How Good Intentions Can Lead to Unhelpful Outcomes
In Part 1, we introduced Edwin Friedman and suggested that one of the most important books for leaders today was written almost 30 years ago by this Jewish Rabbi and family therapist.
One reason we want to provide this resource is that while Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve is so important for leadership teams to read and discuss, it’s not extremely accessible for busy people. It’s one of those books you need to sit with and read slowly. Here are just a few meal-sized appetizers to give you a taste of the richness Friedman calls us to digest.
Anyone who wants to become a non-anxious presence must be aware of:
- How the past is present. How our past – specifically our childhood and the family we grew up in – affects how we show up today, particularly under stress.
- How the brain takes emotional factors into account during the process of reasoning. Before it became the hot topic it is today, Friedman pointed out that our emotions do not simply modify our thinking, they are part and parcel of our reasoning and decision-making process. Our brain’s processing always includes emotional variables. We’re simply not being reasonable if we don’t consider our emotions and how emotional factors affect our reason.
- How attempts to avoid our uncomfortable feelings only intensify their impact. In denying our negative feelings, trying to push them down, we actually give them more power to direct our lives in ways we may not want to go.
- How our wish to avoid conflict and make peace quickly often guarantees that unresolved conflict and a widespread lack of trust will be baked into the foundation of whatever organization we are trying to serve.
We could spend hours talking through the implications of each one of those bullet points. But for today, let’s continue our summary of A Failure of Nerve.
In the previous article we looked at five markers of a chronically anxious system and asked you to consider – do any of these describe my context?
Those markers raise an obvious question: what then should we do to relieve this anxiety? Friedman’s deceptively simple answer is to become a non-anxious presence.
The Seeds of Renewal
For an anxious system, the only way through is by leaders injecting a non-anxious presence into the system. The seeds of corporate renewal are in the leader’s own life.
What does a non-anxious leader look like? It’s someone who is not pulled down into the quicksand of emotional reactivity that is swirling about. In Friedman’s words, it’s “someone who can be separate, while still remaining connected, and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-anxious and sometimes challenging presence.” There’s a lot in that sentence.
Non-anxious as compared to what? We remember that the fifth mark of an anxious system was “poorly defined leadership.” Poorly defined leaders can’t provide what the organization most needs because they can’t disentangle themselves from the very people they are trying to help. But here’s the thing: they can’t see that. They are blinded by their good intentions. We don’t see how our good intentions are keeping us from caring in a deeply healing way. To put it bluntly, poorly defined leaders care more about the approval of others than being a compassionate, courageous leader who serves the well-being of the entire organization.
Now, you might ask: why must we choose? Why can’t we be both well-liked and courageous? This is where Friedman is so illuminating. Because in his schema, if you choose to become a non-anxious presence, what can you expect in return? What reward should a non-anxious leader expect for his or her willingness to prioritize the organization’s mission over the concerns of the most emotionally anxious? Friedman says, “Expect sabotage.”
Expect Sabotage
A non-anxious leader should expect resistance, criticism, even sabotage. That’s a strong word, but it’s the word Friedman uses. For Friedman these headwinds are not a sign that a leader is doing something wrong, but rather a clear indicator that he or she is doing something right.
There will always be forces in any organization that resist healthy change. In an anxious system, these forces, like a virus (Friedman’s metaphor), want to keep the organization mired and stuck.
We are not talking about invisible spiritual forces (though spiritual warfare should not be discounted as a major factor in any story of church conflict). We mean the resistance with which anyone who’s ever tried to change a system, a family, or even themselves, will be familiar.
In the wilderness, when circumstances become difficult, there’s a part in each of us that wants to go “back to Egypt” (Numbers 11:4-6). Egypt wasn’t great; in fact, it was hellish. But it’s the hell we’re familiar with. And in the throes of anxiety, we may prefer the hell we know to a risk-filled, unknown future, even when we are promised good ahead if we persevere and make it through.
Like the children of God before us, we resist change. And like them, we may tend to resist someone who offers to lead us out into freedom (Numbers 12). All change is hard. It’s threatening. It shouldn’t surprise us, therefore, that even positive change is often resisted.
In the face of this to-be-expected resistance, a leader faces a temptation. And it’s a huge temptation, especially for a conciliatory leader, to want to comfort and appease the fretful. That impulse comes from a place of care. But remember that one of the hallmarks of an anxious system is that it tends to cater to the most vocal, the most reactive, often the least emotionally mature.
If the leadership is unwilling to endure the blowback that comes after taking a clear stand, this is what Friedman calls “a failure of nerve.” We hate to disappoint people, people we care about, people in pain, people we want to help. It’s agonizing! So we bend, or backtrack. A wise leader will learn that it is awfully hard to know how to love wisely and well.
Put positively, a leader needs the ability to endure criticism and sabotage, to stay present and connected, even with people expressing disappointment to us and about us. It’s the ability to stay present without defending ourselves that is the hallmark of a non-anxious presence. Friedman considers this posture of enduring sabotage so essential to our being a non-anxious presence that he calls it “the key to the kingdom.”
If we ever hope to become a non-anxious presence, it will entail keeping our nerve and enduring what will surely feel like wrenching attacks and painful betrayals. Perhaps you expected a pat on the back, or a hearty thank you. Instead, you got a knife. The choice to stay present in the face of this animosity, and to keep pushing toward the greater vision, makes someone the type of non-anxious leader so desperately needed today.
A non-anxious leader abides this discomfort and accepts the non-acceptance of others. This is precisely the crucible. The leader’s non-anxious response, in the face of very painful personal criticism, is what points the way forward.
Beware of “Peace-Mongers” and “Nice” People
The sad irony is that, in wanting to be peacemakers, most leaders just make matters worse. Friedman writes:
“If the person at the top is a peace-monger, a highly anxious risk avoider, someone who is more concerned with good feelings than with progress, someone whose life revolves around the axis of consensus, a ‘middler,’ someone who is incapable of taking well-defined stands…. Someone who treats conflict or anxiety like mustard gas – one whiff, on goes the emotional gas mask, and he flits.”
Friedman says such leaders are “often nice if not charming,” but their failure of nerve at this critical juncture, rather than relieving, serves to compound organizational anxiety.
Friedman says that leaders who accommodate may be well-liked, but aren’t serving the long-term emotional health of the organization. They would be horribly offended if someone pointed this out to them because they are so nice. But, alas, they’re also blind to their own emotional processes. (You get the impression reading his book that Friedman was probably not always liked by his clients – except for the ones who pushed beyond their hurt feelings toward the deep healing Friedman was offering).
It’s a sad irony. While earnestly trying to make things better, a leader with a suffocating fear of offending creates gridlock which prevents renewal. The organization remains stuck. It can’t move forward. Time does not heal these wounds.
In fact, the wounds fester and grow worse even when the leadership changes. Friedman warns that neither blood transfusions (existing staff leaving and new staff coming on) nor amputations (cutting out the offending parts) can heal anxious systems unless the leadership team wrestles through the question of what allowed those dynamics to surface in the first place.
Don’t be seduced into blaming those who are no longer present. Remember that another of the hallmarks of an anxious system is blame displacement. Instead ask, “What is it about our organization TODAY that allowed those dynamics to surface and persist in the first place?”
Beware of Misplaced Empathy
Empathy is the word in vogue today: feeling with. Everywhere you look people are praising empathy as an unalloyed good. And the desire to “walk in another person’s shoes,” as empathy is often defined, is commendable. It is an irreducible part of compassion. But it’s not a synonym.
Friedman foresaw that when compassion is reduced to empathy, it becomes a disservice that can end up hurting everyone involved.
I was recently reading Arthur Brooks’ and Oprah Winfrey’s newest book, Build the Life You Want. Brooks is a Christian, a social scientist, who teaches at Harvard. He teamed up with Oprah to write this book, which has become a #1 NYTimes Bestseller. Brooks makes a similar move to Friedman, untangling empathy from compassion.
Brooks points out that empathy is a relatively new concept, even a new word, existing in the English language for less than 100 years. He writes, “As virtues go…empathy is overrated…it can bring harm to empathizers and empathizees alike.”
Brooks notes that it takes a tremendous amount of wisdom to know how to extend care in a way that serves everyone involved. He prefers compassion to empathy. Compassion seeks to relieve suffering. But compassion may sometimes include an element of “tough love,” a willingness to challenge, even the aggrieved.
It struck me because Friedman, writing decades before, made a very similar point. He warned against what he called “the fallacy of empathy.” Like Brooks, he lauded the motivation behind it, but like Brooks, he noted how empathy can easily be misplaced.
Anyone who is not aware of how hard it can be to exercise empathy responsibly, in a way that is truly compassionate, should consider Friedman’s (and Brooks’) point. “Irresponsible empathy” is hurting many people today, keeping them stuck in their emotions.
As commendable a desire as being an empathic presence might be, if we are not wise in how we come alongside to care, we may unwittingly hurt people we desire to help, by leaving them trapped in a mentality that strips them of what they need most in order to move forward in strength and health: responsibility. Response-ability. Agency. The ability to take ownership, to respond in the way they choose. We are not helpless.
Without minimizing the pain of others, we can gently encourage them to stop blaming and start taking responsibility for their own emotional well-being. Remember that’s how Friedman defines emotional maturity: the willingness to take responsibility for one’s own emotional processes. This is what he’s talking about – discovering the power we have, the freedom we have, to choose how we will respond in any set of circumstances.
Negative emotions are important to be listened to and validated. But how we move forward from those emotions is our choice, our responsibility.
Leaders who want to be peacemakers must become more aware of their own emotional processes. Or, in the name of trying to help, we will get pulled down into the quicksand of others’ reactivity – without realizing it.
If you were ever trained as a lifeguard, then you know that one of the primary causes of drowning is when a drowning person, in their fear and desperation, unwittingly pulls down someone who came out to help them. And both go under.
A non-anxious presence stays connected and present, full of compassion and care. But they won’t let themselves get pulled down into the whirlpool. They feel with. But they exercise something stronger than just empathy – they exercise compassion. Even when their compassion is met with stiff resistance.
To put it bluntly, Friedman warns that you will not be liked by the very people you are most trying to help. To help them get unstuck from their own emotional processes, you will have to challenge them to leave behind their resentment so that they can move forward.
Even if they won’t make that turn, their refusal won’t stop a non-anxious leader from keeping his or her nerve, leading the organization toward health, for all, for anyone who wants to be healed. In Part 3, we’ll look at how we might grow in our capacity to be a non-anxious presence in the midst of anxiety.
Questions for a Leadership Team to Consider
As we mentioned, we hope these posts can be conversation starters for leadership teams, in any context.
- Empathy vs. Compassion. Have you ever thought about the contrast Arthur Brooks and Edwin Friedman both draw between empathy and compassion? Have you considered or experienced how empathy can be misplaced? Have you encountered the difficulty of loving wisely those we love sincerely?
- “A suffocating fear of offending creates gridlock which prevents renewal.” Have you ever experienced this? Do you feel that your current team is stuck and can’t move forward?
- Do you find yourself prioritizing the need for approval over the potential of offending, especially when you sense a necessary clear stand that may invite strong criticism, even sabotage?
- Are you one of those leaders whose “life revolves around the axis of consensus”? Have you ever considered how your well-intended efforts might be a part of the problems in your organization?
- Are you a non-anxious presence? Are you able to stay connected, to stay present, with people you know are disappointed with your leadership? What is a step you might take towards becoming a non-anxious leader?