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Welcome to Episode 291 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. If you are new to this podcast, I want to let you know that you can connect with me directly at jack@christian-leaders.com. You can email me with your questions, your comments, suggestions, and ideas for future episodes. And you can go to thenon-anxiousleader.com and find more resources as well as subscribe to my 2 for Tuesday email newsletter. I will also put a link to subscribe in the show notes. And now, without further ado, here is episode 291, An Interview with Dr. Kathleen Smith, Part 4 of 4.

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You also note when you were talking about a leader needing to stay connected, that a mature leader, I'm assuming that's a differentiated leader, spends the most time with the most anxious people in the group. So what's that about?

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I think it doesn't mean that you give unlimited access to the people who are the most threatful. Maybe I would word it a little bit differently than I did in the past. This is why I said I liked getting another opportunity to find my thinking because it changes. I think paying attention A different way of saying it is paying attention to the people you are the least curious about. Often, those are the people who are maybe more anxious or a little bit more, they're involving the group or the leader with how they manage their own anxiety. They're being very critical or trying to manage you or worrying out loud a lot. That is an opportunity of how do you hold on to yourself when you're up against that. I think it's not just about using people for your own growth, but I do think it's helpful to think about how that contact is some good... It's some opportunity for good work on self. Are there people in your family that present that opportunity? How are you quick to avoid them or talk to other people and relay messages to them through that triangle, through that third person?

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We see that in organizations also. All the time. Yeah. So when do you just need to go to that person and say, Can I manage myself a little bit better? And what does that look like? And what does it mean to not take on their anxiety? And what is my part? It's so easy to blame the people who are visibly the most anxious, but they might be in a position that the system has put them in as a way of everybody else staying calm. So it's not just about them or their personality. It's of how things have shaken out in the larger system. I think that's a different way of thinking about it. If you change your part, does that help them in their functioning, too? I think it certainly can.

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Yeah. I mean, Especially if they are bearing the anxiety of the system, they're the symptom bearer. It makes me think, too, that one thing I tell myself is if I distance myself from them, anxiety in the system will go up. Their anxiety will go up, anxiety in the system. If I move closer to them, it helps bring overall system anxiety down. I think that's a really important thing that leaders don't think about. But once they get a family system's perspective, they start to understand that that's how these things work. I was teaching in class last night and we were talking about that. One guy said, a young guy said, Well, those anxious and resistant people are the last people I want to move closer to. I'm like, Well, that ought to tell you something, right? There's something you can learn there.

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What a disservice it is to people when everybody's tiptoeing around them. They don't get any practice at managing themselves if everybody's avoided them.

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Right. Well, and that is a big That then becomes this loop that just keeps feeding back on itself and making it even making everybody else more anxious, making them more anxious, and they're not getting a chance to be themselves. You point out that managing a the emotions of the group, managing the emotions of the group, is not the leader's responsibility. You suggest moving from an other focus to a self-focus. Can you explain what that means and how does the leader do that?

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I think we've all had experiences where somebody was very focused on either getting us to open up or making sure we feel heard. That sounds really nice, but that is a lot of anxiety coming your way. I think I could think of people I've come across over the years who embody that. The difference between that and somebody who is present, interested, not so much invested in managing your reactions. I'm just feeling calmer even saying those words. Sometimes we don't like that because we also do like when people give us praise and attention, and if all of a sudden somebody's not doing that all the time, you can go, What's wrong? Don't they like me? But I think over the long haul, it's a wonderful thing to have somebody leading from that position and how it's very hard to be interested and curious about people you're trying to manage. There's There's not a lot of room to hear and appreciate their thinking because you're not treating them as an individual. And anytime I think a person can shift out of that is for the better.

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I think what I heard you say is when somebody is saying in a meeting, Well, I want to make sure everybody is heard, or I want to make sure everybody has a chance to speak, that can actually be them managing their own anxiety, not actually being truly curious.

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I think because that's people, they're defining themselves as a good leader based on how people are reacting to them, which good luck with that. How is that working for you? It would be the question I had because people won't cooperate They won't do what you want them to do, especially if they can feel the pressure.

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Right. And then they know that they've actually got you under their control because all they have to do is get upset or push back.

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I can think of a supervisor I had years and years back, and I think she was operating under the premise that if you cried in a meeting with her, that the relationship was making progress. That was her metric. Because feelings were being felt. It was not an environment where people were flourishing. There was a lot of anxiety and a lot of over functioning, and it was not a great situation because the focus was on how people and not on oneself. We all do that in our own ways.

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Yeah, we're all influenced by what other people think to some extent. That makes me think, too. I've read that Morrie Bowen said that the best we can hope for is to differentiate about 50% of the time. Is that apocryphal or did you learn that somewhere along the line?

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That is a very ambitious estimation. That's the best. I was thinking like 5%.

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Well, I don't know where I read it or heard about it, but I've been using that and that the average person is a third of the time. That would be pretty good, too, right?

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Yeah. I don't I don't know how you measure that, but I think most people would say that even those really incremental small changes are just a vast difference in functioning. So even a percentage or two, I think people go, How did I ever function the other way? That was untenable.

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I don't know how many coaching clients I've had where when we met, they got excited about one time in that meeting or one time with a family member where they actually showed up as themselves and did what they wanted to do as a self. It's exciting when you can do that. What are your suggestions for a differentiated leader to remain calm and firm when facing the inevitable resistance to change?

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I think it's about remaining firm. It's also about being open to new data or experiences that change your thinking. I think often a leader will get into a situation of, If things are stirred up, I'm on the right track. I think that that is true to an extent. Anytime you're operating in a different way, there is anxiety. But there can also be anxiety because you've done the wrong thing. You need to... So that constant openness of, I'm going to try and get clear about my thinking, but also recognizing that that thinking may evolve. We're both from the Wesleyan tradition, where the reasoning will change, and there's an openness to that. That's that balance of the individuality and the togetherness. I have things I think and believe, but the group and others also have wisdom. How do you walk that line between those two things? How do you have other metrics than just the level of anxiety? Often, we're operating on vibes. As the kids say. We're evaluating ourselves based on how we're feeling that day, which is a pretty terrible metric. Do you have other principles or ideas that you want to use in evaluating yourself as a leader that you can turn to when it's very tempting to just, It's 10:00 at night, and how are you feeling?

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And that translates into how you're doing, which we know is not true, right?

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Do you have examples of those other metrics? Yeah, I have. Yeah, go ahead.

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I have a list in the book, but I think things like, what's my definition of being respectful to other humans or kind? Was I able to communicate my thinking without trying to manage others? How much focus was I able to relate to people one to one versus the triangles or gossiping about other people? Did I take three seconds and try and calm myself down before I responded to somebody? Those are things you can measure and that are actually controllable to some degree versus our feelings and other humans, which are not to a large degree. Just having those small nuggets of wisdom, a couple of good questions you can ask yourself is really important.

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I guess you can do that in advance to prepare yourself. Will I do this? Can I do this? Or you can do it afterwards to debrief. At the end of the day, how did I do?

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Yeah, I think it's so unnatural to us to stop and think about how we're going to define success or progress because we're so social, right? We look to the group to tell us how we're doing and whether they agree with us or not or whether they think we're great or not. That is just so built in. And there's not too much we can do about that other than just offer some alternative that we can turn to before and after the fact.

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Okay. We're coming down the homestretch here, and I did give you this question in advance, but now with the events of the last couple of weeks. So this is an election year. How would you assess our political divide in terms of Bowen theory?

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I always look back to the family because it's easier to wrap my mind around than things on a societal scale, but just recognizing that that conflict is a stabilizing force to some degree. It's incredibly useful to have a person or a group of people to blame because they will give you plenty of reasons. It's not like they don't play a part. They certainly do. But I think you have to ask yourself how much of that focus is about managing the anxiety versus being effective or being responsible or are changing a situation. How much of, let's say, me scrolling through Twitter is about managing my own anxiety, although it certainly also generates anxiety, versus educating myself. I mean, it's pretty much the former, right? And so recognizing when we shift into that focus on others as a way of steadying ourselves, and how much energy do we put into that versus really sitting down and asking, What do I want to do? What is my responsibility? I read about this this week. How might I get over-involved with how everyone else is responding to the problem? I like to ask myself, How much thought How much thought have I given about what the President or my other elected official should be doing?

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Tally that up. How much thought have I given about what it means for me to be a responsible member of my community? That's very sobering to think about. It doesn't mean that we can't have opinions about what other people should be doing, but you got to have that self in it, too. I think that it's easier to be curious about your part I'm just fascinated by the people in my own life who have really plugged away at hard problems for longer than a news cycle. Thank goodness for those people, because the The rest of us are really focused on the symptoms and how to fix things very, very quickly. How can I be a little bit more of that person is what I'm asking myself these days.

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Wow. That's great stuff because there are a lot of anxious people out there right now. I see it all the time.

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There's a lot to be anxious about.

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There's a lot to be anxious about. Yeah. But taking responsibility for self, focusing on what I can do, that's great advice. So I think that's where we're going to wrap. And I really appreciate your time. And good luck with the book.

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Okay. Thank you.

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That's it for my interview with Dr. Kathleen Smith. And for episode 291, remember, you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com, and my website is thenonanxiousleader.com. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.