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Welcome to Episode 96 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Today's episode was prompted by another Theory Day lecture at the Center for Family Process.

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If you recall, the Center for Family Process was founded by Dr. Edwin Friedman, upon whose work I do much of my own work.

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Dr. Myrna Carpenter was a colleague of Edwin Friedman and continues his work through the Center for Family Process. The lecture she gave was on resilient leadership. I'm not going to regurgitate it, but I'm going to pull out the few salient points that I think are important for the non-anxious leader.

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Before I do that, I want to go to the American Psychological Association's definition of resilience. According to the APA, resilience is "...the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. As much as resilience involves bouncing back from these difficult experiences, it can also involve profound personal growth."

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It's important to note that a key component of resilience is this idea of profound personal growth. When we face adversity, it typically involves some sort of disruption that creates stressful change. This results in emotional pain, which opens the possibility for growth. Whether or not growth occurs has everything to do with our own response.

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This leads to the first aspect of resilience, which is embracing the situation at hand as a challenge and not a problem.

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Remember that Edwin Friedman says that nobody gets the problem they can handle. When we allow our own anxiety to take over the situation, then a challenge becomes something that we are less likely to be able to handle. A challenge becomes a problem. On the other hand, when we embrace it as a challenge, we actually open ourselves up for the possibility of positive growth.

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This fosters the ability to tolerate even more adversity. So a virtuous cycle is created. Positive growth occurs and resilience is built. And when more adversity is faced, more growth occurs.

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A second characteristic of resilience is the ability to balance the opposing forces of togetherness and separateness. We might call this the balance between self-definition and emotional connection.

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This is all about the sweet spot of appropriate emotional distance. If we are too connected to others in the system, we will succumb to surrounding togetherness pressure. We will succumb to the pressure to conform. Conversely, if we are too distant from the system, if we are not connected enough to even have any influence, then we will increase anxiety in the system.

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An interesting aspect of this, according to Dr. Carpenter, is that connectedness cannot bring forth individuality. The idea here is that the more connected we get, the harder it is to take a non-anxious emotional stand, the harder it is to self differentiate.

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On the other hand, individuality, when done in a healthy way, can bring forth more connectedness. This is the essence of self-differentiation, which is the ability to say what you believe while giving others the freedom to disagree. This is the ability to claim your own goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure, while staying connected to those who most disagree with you.

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Understanding this emotional, sweet spot helps us to understand the counterintuitive nature of what we need to do as a non-anxious leader when we are facing challenge, and when anxiety in the system is high. Most of us will want to distance ourselves from the most anxious, from those who resist, but this is exactly the opposite of what we need to do. What the non-anxious leader does is move closer to those who are the most anxious while maintaining her own self-definition. This is one of the hardest things to do, but it will build your resilience and increase your effectiveness as a non-anxious leader.

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A third characteristic of resilience is having a healthy repertoire of responses. The broader the range of responses that one has in a challenging situation, the better the chances of surviving and even thriving. This goes directly to the idea in my podcast on Edwin Friedman's formula for toxicity, in which toxicity in the system is inversely proportional to the healthy response of the individual. I will post a link to that podcast in the show notes.

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Unfortunately, anxiety reduces our ability to have a range of responses. It reduces our repertoire and makes it more difficult to be resilient.

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When we are anxious, we are more likely to fall back on reactive or adaptive mechanisms. This reduces our ability to be self-aware and intentional enough to have a healthy response. The ability to vary our responses between playfulness, paradox and the willingness to seek adventure, enables us to reduce the anxiety in the system as well as manage our own anxiety. Further, the ability to listen to others without judgment is another form of response in our repertoire, which fosters emotional connection without getting too close.

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This last part is really important because if we are unable to tolerate the repertoire of others, then it reduces the possibility for change. This is similar to the idea that we must have a higher pain tolerance for the pain of others to allow them to take responsibility for self. Similarly, if we are unable to tolerate the repertoire of others and we feel the need to define them, it will make it more difficult for them to respond in healthy ways because they'll want to automatically push back against our efforts to define them.

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Listening to others is an essential element of leading change, especially in crisis situations.

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This leads to the fourth characteristic of resilience, which is self-regulation. When we are reactive or adaptive, when we are unable to regulate our own automatic responses, this not only comes out of our anxiety, but it also increases it as well because we are unable to self-differentiated and we know it. Self-regulation creates healthy emotional space, it allows for each person in the system to take responsibility for self.

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This is a key component of leadership during difficult times and will enable a more resilient response not only of yourself and those around you, but the entire system, to the challenges that it faces.

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The fifth characteristic of resilience is vision. This is inner clarity. It is direction of self. It is the ability to know your own goals and values, to be able to see a preferred future for yourself and the system you lead. There are two aspects of vision that promote resilience.

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The first is that knowing your own goals and values enables you to persist in the face of challenge. I think of my experience running a marathon and the desire to make it to the finish line, which was the only thing that kept me going and those painful last few miles. Having vision enables us to work through pain and challenge.

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A second aspect of vision is that it helps you to have perspective that can get you outside of the emotional climate of the day. As I've said before, one of the problems with facing challenge is that we have a tendency to think that it is our entire world.

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In reality, it is never our entire world, it is only one part of it. Being able to get perspective helps us to manage our own anxiety as well as to keep our eye on that preferred future.

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The reason I think resilience is so important for the non-anxious leader is that challenge often causes disruption, and this creates the most opportune time for change. It's during these times when people will tend to drop their resistance and consider new opportunities. I consider how churches, which would have resisted to the point of death the use of virtual worship and electronic means have now embraced them during the pandemic. The question is, will they be willing to continue when the next normal arrives? A lot of it will have to do with whether or not the leader can maintain a non-anxious presence when the push back comes.

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In summary, resilience creates the opportunity for growth in the midst of challenge; that is growth for you as a non-anxious leader, growth for your own family of origin and growth for the system that you lead. Knowing how resilience functions will enable you to grow in that way.