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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.
Ep07
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[00:00:00]
Phillip Weiss: Hi, this is Philip Weiss and welcome to Noble Metal, a podcast where we are exploring leadership through the lens of Bowen family systems theory leadership in both work and life. Let me start with a simple observation.
Understanding Anxious Systems
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Phillip Weiss: We live sometimes in anxious systems. It's a normal part of life, and we've talked about this, but then as well, these are especially [00:01:00] anxious times it seems. Families are anxious organizations and their leadership teams are anxious. Congregations are anxious, and what's interesting is that when anxiety rises, our instinct sometimes is to do more.
More meetings, more communication, more empathy, maybe more fixing. But what if the most important thing a leader brings to an anxious system isn't actually a solution at all? What if it's presence?
The Concept of Less Anxious Presence
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Phillip Weiss: Today I want to talk about a concept that comes from family, family systems theory that developed by both Murray Bowen, but later applied more broadly to leadership by a thinker by the name of Edwin Friedman.
And we refer to this as the less anxious presence. And once you see it, you can't unsee it because it explains why some leaders can calm the room just by walking into it and why others actually escalate [00:02:00] anxiety without even saying a single word.
One of the most counterintuitive insights that Bowen gave us is this, that families and by extension organizations are not always primarily driven by logic. They're very often driven by what Bowen would call emotional process. Another words, anxiety, often shapes, behaviors far more than ideas do. Bowen famously said that anxiety is contagious.
And if you've ever been in a tense meeting, you know exactly what he meant. Someone walks in hot, defensive, urgent, over-functioning, and suddenly everybody else tightens up. Ed Friedman put it this way, leadership is always a systemic. Phenomena, meaning that leadership doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens inside of these very powerful emotional systems and systems often react before they think.
So the question isn't always, [00:03:00] how do I fix this conflict? The deeper question actually might be, how am I as the leader functioning inside of this anxious system, or even just as a member of the system, how am I functioning inside of this?
Differentiation of Self
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Phillip Weiss: So, as we've discussed in the last two episodes at the Heart of Murray Bone's work is this concept of differentiation of self, by the way that comes from biology regarding specifically cellular biology as Bowen was really working to try to keep.
This theory of human behavior in scientific terms. So differentiation of self. It sounds technical, but it's, you know, really it's actually very human. One way that Bowen described differentiation was this. It's the capacity of a person to define his or her own life goals and values. Apart from the surrounding togetherness, pressures in plain language.
Can you stay connected without being [00:04:00] absorbed? Can you think clearly while others are getting emotional? Can you hold onto your convictions without cutting yourself off from people? More differentiated folks don't shut down emotionally, but they also don't get swept away. So Bowen commented that a more highly differentiated person can choose, quote, choose between thinking and feeling, and act on principle rather than react.
Emotionally. This in a way is the cornerstone of this concept of the less anxious presence. By the way, Bowen himself didn't use this term, but he spoke really kind of around the term I would say. So this isn't about not suppressing feelings, it's about not about pretending that things don't matter. Yeah, but it is refusing to let that anxiousness in the system do the thinking for you.
Family Example: Applying Bowen's Insight
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Phillip Weiss: So let me ground this in a family example. [00:05:00] Imagine a family with an adult son in his late twenties. He's smart, capable, and he's stuck still living at home. Maybe the basement inconsistent work tension. Everywhere. The parents are really anxious, though they rarely name it as anxiety. Instead, it shows up as regular or constant advice, monitoring his choices and having opinions about them.
Emotional lectures and quiet resentment. The son sun in turn becomes more passive.
More defensive, less motivated. Now here's, here's, here's in a sense the Bowen Insight. I would say that no one person in this family is the problem. The anxiousness in the system is the challenge. Here, the parents are centrally fused with their son's outcomes in life, and his struggles feel like their failure.
[00:06:00] A non-anxious move for the parents might be, or let me put it this way, would, would maybe not be cutting him off or issuing ultimatums or rescuing him yet again. A, a less anxious presence would sound more like, we love you. We believe you can manage your life, and we're gonna step back and let you take responsibility for your choices.
So notice what's happening here. They stay connected. They're clear and They tolerate the anxiety of not trying to fix it, and that is really hard to do, especially if you're a parent. Bowen Thinkers might say This is differentiation and action.
Managing self rather than managing the other. And predictably anxiety rises before it falls, but over time, in many situations, the system reorganizes around this higher level of functioning [00:07:00] because someone stopped absorbing anxiety for everybody else and left it where it, in a sense needed to be.
Another crucial bow and insight.
Chronic Anxiety in Systems
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Phillip Weiss: Most systems, teams, groups, families. Aren't necessarily overwhelmed by the presenting issues, a crisis, a deadline, a conflict. Yes, these are real, but could it be that the overwhelmed is actually more about the chronic, deeply embedded anxiousness?
It's that emotional background noise that just never quite turns off. And so we often find ourselves focusing on these content areas of like the problem or what's the crisis or you know, what's the specific behavior. Systems theory is actually calling us to look at the bigger picture. Yeah, we might have to dig into the details.
Bowen noted. Chronic anxiety is present in all families to some degree and increases during times of stress, [00:08:00] but here's the key point. Chronic anxiety cannot be solved with quick fixes, and this was a key point of Friedmans.
He spoke a lot about sort of that quick fix mentality, that sort of McDonald's mentality where like we get impatient if the food isn't out just immediately. So when leaders try to remove anxiety instead of regulating themselves, they usually make things a little worse.
Edwin Friedman's Leadership Insights
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Phillip Weiss: So this is where Ed Friedman enhances the color really of this conversation.
And I want to do a quick shout out to his book, failure of Nerve, failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman. Strongly recommend it. Friedman took Bowen's clinical theory and said essentially this is, this is leadership gold. He really saw the value of Bowen's theory, and then he took it into his consulting work in both congregations as well as in in organizations.
He [00:09:00] argued that what sabotages leadership is not a lack of intelligence or competence, but it's emotional reactivity. He famously said the key to effective leadership is not more technique, but more self, not more strategy, not better communication skills, not another leadership model, but more self, more clarity, more self-leadership, more ship, more responsibility for one's own behaviors.
Freeman believed that the leader's emotional presence shapes the entire system. In his words, the leader's major effect on the organization is through her or his presence, not through their words. A leader who stays calm. And connected under pressure automatically lowers anxiousness in others, not because [00:10:00] they fix everything, but because they don't join in the panic.
here's where Bowen and Friedman both get especially honest. They warn that self-defined leaders invite resistance. Anxious systems are anxiously yearning for somebody to absorb the anxiety. Somebody to take responsibility for everybody's feelings, keep things comfortable, but real leadership does something different.
Friedman noted. I quote, if a leader will take primary responsibility for his or her own emotional being, others may benefit, but they might not necessarily be grateful, and that's a tough truth. The less anxious presence doesn't mean everybody feels better right away. It means you don't let their anxiety determine your own functioning.
This capacity Friedman says, to remain calm and self-defined in the midst of anxious reaction is the essence of leadership. It's not control, it's not [00:11:00] popularity, but it's presence. By the way, I wanna make a quick comment note that Friedman himself actually spoke of the non-anxious presence, and he has reasons for this, but I personally prefer to speak of the less anxious presence.
It just sounds more feasible. And more doable.
Case Study: Johnson & Johnson Tylenol Crisis
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Phillip Weiss: Let's take a look, a quick look here at a leadership example, right out of sort of the the history books of American business, and I want to go back to 1982 for the, in the famous Johnson and Johnson Tylenol Cyanide crisis. Seven people in the Chicago area died after taking extra strength Tylenol that had been tampered with cyanide.
This was a huge threat to the organization. Tylenol was 30% of Johnson and Johnson's profits. Media panic was intense, as you can imagine, and nobody really knew if more poisonings were going to [00:12:00] occur. This is the kind of moment that normally produces fear-driven defensive leadership, so.
What a less anxious presence looked like was in the CEO James Burke, and he displayed this in several very concrete ways. First of all, he regulated himself first. Burke was calm and deliberate in public and internal communications. No emotional overreactivity, no visible panic, and no blame.
That steadiness set the emotional temperature for the entire organization. Secondly, he named reality without dramatizing it. Instead of minimizing or catastrophizing. J and j simply said, the company simply said, we don't know who did this, but we are responsible for protecting our consumers. That clarity without defensiveness is what I would say is a hallmark of a less anxious presence.
Thirdly, he took decisive action without theatrics. [00:13:00] They immediately pulled 31 million bottles off the shelves at about a hundred million dollars loss. They halted advertising. They opened direct communication with media and authorities.
They were forthcoming. These were bold actions, but they were calm, values driven and not reactive. Fourthly. And lastly, he anchored decision to values, not to fear. Burke repeatedly referred to J and J's Credo, customers first, shareholders last. That grounding prevented the leadership team from splintering under pressure and held together.
This wasn't just pr, it was. Truly a leader's less anxious presence in play. An anxious leadership response would've possibly looked like one legal defensiveness, delayed action to reduce cost or, you know, lost revenue. Trying to control the information, emotional [00:14:00] inconsistency between meetings and public statements.
But instead, Burke absorbed the systems a. Anxiety in a sense. The buck kind of stopped with him in his and his presence. He didn't transmit fear downward. He stayed connected to people while staying separate, standing out as the leader in charge. And that allowed the, the organization to move really very coherently.
Tylenol did eventually regain market leadership within a year, which is really amazing. The crisis reshaped consumer safety standards, which, you know, I think we've all benefited from, and it increased trust in Johnson and Johnson as a company long term.
Practical Steps for Developing Less Anxious Presence
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Phillip Weiss: So let's get, let's get practical here. This less anxious presence can actually look like calm without withdrawal, clarity without aggression, connection without fusion, conviction, without reactivity. But it's not emotional detachment. It's not [00:15:00] conflict avoidance. It's not. Niceness.
It's not over-functioning for others, Freeman offered a warning. Empathy, he said, can be a form of sabotage if it replaces leadership. In anxious systems, empathy without self de definition often fuels dependence instead of growth. Bowen believed that the more a leader can maintain emotional equilibrium, the more the system naturally settles. It doesn't happen instantly. It's not painless, but it is potentially sustainable. So how do we actually develop this less anxious presence? Bowen was honest about this one's level of differentiation cannot be raised quickly or just by instruction alone.
This is slow work. And remember, Bowen Murray Bowen emphasized that some of the most impactful work of differentiation is, is [00:16:00] always done in our families of origin. I want to be clear about that. But even small moves can really make big impacts. What could this work look like? It starts by noticing your reactivity in your families in particular, as well as other groups.
And it goes back to that power of observation. It also, again, as we've talked about before, getting clear regarding your values, whether it's a larger moral issue or a specific situation such as what kind of systems should we be implementing in the organization, but getting clear about the drivers, those priorities, those sometimes refer to them as operating principles that are important to you. thirdly is working to better manage your own emotional stamina. It's easy to say, I get it. Harder to do. But I think just even the awareness, even [00:17:00] having a sense that these elements are in play and beginning to watch how you and others are responding, that act of observation in and of itself can be very, very helpful, very powerful, and in a sense calming.
You don't have to be perfect. But I do believe we have to begin to be, we do have to be responsible for ourselves and the outcomes of our actions.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Phillip Weiss: So let me end with this. You cannot calm an anxious system by joining its anxiety, but you can transform a system by staying connected and not giving up your yourself or a sense of self.
That in a sense, is this less anxious presence. It, it's not flashy. It's not trendy it seems in this day and age, but it can work. So in an anxious time, it may be that this is the most faithful form of leadership that we [00:18:00] have.
Thank you for listening today. If you found this useful, we would love to hear from you, your comments, your own thinking on this topic of the less anxious presence.
We would also love to have a recommendation from you. Again, thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time on Noble Metal.