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Welcome to Episode 226 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. I am on vacation for the next week and a half, and so I'm going to be doing a. Rebroadcast of a two-part series on a family systems model of burnout. I was recently speaking at a clergy retreat, and the bishop who was hosting it shared that they had recently done a clergy wellness survey, and the results were not good. This is consistent with what I have been seeing around the country among clergy. And I think it's true for a lot of people. The pandemic has been difficult. And even as we are coming out of it, people are still trying to find their way in terms of setting healthy boundaries and effectively managing self care. So without further ado, here is Episode 226 of Family systems model of burnout, part 1 of 2.

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This first part of a family systems model of burnout will use Edwin Friedman's five characteristics of systems that are more likely to burn out their leaders. This comes from generation to generation. Then next week, I will go through the ways that leaders can self differentiate to protect themselves as well as lead congregations to a healthier place. I recently did a keynote for a statewide gathering of denominational pastors. In the devotion prior to my presentation, they did a word cloud that represented how the pastors were feeling. The more a word was mentioned, the larger it would be. The three largest words were tired, overwhelmed, and exhausted. I've heard this repeatedly from colleagues who are in pastoral ministry, colleagues who are leading other ministries, and leaders in a variety of other contexts. We are not only having to learn new skills, but we are navigating uncertainty, and our support systems are not as accessible as they once were. The pandemic is a challenge, but it doesn't have to be a problem. The family system's approach to burnout helps us to understand that when a leader experiences burnout, it is because they are the identified patient. They are the one through whom the pathology of the system is experienced, through whom the symptoms of the systems come out.

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This system's understanding helps us to realize that it is the system that is not functioning in healthy ways. And it just so happens that the leader is the one who experiences symptoms such as exhaustion, dysfunctional behavior, and loss of boundaries. This does not absorb the leader from those behaviors, but it does help us to understand that the leader can do something about it. Edwin Friedman's model describes five conditions that make it more likely that a leader, and in this case, he's using congregations, a clergy leader, will burn out. While he applies this to congregational systems, I think this is true of any system, and I will unpack the concepts accordingly. Friedmann also notes that these characteristics, while they could burn out, the leader could also promote symptoms in the leader's nuclear family. This is because the leader could end up triangling members of their nuclear family, and that is where the symptoms might actually occur. I'm going to quote Friedmann word for word because I want you to hear the terms as they are used in a family system context. But I also understand, in fact, the reason I do this podcast is so that I can help to make the meaning more accessible.

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The first characteristic of a congregation that is more likely to burn out, a spiritual leader is, "The degree of isolation between the congregation and other congregations in its own faith community or in its local community." Remember that self-differentiation is the ability to self-Define and remain emotionally connected. Self-definition without emotional connection is narcissism. So congregations, ministries, organizations that are not connected to other like minded systems are more likely to experience the isolation that comes from a lack of emotional connection. The question to ask is, does the system I lead feel connected to others who have a similar mission? This could be other churches or ministries in the local community or in the denomination. In my case, this could be a connection to other camp and retreat ministries, either within our denomination or across denominations. But to the extent that the system you lead feels connected to others who are in mission in similar ways, there will less likely to be burnout. And conversely, to the extent that you are in a system that is more isolated that wants to distance themselves from other like minded organizations, you are more likely to experience the stress of the system.

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The second character the heuristic of systems that promote burnout is, "The degree of distance between the lay leadership and the general membership." Again, this is about the lack of emotional connection expressed through too much emotional distance. If the leadership of the system is not connected to the general membership, it will likely increase anxiety in the system. They become like an emotional elite to whom the general membership find it hard to relate. This lack of emotional connection between the leadership and the average person not only increases anxiety in the system, but it will likely result in members triangling to relieve their discomfort. The most likely triangle target is the spiritual leader, is the pastor or the executive in the ministry. The third characteristic of a congregation or system that is likely to promote burnout is, "The extent to which the lay leadership allows the congregation to preempt its entire emotional life that is no other friends or social networks." Of course, when we are talking about social networks, we are talking about real people, not what we know of social networks nowadays. Remember, Friedmann wrote this in 1996 before there was social media. When you have leaders in your system who have no life outside of it, it's a recipe for burnout.

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The telltale sign is if leaders invest all their energy into the life of the system, whether it's a church or an organization. This is much more likely to happen in churches because that is what church leaders are susceptible to doing. When they are volunteers, it becomes even clearer if they invest everything they have into the life of the congregation and have no outside interests. Even in other systems where people are paid staff, if they invest everything in the ministry, there is suscept to this burnout for the leader because the people who work for the leader have no other outlet for their emotional energy and they put it back into the system. This represents a lack of emotional balance in their lives and makes it more likely that they will form a triangle as a way of avoiding difficult challenges in their own family of origin. And as usual, the target of that triangle is most likely to be the leader. Because there is no other emotional outlet, this increases the intensity of emotions in the system and makes it more likely that a leader will carry this intensity without even knowing it. The bad news is it can get even worse.

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The fourth characteristic of a system that is more likely to promote burnout in its leader is, "The degree to which the lay leadership has intense, interdependent relationships with one another beyond their congregational functioning, such as being related through blood, marriage, or business." This is similar to the leaders who have no other life outside of the system, but it means that they have a life outside the system but their life is connected to each other. If you are leading in a small family church, you get this entirely. People have a hard time distinguishing between congregational life and their family of origin. This is also true of family businesses and ministries where many family members are in the same system. I recognize this condition in the ministry I lead because my daughter and son in law both work here. In fact, camp and retreat ministries are highly susceptible to this because they often have multiple family members working together in the system. It doesn't mean that it's a recipe for disaster, but it does mean that awareness of this situation as well as one's own self awareness and intentionality are critical. The fifth and final characteristic of a system that is likely to promote burnout is, "The inability of the lay leadership, particularly the president or senior warden, that is the most senior lay person, to take well defined positions independent of the complainers."

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In the congregational setting, if the leader of the membership is not self differentiated, it will mean that the pastor will take on the stress of the system. That's because the leader will not take responsibility for self and will allow the pastor to be triangled even more than usual. I work with pastors and churches, and I have seen numerous situations where when the top layer of leadership is not well differentiated and the system is stuck, that replacing the leader with a well differentiated leader will actually break open the system in a way that encourages other healthy leaders to step up. This not only helps the system move forward in a positive direction, but it reduces the stress on the pastor. As a young pastor, when I was assigned to a church, I was told by the outgoing pastor that if I took care of one particular family, everything would be fine. Something about this didn't seem right to me, probably because it wasn't equitable. I hadn't yet learned about family systems theory. So fortunately, I did not take his advice. But what the situation represented was two of the five characteristics. First, that there was distance between the leaders and the general leadership.

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This was like the first family of the Church. The patriarch and matriarch had been leaders in the Church for decades, and even though they weren't so much involved, they had passed the mantle on to four of their five adult children who were active as leaders in the Church. Of course, the second is that the leadership, these four adult children and their parents, of course, were connected outside the church. All five families lived near the church and they were involved in the community and with each other in a way that made it impossible to separate their family life from the Church life. I believe it was because I did not follow my predecessor's advice that the Church nearly doubled in attendance over the course of five years. Early on, there were some tense moments, but I was able to stay connected to the family even as I learned how to not cater to their every whim. I should say that there was nothing wrong with this family. They were good people, but like every family, they had their own challenges. The difference was that they started to work them out among themselves rather than unwittingly working them out through the congregation.

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What was most gratifying to me was that I ended up with an extremely close relationship with one of the family's adult children, and I remained on good terms with the rest of the family. You see, what was good for the church was also good for the family because it enabled them to have their own life outside of the church, even as the church grew because more leaders stood up. And it wasn't just all about this one family. One wonders how long I would have lasted in ministry had I listened to my predecessor's advice because I would have then felt the stress of trying to please this one family. And it would have actually made things worse for the rest of the congregation because they would feel distanced from the leadership of the Church. This typically results in a downward spiral of lower attendance and less participation among others. And that would then create more stress for me as the leader. Understanding these characteristics of systems that promote burnout among their leader is essential to being a non anxious leader. And it helps you to understand that it's not just you, that there is a system that functions in certain ways and that when you can recognize these characteristics, you can do things differently to help yourself and actually help the system move to a better place.

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That's what we will talk about next week.

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That's it for Episode 226. You can get the transcript at thenonanxiousleader. com/226. You can also sign up for my email newsletter. It's two for Tuesday. I send out an email every Tuesday morning. It has two recommendations of resources that have been helpful to me and I think would be helpful to you.

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You can sign up at thenonanxiousleader.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.

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