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Welcome to Episode 129 of the Non-Anxious Leader podcast. Before I get into today's episode, this is a final reminder that my annual online course, the Non-Anxious Leader Family Systems Basics, starts this Wednesday, June 30th that's 2021 and will run for four weeks until July 27th. There will be live sessions, but they will be recorded and everything can be accessed asynchronously.

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The cost is $198 and you can find out all you need to know at thenonanxiousleader.com and click on the retreat's and online courses in the upper right hand corner.

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So without further ado, here is Episode 129, Servant Leadership and Self-differentiation. The idea of servant leadership is that you put the needs of others first, especially those that you are leading, this may seem antithetical to the idea of self-differentiation where you're able to claim your own goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure.

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At first glance, you would think that the needs of others would be part of that surrounding togetherness pressure part of that pressure to conform. So what gives? I'm using an article entitled Character and Servant Leadership 10 Characteristics of Effective Caring Leaders by Larry Spears of the Spears' Center. In this week's episode, I will go through the first five characteristics in relationship to Self-differentiation and Family systems theory. Next week, I'll cover the second five.

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I do believe that servant leadership and self-differentiation are compatible. Remember that a basic family systems concept is this constant tension between the need for individuality and autonomy, between emotional connection and community. And I think this is the essence of understanding self-differentiation and servant leadership. I believe that there is a healthy way to do this, to be self-differentiated and a servant leader for yourself and the entire system. So let's get to it. In this article, Spears defines servant leadership by quoting Robert Greenleaf, who is the one who originally developed this idea of servant leadership.

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According to Greenleaf, "The servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The best test is do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?"

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Right off the bat, you will notice that as opposed to saying that the servant leader puts the needs of others over her own, the idea is that the servant leader is trying to help another grow to become more autonomous, more likely to become a servant herself. And so you can see that there are hints here of self-differentiation. The idea here is not to enable others who overfunctioning, but the idea is to help others to grow stronger in their own self-differentiation.

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I do think in the Christian faith, too, that we think of Jesus as the ultimate servant leader. Jesus didn't try to enable others by overfunctioning. What Jesus did was he wanted others to choose growth, to choose relationship with God, to choose to be a servant in a way that is healthy. According to Spears, the first characteristic of servant leadership is listening, and this includes listening to others, of course, but also listening to self. So in addition to listening to others, there is this idea that we want to be more self aware, that we want to be reflective and understand what is going on inside of us.

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And as you know from my work, self-awareness is an important part of self-differentiation. Listening is one of the best ways to remain a non-anxious presence in anxious situation, it fosters emotional connection without giving up self. If you want to be a self-differentiated servant leader, then work on your listening skills. They will serve you wherever you go. Remember to use open ended questions that begin with who, what, where, when and how. Don't use why? Because people don't usually know why they believe or feel what they feel and that tends to stop people in their tracks.

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Likewise, when you ask closed end questions, those that can be answered yes or no, it doesn't foster the other to share and express what's going on with them. So ask those reporter questions who, what, when, where and how, and then try to reflect back what you are hearing, especially in terms of feeling. Try to let people know that you get what is going on with them. You may not always be right, but when you try, people tend to respond positively, which fosters emotional connection without giving up of self.

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This leads to the second characteristic of a servant leader, which is empathy. You may know that Edwin Friedman was not a big fan of empathy, but I unpack that difference in episodes 35 and 48, according to Spears, the servant leader is a skilled, empathetic listener, one who is able to try to understand and empathize with others. As Friedman would note, empathy can make things worse. A certain kind of empathy called empathetic distress actually does this because we take on the anxiety of others.

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This exhibits a low threshold for the pain of others and usually results in overfunctioning trying to fix things for the other rather than allowing them to face the challenge themselves. On the other hand, healthy empathy is trying to understand where the other is coming from. This is called empathic concern and enables us to get a better understanding of other people's pain without trying to fix it. This fosters emotional connection without giving up self.

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The third characteristic of a servant leader is healing. This is the idea that servant leaders have the potential for healing self and relationships to others. So it's not so much about healing others, it's about healing relationships. According to Spears', Greenleaf says, "There is something subtle communicated to one who is being served and lead. If implicit in the compact between servant leader and lead is the understanding that the search for wholeness is something they share." rather than trying to fix another rather than try to over function and take away their pain.

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The idea here is that a servant leader is allowing another to, as the apostle Paul would write, work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. But the idea is the servant leader, the Self-differentiated leader, cares enough about the one being led to understand that each one working on their own healing is best for the system. I think it's important to note here that as a Christian, I believe that Jesus, who is the great physician, is the one who does the healing.

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So when we think about being a leader who is healing, the most important thing to think about is presence. Being a non-anxious presence has a calming effect. It creates emotional space and gives others a chance to respond to whatever challenge requires healing. I believe this makes space for the grace of God to work. On the other hand, when we try to go in and fix things for other people, we are not healing. We are actually making them less capable.

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Scott Peck defines love as an act of will intended to foster the growth of another. This is consistent with this idea of servant leadership and which we are trying to help others to grow. The fourth characteristic of a servant leader is awareness. This includes both self-awareness and the awareness of things going around, I would say awareness of the system and its dynamics. I cover this in depth in Episode 90. It's very difficult to be a non-anxious leader if we are not able to know what's going on inside of us.

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Self-awareness is key to being self-differentiated and being a servant leader. Doing this is the first step to self-regulation in anxious situations. Likewise, awareness of what's going on in others and in the system requires an understanding that we want to focus on the emotional process and not the content of anxious situations. This helps us to see more clearly when other people are expressing their pain and anxiety in unhealthy ways, which helps us to avoid taking things personally. The main idea of mindfulness is to acknowledge the present without judgment.

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I believe that this type of awareness to things going around us enables us to see emotional process more clearly. The fifth characteristic, according to Spears, of servant leadership is persuasion spears. Contrast this with using coercion and positional authority. As we know, just because we have the authority to make somebody do something doesn't mean that they're going to want to do it in a healthy way. It doesn't mean that they're going to give their best effort to do it.

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Spears says that this distinction between persuasion and coercion is one of the clearest distinctions between the traditional authoritarian model of leadership and that of servant leadership. And I would agree persuasion is the idea, as I have said often, that a non-anxious leader is able to say what she believes while giving others the freedom to disagree. You are able to express your goals and values in a healthy way without requiring others to agree with you. This is counterintuitive, but as we know from Self-differentiation and Non-anxious leadership, this is the best way to get somebody to follow rather than requiring them to do so, rather than trying to convince them that you're right and they're wrong.

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You give them the choice to follow. And when you do that, you give somebody an opportunity to do so of their own free will. Not everyone is going to agree. That's when you want to listen. You might hear something you need to know. That's where it's important to understand emotional process, because if the other is defining herself in healthy ways, then you definitely want to listen. However, if she is blaming or triangling, then you know that there is some kind of pain displacement going on.

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A typical dynamic is that they are uncomfortable with the changes that you are leading and they are blaming something else because they are unable to express how they feel. A second common dynamic is that something is going on in their own family of origin or with someone else in the system. And this becomes an easy way to blame what you are trying to achieve. Regardless, the essence of persuasion for a non-anxious leader is avoiding a conflict of wills and rather pointing in the direction that you believe things need to go.

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And this is just a hint of concept. No.6 characteristic No.6 of a servant leader. But I'm going to stop there in today's episode, so stay tuned for Episode one 30, part two of this look at servant leadership. I neglected to mention in the opening that this came from a listener who asked me about servant leadership and self-differentiation. I am always looking for topics to break down from my family systems perspective or case studies to look into. So if you would like me to address something, contact me at thenonanxiousleader.com until next time.

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Thanks and goodbye.