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Welcome to episode 276 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Before we get into today's episode, I want to remind you that the study of Jenny Brown's book, Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life's Relations, begins on Tuesday, May 14th. It's a six-week study running every Tuesday night at 07:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. It will run until June 18th. This is a free study. It takes place in the Non-Anxious Leader Network, and I will put a link in the show notes to get more information and to sign up. If you're not familiar with Jenny Brown, she is the founder of the Family Systems Institute in Sydney, Australia, and has done extensive work on family systems theory for both therapists and congregational leaders. I also want to let you know that the second part of my appearance on the Minding the Gap podcast dropped this past week.

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This is episode number 13. It's how to be a non-anxious person in this political season. I was interviewed by Chris and Declan Barris. They are a father-son team whose podcast focuses on closing the gap between who we are and who we want to be. I met Chris in the Friedman's Failure of Nerve, Book Study in the Non-Anxious Leader Network, and it's been great getting to know him. I'll put a link that episode in the show notes. Now, without further ado, here is episode 276, 10 Steps to Effectively Deal with Resistance, Part 1 of 2. The idea for this episode comes from an article in Nonprofit quarterly, Calling People Forward Instead of Out, 10 Essential Steps. It's an excerpt from the book, How We Ended Racism: Realizing a New Possibility in One Generation by Justin Michael-Williams and Shelle Tegielski. This is an excellent guide in how to do anti-racism work and is worth reading just for that purpose. However, I also believe that it can apply whenever there is any resistance, especially when that resistance is based in a difference in values. I learned a long while ago that people don't negotiate their closely held values, trying to them that their wrong will get you stuck in a conflict of wills.

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Nobody likes to be told what to do, and nobody likes to be told that they're wrong. The authors write, It's well documented in studies in the fields of psychology Anthropology, sociology, and even neuroscience that shaming, blaming, and guilting someone shuts down the center of their brain responsible for learning and growth. Thus, regardless of how much a person meditates or pray or how emotionally or spiritually evolved they believe they are, if you use the tactics of shame, blame, and guilt, it blocks the ability for the person you are speaking with to actively listen. It stunts the capacity for them to learn, and it eliminates any opportunity for growth. We've all experienced this resistance. So while I believe this article is worth reading just for its take on antiracism work, I We're going to broaden this and go through the 10 steps and apply them through a family systems lens so we can learn how to lead as a non-anxious presence. The authors distinguish between three responses to the behaviors of others, two of which are not helpful and the third of which they recommend. The first is calling someone out. Calling out is naming a wrong publicly.

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For example, calling someone's behavior out in a meeting, or worse yet, calling it on social media. As you can imagine, this is not helpful. The second is calling someone in. Calling in is naming a wrong privately. It's doing it one on one. But as we know from the concept of a conflict of wills, nobody likes to be called out, even one-on-one. It will likely increase resistance and pushback. Both calling out and calling in assume the person who is doing the calling is not only right, but is morally superior and has the authority to correct the other. As you can imagine, this is a recipe for a conflict of wills and leaves no room for conversation. Instead, the authors recommend calling forward, which is an invitation to be something greater. While calling out or calling in is fighting what is wrong, calling forward is pointing toward what is right. This is all about self-differentiation. It's pointing towards where you think you should go, even as you give others freedom to choose not to. To me, one of the most powerful examples of calling forward was Dr Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech. He cast a vision of what could be, of what is right, a society where people aren't judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

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The reason non-anxious leaders respond to resistance by calling forward is they realize that calling out or calling in is defining others, and that doesn't work. It's about realizing the difference between what feels good, which is defining others, calling them out, saying they're wrong, and what actually works. The authors ask, Here are two questions you can ask yourself as a litmus test prior to having a difficult conversation. Do I want to be heard or do I want to be effective? Do I want to create a bridge or widen the divide? This is understanding that self-definition rarely works without emotional connection. You can say what you believe believe all you want, but if you don't show care and concern for the other, you're likely to get nowhere. Calling people forward is a way to not argue and not agree. It's a way to avoid a conflict of wills where each is trying to convince the other of their own rightness, which almost always gets you stuck. Self-differentiation isn't always about taking a non-anxious stand. Sometimes it's knowing that to get anywhere, you need to start where the other person is through true emotional connection. With that as background, let's get into the 10 steps to dealing with resistance by calling people forward.

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The first step in calling people forward is to center in your vision. Self-differentiation is about the ability to express your goals and values in non-anxious ways in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure. In this case, the pressure Is the other's belief, which you believe is wrong, or simply just their resistance to change? Before you can call someone forward, you need to get clear on your own goals and values. Why does this matter to you? What would a preferred future look look like. When you take time for this reflection, you are much more likely to be able to calmly call another forward. The second step in calling another forward is to drop your stories. We make all kinds of assumptions about other people and situations like, I can't trust them, or people of that culture always respond a certain way, or they're only out for themselves. They don't care about the future of this organization. Whatever stories you're telling yourself, they get in the way of creating healthy emotional space for real conversation. This is about self-awareness that will enable you to own your biases. You won't necessarily be rid of them them, but having self-awareness makes them less likely to control you.

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Step three is to imagine that this person's actions were coming from a place of care, concern, and love. The authors say that you can ask yourself, if I force myself to assume this person's actions were coming from a place of care, concern, and love, then why might they have done what they had done? Doing this helps show up as someone open to conversation. It's understanding the fundamental attribution error, which is a bias that we assume other people's actions are attributable to their character while we judge our own actions based on our intentions. For example, when we accidentally cut someone off in traffic, we give ourselves a break because we didn't mean to, whereas when someone else cuts us off, they're aggressive or an idiot or both. Imagining that someone's actions are coming from a place of care, concern, and love is assuming their good intentions. It's a much better place to start, even if it seems a stretch. It's taking responsibility for self without seeking to define the other. The fourth step in calling someone forward is to prepare the space. This is simply giving people and yourself the time to prepare for an important conversation, which opens up the possibility that they might be ready to listen.

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You can ask, Do you have the capacity and space to talk tomorrow? The subject is a little sensitive, but I feel it's important that we talk. This sets the tone and forces you to have a conversation. It commits you to talking by agreeing to a conversation, and it forces you to prepare to think through how you might show up as a non-anxious presence. The authors also note that in an anxious moment, you can create a pause by asking the other if you both can take a break and come back to the conversation later, even if it's only a few minutes later. This gives you the opportunity to get out of reactive mode so that you can have a healthy conversation. In either case, preparing the space is about setting the intention to have a conversation about a difficult subject, but to do it in a healthy way. I'm going to stop there after the first four steps. Hopefully, you are getting the idea that calling people forward Dealing with resistance means doing a lot of work beforehand before you even have the conversation. And so next week, we will cover steps 5 through 10. That's it for episode 276.

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Don't forget that you can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com, and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. If you've found this helpful, please share it with a friend, and please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.