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Welcome to Episode 115 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Before we get started, I want to remind you that this Wednesday, March 22nd at 12:15 EDT, we are going to have a free workshop in the Non-Anxious Leader Network on Compassionate Communication.

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My good friend and colleague, Rev. Todd Bartlett, will be joining us and he will be sharing what he's learned over the last decade in how to communicate effectively with people, as well as how to listen effectively. So if you want to learn how to self-differentiate, to express yourself in a healthy way, and if you want to be able to listen as a non-anxious presence to others, you don't want to miss this. It's free. You can go to The Non-Anxious Leader Network at network.thenonanxiousleader.com and sign up. We will see you this Wednesday at 12:15 EDT. And now, without further ado, here is Episode 115 on recognizing a conflict of wills.

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We are going to do another fable from Friedman's Fables. Next week, I'm going to actually focus on something else. I will come back to the fables at some point. It seems that people are appreciating the entertaining nature of the fables as well as how it can teach us about family systems, which I certainly agree. It is a great way to learn about family systems theory.

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Today we are going to focus on a fable called "Soaring" from Friedman's Fables.

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Please obtain a copy of Friedman's Fables and read, "Soaring."

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And the moral of the story is, "The children who do best in this world are those we make least important to our own salvation."

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This is my favorite fable in Friedman's Fables. There is so much to unpack here, so let's start with the moral itself. "The children who do best in this world are those we make least important to our own salvation." What we can see here with Mama and Papa Bird is they wanted to move on. It was time for them get on with their lives, to get baby bird out of the nest and become, "empty nesters."

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The problem was, was that baby bird could sense this, that his flying was actually going to help define their future for them. When we make our future dependent on somebody else's functioning, they can actually sense that, and it creates a conflict of wills. Any time a parent says, "You've embarrassed me" or "The family is depending on you," these naturally create situations which promote a conflict of wills. Nobody wants to be told what to do, especially when what they want us to do is going to benefit them more than us.

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Now we know that Baby Bird would benefit because he's going to learn to fly and he's going to grow up. But the problem in a conflict of wills like this is that people are going to sense that it's more about us than them if we make our happiness, our self-definition, dependent on their functioning. So it's really important to recognize that when we are putting demands on other people that help us define ourselves, help us to make our lives better, then we are creating a conflict of wills because people will normally push back against that.

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Now, if they don't push back against that, that doesn't mean that everything is hunky dory. What it means is that they are usually adapting and that will somehow, somewhere come to pay the piper in dysfunctional behavior.

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A second thing to recognize here is that a conflict of wills is often created when we try to make another person responsible. We know from family systems theory that we can't make another person responsible. By trying to make them responsible, we actually take their responsibility away. Think about how Mama and Papa Bird swoop down to save Baby Bird when their own anxiety could not let him figure it out himself.

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This leads to the third point, which is when our own anxiety causes us to be either reactive or adaptive, then that makes the situation even worse. In this case, Mama and Papa Bird were reactive when they would chirp at him, telling him to get out of bed. That just enabled him to be angry and to avoid taking responsibility for self. Or they coax him and soothe him, overfunctioning by giving him tasty morsels to try to get him to do what he had to do. In either case, neither thing was helping Baby Bird to take responsibility for self. The only way that he was going to take responsibility for self is if they backed off and gave him the freedom to make his own choices.

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The next point I think this story illustrates is that when our own anxiety gets us into these conflicts of wills, it results in triangles because we are not able to deal with the situation in the way that we should. Mama and Papa Bird's responsibility was to allow Baby Bird to figure it out for himself, to push him out of the nest and let him go.

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But they couldn't do that. And the more anxious they got, the more they actually chirped at each other. And that becomes a triangle to avoid the discomfort they are having with Baby Bird. Each of them is uncomfortable with Baby Bird not being responsible. And so they start chirping at each other. They start fighting with each other. That is a classic triangle in a family of origin when a child is not able to function effectively because of the anxiety of the parents.

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This goes to what family systems theory calls a childfocused family, which makes it difficult for the child to function in healthy ways because the parents put too much intense focus on the child. That can be a whole other episode. Maybe I'll do that at some point in time. But that's what is going on here. And it ends up creating a triangle between the child and the two parents who end up fighting with each other because they can't deal with their own child.

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And of course, the end of the story comes when Mama and Papa Bird finally get fed up. Being fed up is a gift. At some point when you say I am not going to deal with it anymore, I'm going to give the other person responsibility for themselves and you can do it in a healthy way, then they are forced to deal with it. That creates anxiety in the other. What happens here is Mama and Papa Bird finally get fed up and they say, well, we're just going to leave.

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They don't even say goodbye. And Baby Bird gets up. And with Mama and Papa Bird not being reactive or adaptive, not chirping at him or coaxing him, he starts to feel anxious. He starts to feel uncomfortable, and he goes to sabotage. He's going to sabotage the whole thing by diving out of the nest and showing them what's what. But of course, nature takes over and he starts to fly, and this is a great metaphor for what happens when we actually are able to be a non-anxious presence and give people responsibility for self.

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Now, there's a little breakdown here because they are not actually present. They leave and they force Baby Bird to be responsible for himself. But when we can be a non-anxious presence and stop chirping at people, stop. Overfunctioning for people, tell them what we believe, but give them the freedom to choose for themselves, then they have to deal with their own anxiety. That is what non-anxious leaders do.

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Non-anxious leaders can tell people what to do, but they don't. They give them the freedom to choose. They say this is what I think we ought to be doing. I hope you agree. And they don't force them. They don't get into the conflict of wills. This is a hard thing to do because we feel like we need to be leading by telling people what to do, but we need to be leading by saying what we believe is right and then giving people the freedom to choose.

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Sometimes people will rebel, sometimes people will dysfunction. And that's when we really need to remain our most non-anxious presence. If we can do that then, like Baby Bird, they will then have to deal with their own anxiety and they're either going to figure it out or they're going to leave. That's been my experience as a non-anxious leader.

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So the key takeaway here today is to recognize how to avoid getting into a conflict of wills so that we give people the freedom to make the right choice themselves. In this case, it was baby bird diving out of the nest and learning to fly. Whatever it is, in your family of origin, in your congregation, in your organization, if you can lead as a non-anxious presence and if you can be that person who gives people the freedom to make the right choice, you will give your team, you will give your family, you will give the mission of your organization the best chance to thrive.