Digital Flipchart

If there’s one thing a leader hates the most it may be getting caught by surprise—getting blindsided, waylaid, sideswiped, or caught unprepared. This pitfall sometimes happens because staff or subordinates tend to be hesitant about sharing “bad news” to their supervisors. But often, it’s because leaders miss the subtle signs of trouble brewing beneath the surface. They may overlook clues, or be too quick to dismiss cryptic messages. They may dismiss minor complaints or tensions as benign rather than recognizing them as indicators of deeper systemic anxiety that could escalate into full-blown conflict.

Leaders need to be able to “read the system” to see below the surface of mild rumblings which may or may not be worth paying attention to. Some griping is benign; some people just like to complain. Some complaints have nothing to do with what people are complaining about. But some signs can signal that conflict is on the horizon. Leaders ignore those to their peril.

The experience of anxiety in itself will not harm or endanger a system; people get anxious about a lot of things, and, the more they genuinely care about matters, the more anxious they can get. It is the response to anxiety that often determines outcomes. “How anxiety is addressed will determine the outcome more than anything else. Your responsible and enlightened behavior is the touchstone.” (Steinke, Uproar, pp. 13-14.)

Unfortunately, it is often the case that when anxiety turns into reactivity is the moment leaders can see the signs. If leaders can learn to read those signs of potential escalation, they can avoid being surprised when things bubble up to the surface to become a conflict.

Characteristics of reactivity

Anxiety is not imaginative, so reactivity can become a vicious cycle of intense predictable reactions of people in a system to events and to one another. Here are some common reactivity patterns and behaviors that can help identify when trouble is brewing.

Herding: a process through which the instinct for togetherness triumph over the capacity for individuality and thinking. This reactive posture moves everyone to adapt to the least mature persons in the system. 

Blame displacement: an emotional state in which members focus on perceived forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being, decisions, and destiny. This fosters a lack of agency and accountability.

A demand for a quick-fix: this is result of a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change. “Uncertainty is the breeding ground of anxiety,” wrote Joseph Ledoux. Relieving immediate anxieties about uncertainties makes people feel good, but it does not address the fundamental issues that require more responsible, long-term, and often costly solutions.

Lack of well-differentiated leadership: Edwin H. Friedman identified a leader’s failure of nerve as contributing significantly to acute and systemic crises. To reorient oneself away from a focus on technology toward a focus on emotional process, Friedman claimed, requires that we think in ways that not only are different from traditional responses to crises, but that also sometimes go in the opposite direction. (Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix).

Leaders can better anticipate crises by focusing on how the emotional process in the system gives hints that anxiety is at an acute stage, watching for patterns of automatic reactive responses, and moving toward addressing the issues that are brewing rather than ignoring them.

Israel Galindo is Coordinator of the Leadership in Ministry program of the Center for Lifelong Learning at Columbia Theological Seminary.