Truisms for Anxiety-Ridden Systems

All organizational systems experience episodes of acute anxiety but manifest them differently.

Relatively stable, resilient, and high-functioning systems seem able to respond to episodes of acute stress.

In contrast, chronically anxious systems that lack resilience tend to be reactive in the face of acute anxiety.

That is, they have little tolerance for challenges and lack the capacity for self-regulation or imaginative responses to handle times of acute anxiety.

Chronically anxious systems share the following characteristics:

(1) They make someone in the system responsible for someone else’s functioning.

(2) They are structured to inhibit the effectiveness of their leaders.

(3) They develop reactive, rigid, and predictable patterns for dealing with anxiety.

(4) They tend toward patterns of triangulation.

While assessing the emotional process at work at the systemic level is more helpful, observing how symptomology plays out in individuals in the system can also be beneficial.

When facing reactivity at the systemic level, congregational leaders will need to respond to how it affects the individuals in the system.

Those individuals in the system who have a low capacity for self-differentiation and for managing their anxiety will tend to be the most symptomatic (i.e., the ones who “act out”).

Symptomology in Anxious Systems

Here are some truisms worth remembering when dealing with reactive individuals in a system going through acute anxiety:

• Some people just need to be mad. They want their pain.
•  Trying to dialogue with a person having a tantrum is a waste of time. 
•  Some people just need to be “right,” regardless of the cost, even if wrong.
•  A chronically anxious system in the grips of acute anxiety has a tremendous capacity for self-sabotage. There will be plenty of volunteers willing to lead the way.
•  Anxiety spawns triangles—-even over distances.
•  Anxious people lose the capacity to practice grace and will assume the worst of others.
•  Persons who are “stuck” will believe what they want to believe. No amount of earnestness or data will convince them otherwise.
•  It only takes one willful, anxious person to kick up the reactivity in a nervous system if the healthier ones do not respond with mature and principled interventions.
•  A leadership vacuum leaves a system with a need for self-regulation or vision.
•  Anxiety spreads like a virus in a system that lacks immunity provided by leadership.
•  During times of acute anxiety, emotionality trumps rationality, even in a system full of “smart” people.
•  Immature people will take any opportunity to work out their unresolved issues if given a forum.
•  Trust is a gossamer thread; it’s almost impossible to regain once severed.
•  Systems in reactivity usually cannot hear vision or follow the leaders they need.
•  People are hooked on the myth of information—the notion that if one has all the information, it will make a difference in the next steps or that more data will bring insight.
•  While information reduces anxiety, for anxious people, so will misinformation.
•  Chronically anxious systems facilitate regression if unchecked.
•  No matter how hard you think you’ve tried to communicate the process, most people will not hear it all.
•  When people give in to paranoia, guilt by association carries more weight than observable facts.
•  When people lack data, they’ll fill in the blanks.
•  Perception is people’s reality. And most people will see things only from their frame of reference and position in the system.

The job of a leader in a system caught up in acute anxiety is twofold: first, self-regulation, and second, being attentive to the emotional process in the system and providing the function it needs of its leader.

Depending on the circumstance, the function of the leader can be anything from providing a corrective to acting out behavior; re-framing the issues from principled values and missional perspective; empowering the calmer, more mature, more centered persons in the system; or merely providing the presence of the leader in the system (staying visible and emotionally connected).

The good news is that acute anxiety and the reactivity it engenders are episodic.

Its shelf life is as long as the length of the crisis.

Leaders can also be encouraged by the fact that every system has some elements of health and maturity, even amid acute anxiety and crises.

When the leader can focus on those, they can be surprised at the capacity of some in the system to step up to leadership or be a resource to the system.

To learn more about systems theory as a resource for ministry leadership, attend the Leadership in Ministry workshops, which are part of the Pastoral Excellence Programs of the Center for Lifelong Learning.

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Israel Galindo is Associate Dean for Lifelong Learning at the Columbia Theological Seminary. Formerly, he was Dean at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. He is the author of the bestseller The Hidden Lives of Congregations (Alban), Perspectives on Congregational Leadership (Educational Consultants), and A Family Genogram Workbook (Educational Consultants), with Elaine Boomer and Don Reagan.

His books on Christian education include Mastering the Art of Instruction,The Craft of Christian Teaching (Judson), How to be the Best Christian Study Group Leader (Judson), Planning for Christian Education Formation (Chalice), and A Christian Educator’s Book of Lists (S&H), and Theories of Learning for Christian Educators and Theological Faculty.