on the identified patient. That's the focal point. But what Bowen and his team began to discover over time is that the functioning of the [00:14:00] patient would really vary depending on who was coming in and out of their orbit.
And so this really led to the thinking that the unit of study isn't just the identified patient but it's also the entire family system. That really to begin to think about how an organization is functioning or a person inside of the organization is functioning, we need to look at what's going on around them.
In 1959, Bowen was recruited to Georgetown University where he established the family center and was there until his death in 1990. The other thing I wanna mention about Bowen was he really was striving and the people who are following in his footsteps are really striving to ground the study of human behavior in science as much as possible rather than speculation.
The other thing I will mention to two other things. One is. While Bowen's theories [00:15:00] has, has started obviously with the study of families and continues to be significant to this day, it fairly quickly moved also in application beyond families, into non-family systems because these patterns of human behavior, which we're gonna explore over time are common, really, whether family or not.
The last thing I do wanna mention is don't confuse Bowen Family Systems Theory with Internal Family Systems Theory IFS. It's another system and theoretical approach. So let's just do in the time that remains a really brief summary of this theory, and we're gonna dig more into this in the next episode.
Key Traits of Bowen Theory
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Phillip Weiss: So what are some of the, what are kind of some of the high watermarks, some of the key traits of the theory? First of all, again, as I just mentioned, it really looks at the family as a group or an emotional unit and that, that's for some reason, as humans, we love to connect and we're [00:16:00] not the only ones on the planet that like to do that.
But when we come together, we connect emotionally, we start to kind of feel each other's, tone and reactivity, et cetera, all of that, we start to sense each other. It's just something we as humans love to do. So, you know, think of, you know, as far as families go, think of Sunday dinners, holiday gatherings, key events such as births, weddings, funerals.
There's this connectedness that we as humans engage in, and we do it at work as well. We get to know each other, and there are things that come from this that are really positive. First of all, just from a pure survival perspective, there's safety in numbers.
So there's, there are a lot of benefits we get from being together in a group safety support. We get more done, we have more fun comradery. It's all great. [00:17:00] And there is also. A particular challenge and that is the challenge of anxiety entering into the system, this anxiety or anxiousness. And I toggle back and forth between those terms have a tendency to amp things up.
What I want to do though right now is I want to be very clear and I'm gonna be doing this all throughout our podcast from time to time. And that is normalizing anxiety. It is just part of life. It's part of being a living creature. It's part of being human. And I think sometimes actually anxiety kind of gets a bad rap 'cause we're, you know, it's kind of painful and we don't really enjoy it.
But it actually can also send us signals. We'll get more into that later, but it's really normal. That's the key point I wanna make. So what is it that kind of creates this anxiety for a group, a family or an organization? what [00:18:00] are some of the internal stressors that might happen for a family? Things like weddings, funerals, moves, as good as they can be. They can also be stressful. Financial challenges. These, these can internally start to stir people up. What about in organizations? The list could go on, but for example, the loss of a leader.
The bringing in of a new leader and the uncertainty that goes with that, reorganizations, poor communications about things that are going on. All of these can amp up. The system put people on edge. So what happens when we're on edge? What happens when we're amped up? One of the challenges is we start reacting more automatically. The higher the anxiety, the more reactive, and at times the more paralyzed we can become. [00:19:00] Better thinking is actually, I think, sacrificed on the altar of automatic reactivity.
Again, folks, this is so normal. You know, I've, you know, I'm probably doing that multiple times throughout the day to some degree in varying degrees. So then this really leads to the punchline of what do we do? And this is where we want to be going in the podcast, which is what is the goal of the individual inside of these systems?
What is the goal of the leader inside of an anxious system? Very quickly as we move toward a wrap is. Let's start to lower some of the anxiousness. Again, we're gonna talk more about that. Let's get more objective about what's going on, noting the facts. Again, a really key point. Murray Bowen talked about the difference between the.
Standing on the field at the 50 yard [00:20:00] line, what you see and experience versus going up into the top of the bleachers where some of the coaches are these days, and looking at it from that big picture. So getting more objective, getting curious, genuinely curious about what's going on, how am I showing up?
How are others showing up in this more anxious system? Then maybe I have a shot at getting more clear for myself, getting a little more knowledge around what it is I believe or don't believe, or will do or won't do in a particular situation. That allows me then to begin to make key moves, and we're gonna talk about that at some in our next podcast actually, that ultimately this is leading to moves that I can make because guess what folks?
I cannot change other people breaking news. Can't change other people. [00:21:00] But I do have a shot potentially of. Changing how I show up what I do and say,
so this leads us to this importance of, again, back to this sort of this solidity, this gravitas, this weightiness that leaders yours should be working to develop this noble metal last little punchline.
Because of the connectedness in the system, when I raise my own level of functioning and I start to do better, the group also starts to do better. Their functioning very often will start to improve as well. So you can see the potential for understanding this system and why it might be really valuable.
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
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Phillip Weiss: So, in closing, let me just [00:22:00] pose a few questions or or provide a few more thoughts. If the goal of leadership is to motivate and inspire movement. And there's a connectivity among people in families and on teams. How I show up as a leader is going to make a difference, and I can begin to make better choices when I start to look at that bigger picture of the system and make choices for more optimal moves.
So in closing, I want to pose three questions to you. What if my success as a leader isn't just about what's going on inside of me or about only about my personality? What if in fact we are emotionally connected to each other in the groups that we're part of? What if as a leader, my own behaviors.
Actually really impact impacts others around [00:23:00] me. My challenge is to get curious, begin to watch for signs that this larger system is in play. And again, we're gonna explore more what those signs are, but start with yourself. Look for how is it you might find yourself reacting sometimes when the system gets a little more amped up.
Look for ways that others might be reacting to you. More to come about systems leadership on the upcoming episodes. Thank you so much for joining today. I want to encourage you if you found this useful, please subscribe to upcoming podcasts and we also would love to have you leave a review. Again. Thank you for joining us.