{"id":36108,"date":"2024-02-23T09:17:08","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T17:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36108"},"modified":"2024-02-23T12:12:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T20:12:55","slug":"leading-to-an-anxious-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leading-to-an-anxious-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading in an Anxious Culture\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anxiety and overwhelm weren’t big issues for me until recently, after a build-up of chronic stress that had me in the hospital almost every week for a year and a half. While everything in me wanted to focus on helping myself, there was always work to be done, so I did what any “hard worker” would do and dove in deeper. This led to not only my physical health declining but my emotional and mental health as well. Rather than taking the time to discern my moves intentionally, I reacted<\/span>,<\/span><\/i> making decisions from a place of fear and lack rather than attunement. I had hired an Operations Manager who wasn’t ready for the role. Even when I disagreed with her, I’d go along with what she wanted to do, simply because it was easier and I didn’t have the energy to deal with her “fits” when things didn’t go her way. This often came back to bite me in the butt because, inevitably, it would lead us down unsustainable and inauthentic routes, which I’d then have to work twice as hard to come back from.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I started to resent the team I built because they weren’t meeting the standards. Not only that, but I’d gone from a solopreneur to a small team to get more time and make things easier, but this was neither. I went through several cycles of firing and hiring but ended up in the same place, just with different people. I was exhausted and knew something needed to change. Reflecting on my problems, I realized I was the common denominator.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I had been frustrated at the lack of responsibility others were exhibiting and would get angered by them not taking ownership of projects or not delivering on what they promised. But I had decided to hire them in the first place. It was I who was avoiding the hard conversations when they fell short. It was I who was letting them play small with no repercussions. It was I who was leading by a poor example. I had to ask myself, “Why?”. From that, a whole world of insight was uncovered.<\/span><\/p>\n

In “<\/span>A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/span><\/i>, “Edwin Friedman shares years of insight as a family systems therapist and rabbi, applying lessons from his work to the church, leadership, and American society at large. Friedman makes the case that we live in a “leadership-toxic climate” where chronic anxiety creates and nurtures a variety of characteristics that have major implications on how we lead. He believes that most of what we see in leadership today is “gridlocked” by echo chambers that keep us in anxious cycles. These echo chambers include reactivity, herding, blame displacement, a quick-fix mentality, and a lack of well-differentiated leadership (the inevitable culmination of the first four).[1]<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the shared elements of family systems theory that he highlights as pervasive in American society include:” (1) systems that allow the weakest, most dependent members of any organization, group, or family to set the agenda, (2) the depreciation of individuation among leaders, discouraging them from relying on their decision-making ability but instead on “expertise,” (3) an obsession with techniques and data, and (4) a widespread misunderstanding in relational processes in families and systems that persuade leaders to solve problems through consensus or peace-making.” [2]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I think about how I show up as a leader during extreme burnout, it’s easy to spot these toxic traits and tendencies at play. Friedman outlines how organizations, like individuals, require a healthy immune system, or they’ll be susceptible to disease. When I first started building a team, I was in an emotionally and physically healthy state. I had a clear sense of self and vision of where I was taking the organization. I built an organization chart, clarified roles, and adopted an apprenticeship model paired with leadership coaching for every team member. I had some truly wonderful people help me build out the basis of a scalable company. But as time passed, client demands, my responsibilities, and overhead increased. Plus, now I was operating less and less in my zone of genius, feeling even more out of depth, without an executive team of support and added pressure of others’ livelihoods riding on my ability to meet needs. I stopped trusting myself, and what got me to where I was (the Spirit’s guidance) less and less. Instead, I searched for “experts” to apply what the latest data says to do to successfully scale. When it came to the team getting things done, I offered empathy and understanding, thinking it was a form of living our values in action. However, I later saw how detrimental that was and now realize how much there is to learn from the Fallacy of Empathy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This only added to my stress, making the “quick fix” mentality all the more appealing when, in fact, I knew that was not what I wanted. However, reaction often becomes your only option when you have nothing to give physically, and at this point my body had completely shut down. Eve Poole highlights the impact of constant stress states in her book “Leadersmithing,” explaining how it kicks us out of our neocortex (the most evolved part of the cerebral cortex) and into our amygdala (the reptilian brain), where our flight, flight, freeze, and fawn process take control[3]. But how could anyone support me when I was stuck in a cycle of reactivity, fighting against everything that felt like it was creeping upon me? Friedman writes, “The most damaging effect of intense reactivity in any family is on its capacity to produce or support a leader[4]. Thus, we as an organization could only help develop leaders once I could return to a healthy state. For someone whose work was focused on building leadership as our external “products,” this was a big roadblock. Ultimately, it called for a complete halt in work as I knew it, to focus on my healing and exploring the patterns I saw present between myself and my clients.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I continue to research and rebuild, the question remains: how do we lead in our current culture of anxiety when we know constant stress states make us lousy leaders? Friedman’s way forward is to develop more “well-differentiated leaders” who break past the echo chamber of what’s urgent to cultivate a calm mentality and steady presence of leadership.[5] He breaks down some practical support to grow awareness and development. While it’s a really powerful start, I can’t help but be riddled with more questions and yearn to know more…<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1] VanCamp, Trey . \u201cPASTORS: STOP FEEDING the CYCLE of ANXIETY | Analyzing Edwin Friedman\u2019s \u2018Failure of Nerve.\u2019\u201d www.youtube.com. Trey VanCamp, November 13, 2019. <\/span>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mYKndgLOV3U&t=402s<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2] Fuller, Andrew . \u201cBook Review of Edwin H. Friedman\u2019s a Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.\u201d Ex Vit\u00e6 Verborum. Blogpot, September 28, 2020. https:\/\/andrewfullerblog.wordpress.com\/2020\/09\/28\/book-review-of-edwin-h-friedmans-a-failure-of-nerve-leadership-in-the-age-of-the-quick-fix\/#_ftn1.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3] Poole, Eve. \u201cLeaderSmithing | Eve Poole | TEDxDurhamUniversity.\u201d www.youtube.com. TEDx Talks, April 12, 2017. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=73L1613KDnw.<\/span><\/p>\n

[4]Friedman, Edwin H, Margaret M Treadwell, and Edward W Beal. <\/span>A Failure of Nerve : Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/span><\/i>. New York, New York: Church Publishing, 2017. Pg 64<\/span><\/p>\n

[5] Fuller, Andrew . \u201cBook Review of Edwin H. Friedman\u2019s a Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.\u201d Ex Vit\u00e6 Verborum. Blogpot, September 28, 2020. https:\/\/andrewfullerblog.wordpress.com\/2020\/09\/28\/book-review-of-edwin-h-friedmans-a-failure-of-nerve-leadership-in-the-age-of-the-quick-fix\/#_ftn1.<\/span><\/p>\n



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Anxiety and overwhelm weren’t big issues for me until recently, after a build-up of chronic stress that had me in the hospital almost every week for a year and a half. While everything in me wanted to focus on helping myself, there was always work to be done, so I did what any “hard worker” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3072],"class_list":["post-36108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlg03-friedman","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36124,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36108\/revisions\/36124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}