Hi, I'm Gil Crosby. And this video is about the five characteristics of chronically anxious systems by Dr. Edwin Friedman, the fellow you see here on the screen. Dr. Friedman was a family systems theorist, a protege of Dr. Murray Bowen, who took the information from family systems and applied it to leadership and to the implications of leadership behavior in a broader organizational system. So that's what I'm going to be talking to you about today. And here's the first characteristic of a chronically anxious system. Now by chronically anxious Dr. Friedman means that there is too much emotional tension in the system, a certain amount of emotional tension is good.

If you don't care about what you're doing, if you don't have some emotionality about it, then you're not going to be motivated enough. But if there's too much stress and tension in a system, then human behavior will start to break down in some predictable ways. So the first way that it breaks down, according to Dr. Friedman is reactivity. That is, people will go into the primitive brain reactions of fight that is being in opposition to whatever the leader or other groups or any kind of feedback, they'll just be stuck in oppositional behavior. Much of Which is unspoken, kept to themselves, but that really starts leaning into the opposite into the spectrum, still reactive freeze. In freeze behavior, people keep their mouths shut.

They're very careful about what they say they only say what they think people above them want to hear. And so that's reactive behavior in a system that has too much tension. The second characteristic Dr. Friedman called hurting when there's too much stress, people will identify with their peers in opposition to everyone else. I've being part of something is human nature. And it's it's good to be part of something. The problem When I can't hear anything, in terms of criticism about whatever I'm part of, then learning stops and silos harden intergroup cooperation decreases and people get reactive back to fight or flight, a flight.

Another way to think of flight is avoidance. And when people are hurting, they talk about other groups, but they don't talk to the other groups, very destructive in an organizational system. The third characteristic all these are pretty related. As you can see, I Friedman called displaced blame. Something goes wrong, wasn't me. I wasn't my fault.

I did everything I could do. It's those others. maintenance. They never get their job done. That's displaced blame. Of course, in a system that's functional when things go wrong.

People stop and say, Wow, what can we do to keep this from happening again? What was my piece of this? Is there anything that I could do differently that would help prevent this from ever happening again? What do I need to do? Who do I need to talk to and work with in order to make things go better, so that we can be more productive, that's a functional system versus pointing fingers and making sure that you stay out of the range and eyesight of anyone that might point fingers at you. The fourth characteristic is quick fix mentality when there is too much stress in the system, and I think this is an epidemic Today, people are constantly looking for the next solution.

They are implementing too many things at once, and are highly reluctant to ever postpone any good idea. So organizations are frantically pushing all kinds of activities that are, of course, draining resources away from each other. And then wondering why, even though they planned Well, the implementation went poorly. And also making the mistake of thinking that when they didn't get the results they wanted from the new solution. It was the solution that was flawed, instead of the implementation and the over abundance of quick fix activity in the organization. So people are under a lot of pressure these days, they are expected to continually raise the bar on earnings and so on.

That's understandable. But the way to get there is to do a few things well, not to frantically try to do too many things. And when things don't work, to pause and think about what happened, so that you don't repeat, the lack of good implementation, which is again, an epidemic in today's organizations. Dr. Friedman had quite the wit. And so his way of talking about this he liked to use metaphors was you can't make a bean grow by pulling on it doesn't matter how badly you want it to grow faster. You pull on it, you're going to kill it.

And that's true of many solutions which organizations are trying to implement what Hardware solutions, IT solutions, technological or people solutions. You got to move forward steady, yes. But if you're rushing, just like in safety, you're going to cause accidents. Finally, the fifth characteristic is the lack of non anxious leadership. Friedman and Bowen also talked about this as a lack of self differentiated leadership, something you can learn about more in one of my other lectures. But I, the lack of non anxious leadership, this does not mean that there are human beings in any system who never get anxious.

Of course, that's part of being human is feeling anxious and some anxiety is a good thing. I get anxious before I put together a video and so I do my best to do some prep work. ration and to relax myself. That's all good for performance by too much anxiety and again, people start to break down they start to perform poorly. So here's another metaphor in the emotional system of your organization Are you a step up transformer of emotional energy? People are scared people to hear comes a rumor Oh, we're gonna close we're gonna cut down you hear the rumor ah like chicken little puppy, pass it on boo, boo boo.

And step up the tension. You're that you're a leader. And when there's tension from above, you go out to the people below you. That's a step up transformer in the emotional system. effective leadership and effective membership in any organization, whether you're a leader or a follower or both. is to be A step down transformer of intense emotionality.

Boom Here comes the rumor boop boop boop like dominoes, boop boop boop boop boop boop, it gets to you and you go, who? Okay, that sounds bad, but what you know where exactly did you get this information? And, you know, so and also I just need to take a deep breath before I do anything with this, but but really for sure I want to understand the facts behind whatever this thing is and not just start reacting to it and passing on the emotionality. I want to be a step down transformer in the emotional system. So those are the five characteristics of chronically anxious systems and people are either fueling the chronic anxiety or they're having Hoping to decrease it. And of course, I'm sure that you want to be one of those persons who is commonly dealing with difficulty because there will always be difficulty and helping your organization move forward in the right direction.

So pleasure talking to you today. I look forward to our next conversation.