[00:00:34.000]
Welcome to Episode 132 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast, I'm Jack Shitama, and we are going to get right into today's episode, which comes from a situation that occurred in my time in the last 21 years as a camp director.

[00:00:51.010]
I'm not going to share the names of the persons involved, nor will I actually talk about the content of the situation. I'm going to try to describe it in terms of the emotional process. Remember, it is process, not content. And hopefully that's what you can take from this is understanding a certain situation where there was anxiety and there was frustration. And I just want to share how I dealt with it and how it turned out. The staff member came into my office, plopped down in the chair opposite my desk and said, I'm done here.

[00:01:30.220]
I nodded my head or said something like, OK, and then remained silent, inviting them to speak further. I knew what the subject was because the day before this person had brought forth a frustration they were having in their particular area of supervision, we were not only short staffed, but the persons that were working in that area didn't have any institutional memory. They didn't have a way to understand how we were doing things and how we had done them in the past.

[00:02:03.330]
Of course, effective training can remedy that situation, but sometimes that takes a while. And the person that was in my office was frustrated because they wanted to see something happen more quickly. The day before, they had come to me and said, we need to do something about this. And since it involved other areas of our ministry, we had a meeting with four people involved, each of whom had an area of responsibility that was related to the person who was frustrated and struggling with the situation at hand.

[00:02:37.100]
A key issue was that one of the other supervisors had a person who was experienced in the area that was in need. The supervisor who had come into my office had asked if that person could be transferred over to meet this need before we made that decision, I wanted to have this meeting with the four people involved and talk it through after hearing the issues and allowing people to share what their thoughts were. I said, well, this is going to be the call of the person who was supervising the experienced person.

[00:03:13.560]
Currently, as you can imagine, I was not going to remove somebody from this person's area of responsibility and move them to another in need without checking with them first. The supervisor of the experienced person responded by saying, well, I've already talked to them and they don't want to move. We then spent the next thirty to forty five minutes going through our options, trying to figure out how we could cover the area where we had inexperienced people, as well as bringing them up to speed so that they could do their jobs as well as possible.

[00:03:52.390]
I didn't feel great leaving that meeting, but I felt we had done the best we could in a difficult situation. As I said, it was the next day that the supervisor who was dealing with a frustrating situation sat down in my office and said they were done, they were ready to leave their job. Needless to say, I was feeling anxious, but I was also trying to figure out how to be a non-anxious presence because that's the key in situations like this.

[00:04:26.220]
As I sat silently, I could tell that this supervisor was not only frustrated, they were anxious, they were at the end of their rope. It didn't take long before they shared all the things that were behind their frustrations. But they said one key thing that really stuck in my mind, and it was this. Under different kind of leadership, we would have just told the experienced person they have to move to the area in need. What this supervisor was telling me was they were frustrated with me because I didn't just force the move, I didn't make the move happen, and they felt that I was leaving them at a disadvantage.

[00:05:11.640]
I listened patiently until they finished speaking and then I took responsibility for my position, that is what a Non-anxious leader does and Non-anxious leader has to take responsibility for self in situations like this. What I said was, well, this is really on me because, you know, I do not like to force people to do what they don't want to do. I may be wrong about that, but that's how I have learned to lead. And I believe when I do that, people are actually more committed because they voluntarily do things.

[00:05:48.260]
They step up because they want to. And I am not going to force people to do what they don't want to do unless we absolutely have to. But I believe we rarely have to do that. I went on to say that I thought that this was one of those situations where we could make it work without having to force somebody to do what they didn't want to do. Furthermore, I didn't want to yank a person away from another supervisor, especially if that person didn't want to go.

[00:06:18.050]
The person across from me nodded their head. They understood because they know who I am. This was not a surprise to them. They've been working with me for a long time. In some ways, I think they needed to vent and in another way, I think they just needed to hear me say that that was my position, not that I was going to change my mind, although I think that's what they would have liked. But then I went on to say, well, why don't we give it a few days?

[00:06:46.530]
You know, I'm not going to try to talk you out of leaving. If you think that is the best for you, then you should do that. But I think we should take a few days. Why don't you think about it? And then we will talk because there was something else I knew was going on. Recent conversations I had had with his supervisor had told me that there were stresses going on and their own family of origin that is assigned to me an emotional process assigned to me, that the frustration they were feeling in their job was an easy way for them to triangling the frustration in their family of origin so they could focus on that.

[00:07:29.660]
The way I tried to de-triangle in the situation was taking responsibility for myself, saying that I wasn't going to move the experienced person also saying that we needed to have some time showing that I cared and wanted to stay connected, and then also mentioning that I knew that there were struggles going on at home. And that was a key because it meant that I moved away from the topic from work and also showed that I cared about the situation that they were going through in their family of origin.

[00:08:03.230]
That's a way to move closer and get connected so that we could actually locate some of the frustration where it belonged. Over the next several days when I saw this supervisor, I didn't talk about the frustrating situation, but I asked about the situation in the family of origin. I mentioned in last week's episode that one of the things I've learned over the years is that when I am feeling anxious about a situation, I actually move closer. It is easier for me to lean in and get closer to another person who might be making me anxious rather than withdraw.

[00:08:42.720]
Before Family systems theory became clear to me, I would more likely withdraw. It was just easier not to deal with someone who was causing me anxiety, either because they were anxious or because of my own issues. But what I have learned is moving closer and not arguing, not getting into a conflict of wills, not agreeing, not backing down on what I believe, but just connecting in ways that are helpful is what does the most good in situations like this.

[00:09:14.040]
The other thing I've learned is not to pursue, so I realized that even though it would be hard to have this person leave their position, I wasn't going to pursue them and say, have you decided? Have you decided? Have you decided? Because that creates pressure on them and may cause them to make a decision that they don't want to make. So I waited patiently and after four days, the person contacted me and asked to talk. The first thing they said to me was, I'm not going anywhere.

[00:09:49.550]
I wasn't surprised, I knew that they were committed to their job and to this ministry and I knew that they were just frustrated at the time they came in and said that they were done, I actually would have been more surprised if they said that they were going to leave. But one of the things that's important about this situation is giving them the freedom to leave actually gives them a better chance to stay. They sure that there were some things that had happened in the last few days that really helped them to understand how important the ministry was to them and that they were going to work through this situation just like they had worked through others.

[00:10:30.620]
I shared that I was glad that they were staying, and that's why I just wanted to wait a few days and let things cool down. Had they decided to leave, I would have been my best non-anxious presence then as well and wish them well and also tried to figure out how do we move on from here? One of the things I have learned as a leader is that nobody is indispensable, not even me. And whatever challenges we face, we best do it when we are able to remain level headed and remain non-anxious and put our best efforts toward it.

[00:11:08.080]
In this case, we didn't have to worry about the person leaving and we were able to move on. For me, the key concept here is when somebody is frustrated, when somebody's at the end of their rope and they are thinking about doing something drastic, the best thing we can do is remain a non-anxious presence and try to create emotional space. Creating emotional space means giving people time and space to think about what they are doing without pursuing them, without trying to convince them that we are right or they need to do something and allowing them to come to their own decision.

[00:11:46.790]
And as I mentioned, at the same time remaining connected, especially if we have clues that something else is going on, that it is really the root of their anxiety, the root of their frustration. If we can see things in that way, if we can recognize emotional process and then respond accordingly, we give our team the people we lead the ministry, the organization that we lead the best chance to respond to challenge and the healthiest way. That's it for episode 132.

[00:12:21.980]
Don't forget to connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com, you can sign up for my two for Tuesday e-mail and get a blog post on leadership every two weeks. You can also get my email address and ask me questions about situations you are facing or share ideas for future podcast episodes until next time. Thanks and goodbye.

[00:13:08.380]