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Welcome to Episode 346 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. If you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions, suggestions for future episodes, and comments on this episode or any other. You can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com and find out more about my coaching practice, speaking engagements, courses that I offer and books that I've written. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter there on the website or at the link that I provide in the show notes. Finally, if you want to support my work for as little as $5 a month, you can do so by going to the link in the show notes. Thank you to all of you who are already supporters, and if you're not, thank you in advance for your consideration. Now, without further ado, here is episode 346, 6 Ways, Self Differentiation builds Leadership Courage, Part 1 of 2.

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The idea for today's episode comes from a Harvard Business Review article, 6 Ways to Practice Every Day Courage by Alex Budak. I apologize if I am pronouncing that incorrectly. I'll put a link to the article in the show notes, although you may have to sign up for a free subscription that allows you to read two free articles a month. The first thing the author notes is that courage isn't bravery, which he says is more of an innate hero quality that comes forth during a one-off crisis. Courage he writes, Isn't an instinct. It's a muscle built through consistent values, aligned actions taken in the presence of doubt, risk, or fear. This steady, practiced response is what I call everyday courage. It's especially powerful in moments that feel too small for a headline but big enough to shape organizational culture, trust, and legacy. My take on this is that everyday courage is a result of self-differentiation, and what is referred to as organizational culture and trust, I would call healthy relationship systems. I also equate legacy with intergenerational transmission. That is, when When there is self-differentiation, especially among leaders of the relationship system, whether that's a family, congregation, or organization, that gets passed on from generation to generation.

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Intergenerational transmission doesn't just pass on dysfunction. It can also transmit strength and resilience, or as the author calls it, everyday courage. For each type of courage, there are three elements. The first is core risk. This is what one could face and or lose if courage is exercised. The second element is leadership action, which is what courage looks like in practice. And the third element is the payoff. This identifies the positive impact that courage has on the system. The article applies these concepts to for-profit organizations, but I believe they apply to any relationship system. So let's get into it. The first Another type of courage is moral courage, and this is the willingness to act on your values even when doing so carries personal or professional risk. Remember that Edwin Friedmann defines self-differentiation as the ability to claim your goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure. The core risk for moral courage is the loss of reputation, revenue, opportunity, and the potential for political backlash. Surrounding togetherness pressure is at the heart of the loss of reputation or the possibility for backlash. The leadership action and moral courage is prioritizing principles even when your values conflict with the opportunity.

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This is hard enough in a vacuum, but really gets hard in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure. For example, if a pastor is asked to officiate a same-sex marriage in a congregation that has mixed opinions, they risk a backlash regardless of what they choose. If they believe in inclusion and decide to officiate the ceremony, they could face resistance, even to the point of some members trying to prevent the service from taking place. Or if they refuse to officiate, they could face criticism from those in the congregation that disagree. Remember, it's process, not content, and the process is the ability to take a healthy stand even when others disagree. The author says that you can build moral courage by clarifying your core values values and by pre-committing to your action before a crisis occurs. The latter is done by creating if-then statements for yourself. In our example, this might be writing down, If I am asked to officiate a same-sex wedding, I will agree to do it and request to use our sanctuary, even if there might be fallout, and writing this down even before it ever happens. I talk a lot about the importance of reflection to clarify values, especially before you're going into difficult situations.

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What is unique about this approach is that pre-committing requires you to think about situations that haven't even occurred and might never happened at all. I think it's brilliant, but we'll have to see for myself how practical this is. Regardless, whenever you are faced with a situation where moral courage is required, it's essential to take time to clarify your goals and values. Ask yourself, what's important to me here? What outcome am I seeking? What can I live with? And what's a deal breaker? This will help you get clear on what you are willing to do and say and make it more likely that you can exercise moral courage. Finally, according to the article, the payoff for moral courage is long term trust and integrity that is attractive to others. He offers this in terms of brand integrity that attracts employees, partners, and customers, but I think you can see how this applies to families and congregations as well. The second type of courage is social courage, which is a willingness to speak out or stand apart from the group despite the risk of embarrassment, exclusion, or reputational damage. This is similar to moral courage, but has more to do with a core risk of status loss, ostracism, or career penalties.

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Again, surrounding togetherness pressure is huge here. This is all about our place in the relationship system and the fear that we might lose standing with others if we speak out according to our values. The leadership action in social courage is speaking up against groupthink or even misconduct when others are remaining silent. In family systems terms, this is, again, about taking a non-anxious stand. It's the ability to self-define without defining others by blaming, shaming, or guilting. I find the suggestions for building social courage to be quite helpful. The first is to name the risk and speak. For example, to say, this may not be popular, or, This might go against the grain, and then to self-define. This goes along with one of my go-to phrases, which is, You don't have to agree with me. The second suggestion is, as a leader, to reward principled dissent. This encourages others to self-differentiate and makes them more likely that people will take healthy stands. The payoff for social courage is psychological safety that encourages ethical behavior. We know that psychological safety is one of the key elements of effective teams, and I would say is also an element of healthy relationship systems.

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I'm going to stop here and cover the next four types of everyday courage in the next episode. But I want to encourage you to click the link for the article and get access to it because there is a really helpful table in there that shows all six types of everyday courage, the core risk, the leadership action, and the Payoff. He also has great examples in there from the corporate world in terms of what these types of everyday courage look like. For me, this is self-differentiation at work. And understanding self-differentiation Differentiation as courage helps us to think that it's not going to be easy. Taking a stand is not easy, but we can do it. And when we do it, it has long term benefits for us as leaders and for the relationship systems that we lead whether they are families, congregations, or organizations. That's it for episode 346, remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com and find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. If you have found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.