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Welcome to Episode 292 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama, and I had fully intended to come up with a new episode this week, but we had a death in the family, and we've been having family come in all weekend, and so I am going to do a rebroadcast. Hopefully, I will be able to come back next week with a new episode. Before we get into today's episode, I want to remind you that you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com if you have questions or ideas for future episodes, and you can subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter through a link in the show notes or at thenonanxiousleader.com. I chose to rebroadcast this particular episode because I think in this political season, it is particularly relevant. So now, without further ado, here is episode 292, a rebroadcast of why saying what you believe matters.

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We are going to jump right into today's episode, which is based on an article from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. It's called When Political Discussions Get Heated, Is It Best to Just Stay Out Of It? And it's based on the research of Ike Silver and Alex Shaw. I'll put a link in the show notes. Several years ago, I was approached by a supporter of the camp that I serve who asked me, what's going to happen if the United Methodist Church splits and who will our camp go with? If you're not aware, the United Methodist Church has been grappling with LGBTQ+ inclusion for many decades. The prevailing wisdom is that the United Methodist Church will ultimately split into progressive than traditional branches, so it was a relevant question. My answer? What I believe doesn't matter. We are going to go with whoever owns the property. I have been the leader of this ministry since 2000, and Over the years, I have become the so-called face of the franchise. I made a decision a while ago that I did not want to share my personal beliefs because I didn't want people to confuse them with the direction of this ministry.

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In the end, I feel like my obligation is to do what's best for the mission, and that might not always agree with what I believe. Now, I'm wondering if that was the best approach. You've heard me say that non-anxious leaders say what they believe while giving others the freedom to disagree. I believe this to be true. I also know that doing this is hard. Murray Bowen once said that the best we can hope for is to self-differentiate 70% of the time, and that would be a once in a couple of century occurrence. Even being able to self-differentiate 50% of the time is extraordinary, and most of us do it 30% of the time or less. The question is, when is it best to take a non-anxious stand and when is it best to avoid it altogether? New research sheds light on this. The article writes, quote, Ike Silver and his co-author Alex Shaw at the University of Chicago were intrigued by the public's reaction to politics averse figures like Taylor Swift. Silver notes, People seem to react so strongly to public figures that don't take sides. It got him thinking, while there's an intuitive appeal to staying out of controversial issues in the hopes of dodging conflict, could it backfire?

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Counterintuitively, the research shows that not taking a stand on controversial social and political issues is not the best course of action. It actually inspires mistrust and comes across as calculating or deceptive. People tend to perceive this as strategically concealing things for one's own self-interest. Ironically, in the story I mentioned at the beginning, I was concealing what I believed for the strategic best interests of the ministry I serve, but perhaps that wasn't how it was perceived. In one study, researchers took 187 College students and had them watch a short video of the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs football team responding to a question about players kneeling during the national anthem. His response was, We aren't doing anything about that today. There's really nothing to talk about. The college students were then assigned to one of two groups. One group was told that the owner was speaking to a mostly conservative audience. Think of this as speaking to Fox News. The second group was told that the owner was speaking to a liberal audience. Think MSNBC. The students were then asked to say what they thought the owner really believed, what their own beliefs were, and how their own perceptions of the owner's sincerity, trustworthiness, and honesty would change if he had actually shared his position.

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Participants who had been told that the owner was speaking to a liberal audience believe that he opposed kneeling during the national anthem, while those who were told that he was speaking to a conservative audience believe that he supported kneeling during the national anthem. The researchers interpreted this as people inferring that he had a strategic motivation to hide his true beliefs. What's even more important about this is that most of the participants found that this calculated avoidment was less sincere, honest, and trustworthy than outright opposition. Silver notes, Many participants, whether they were on the right or the left, said they'd trust him more if he just came out and disagreed with them. The researchers did other experiments and found a similar pattern. Scenarios included a state representative who would not discuss removing Confederate statues, an English professor unwilling to share views on protesting the police, and a family member who didn't take a stand on COVID-19 mask mandates. Participants consistently assumed that the actors who were portraying these people were actually strategically concealing their true beliefs because they would be unpopular with their audience. The question is, from a family system's perspective, what is going on here?

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In Generation to Generation, family process in Church and synagogue blog, Edwin Friedmann shared that a self is more attractive than no self. What he means by that is that leaders who aren't able to share their own goals and values in a healthy way are viewed as either wishy-washy or believing. Either way, this increases anxiety in the system. The bottom line here is that as a leader, you are better off saying what you believe while giving others the freedom to disagree. Doing this is leading as a non-anxious presence. It's leading through self-differentiation, and this helps everybody in the system, whether they agree with you or not. It's important to note that you will feel anxious inside. This is about self-regulation self-awareness and intentionality. Being able to express what you believe in a calm way truly means that you are able to exercise integrity in the moment of choice. The interesting thing is the research shows that saying what you believe while giving others the freedom to disagree not only improves people's perception of your trustworthiness, it increases their willingness to work with you. Participants in one study were asked to participate in what is known as the prisoner's dilemma game.

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In this game, they are paired with a partner, and they're both asked to make a choice at the same time, and the options are rely or avoid. If they both choose rely, they both get 25 cents. If they both choose avoid, they get nothing. If one partner chooses rely and the other chooses avoid, the one who chooses avoid gets 30 cents. The basic principle of the game is that you will do better if you work together. If you both say rely every time, you both get 25 cents. If you say avoid, you can get more, but you actually risk getting nothing as well. The difference in this study is they let participants pick who they wanted to play with as a measure of whom they trusted to cooperate with them in this game. To help them make a choice, they let them engage in what is known as a belief sharing exercise. Participants were asked to indicate their position on gun control, choosing between one of two statements. First, I believe ordinary citizens should be allowed to own guns, or I believe ordinary citizens should not be allowed to own guns. The participants were also told that their responses had been shared with two potential partners who had been given the choice to either share their own position and return or declined to take a position.

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Participants were then asked to choose between a partner who had declined to take a position and one who disagreed with their view. The results were pretty significant. 61.2% decided to play the game with a political opponent, while only 38.8% chose a partner who decided not to share their own position. A statistical analysis showed that participants found those who believed differently than them were actually more trustworthy than those who stayed out of it. Silver says We typically think of people's positions on hot button issues as a signal of their morality or trustworthiness. If you are my political enemy, I don't trust you. In this situation where trust was directly at issue, participants chose the person who disagreed with them at higher rates than the person who declined to take a side. The bottom line here is that you are going to be more trusted as a leader if you are willing to take a stand. I will still say that our camp and retreat ministry still has no position on the potential United Methodist split. I'll also say that I still won't speak publicly with my position because I don't want people to misinterpret what I believe with what the camp is focused on.

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That being said, as an ordained minister in this denomination, I am a progressive who hopes to one day officiate a same-sex marriage, be part of a denomination where those weddings are welcome, and to be in a denomination where we ordain LGBTQ+ persons. I'm pretty sure that most of the clergy colleagues that I work with know my position. I have spent a lot of time over the years cultivating healthy relationships with the people who disagree with me. Some of them are even on our board of directors. I believe that they trust what I am doing is in the best interests of this ministry, regardless of what I believe. I guess only time will tell.

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That's it for episode 292. I do have an update. The United Methodist Church did split this year. I actually turned over the reins to the camp at the beginning of 2023. But even now, the camp continues to serve both progressive and conservative churches, even churches that have left the denomination. I think the important distinction here is that even if people knew my progressive beliefs, they realized that they did not represent the position of the camp. Don't forget, you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com, and you can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. If you have found this episode helpful, please share it with somebody else who might benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. I would really appreciate it. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.