Triangles in the emotional field

Students of Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST) learn early about the importance of triangles in relationship systems. The concept of the emotional triangle is one of the original eight basic concepts in BFST. So foundational to the theory of emotional process is the concept of emotional triangles that it is often said, “If you understand triangles, you understand the theory.”

Your Mother Was Right: Life's Not Fair (and sometimes, you shouldn't be)

Most of us carry a little tape in our heads of things our mothers said repeatedly. And sometimes we repeat those things, often unintentionally mimicking mom’s voice. One of those things your mother probably said, especially if you had siblings, or, when little friends came over to play was, “Play fair!” But you likely remember what your mother also said on those occasions you protested “It’s not fair!” She likely quipped, as countless mothers have through the ages, “Life’s not fair.” (And, if your mother was like mine, she may have added, “Get over it.”).

One source of anxiety for many leaders is the need to be, or at least appear to be, “fair.” Adult employees or staff persons, like children, will cry “foul” when they feel they are treated unfairly. And reactive employees, or church members, will be quick to charge pastoral leaders with being unfair as a quick way to get a hearing or gain an advantage. The trap for any leader comes when he or she feels the need to live up to the expectation that it is the leaders’ job to always be fair, and to live up to what that means for everybody in the system. 

But the fact is, as your mother said, life is not fair. And, not everything is equitable or needs to be. What seems fair for one person or group in the system will seem unfair to another. And while I always say “Never question people’s motives,” I am also fond of reminding myself, “Never underestimate the power of the baser motivations.” On any given day, anxious persons will always choose what is best for them over what is best for the system. 

Recently a pastor shared his experience during a church business meeting in which a troubling and willful church member took the floor during a time of debate. As is typical during times of congregational crises, attendance during this particular business meeting was robust. Acting as moderator the pastor sought to keep things orderly and announced that each person would be allowed to speak three minutes for or against the issue under debate. The troubling member was the first to stand to have his say, but strongly protested that three minutes was not enough time to speak his case.

Not wishing to seem unfair, and thereby antagonizing the troubling member and his supporters, the pastor said that he would stick to the three minute rule, but would allow others to “give” the speaker their three minutes. Whereupon, starting with the man’s daughter, several people “gave” the man their three minutes, enabling him to go on to monopolize the business meeting for about fifteen minutes! 

In a moment full of anxiety, trying to appear “fair” (and likely with all good intentions about acting fairly) this leader effectively not only empowered the most willful person in the room, but also failed to challenge people to take personal responsibility for their thoughts and beliefs. The tactic failed to challenge persons to take a self-defining stance for their positions, viewpoints, or beliefs. Instead, this leader facilitated a “herding” mentality. Instead of each individual standing up and taking responsibility for him- or herself, many chose to allow another to speak for them. 

Leadership requires courage, and acting courageously in the midst of crisis is hard. But leaders need to remember that they are first responsible for the welfare and health of the system as a whole, and their own functioning in their leader position. Everything else is secondary: other people’s functioning, other people’s happiness, or, whether every decision is “fair” for every individual or group in the system. 

Do you want to be great?

I have come to appreciate the cycle of blockbuster best-selling leadership-in-organization books. To be honest about it, they’re good for business. It isn’t too long after one of these best-sellers hits the bookstores that I get an uptick in consultation requests. I used to get calls asking for help in getting organizational staff leaders to develop “habits” for being effective leaders. Then, the calls were about helping organizations and schools become “learning organizations.” 

The Five People You Need as a Leader

Leadership is lonely, the say. That is true to a real extent. Few understand the weight of responsibility that comes with leadership, or the shifts in relationship that can bring isolation and distance. But to say leadership is a lonely position does not mean one can do it alone. Even the most differentiated leaders need to be meaningfully connected to others in the work system, and, to a personal support system. Ask most leaders for the secret of their success and they'll likely tell you two things: "I surround myself with the best people," and "I have invested in a long-term peer support system."

When one is in a position of leadership one's network of relationships both expands and narrows. You'll be connected to a wider number and variety of people in the organization to some extent and in several capacities. At the same time you'll narrow the scope of your direct charges, your "inner circle" of second-chair leaders and associate staff. In other words, you need to be present to all but accessible to only a few. In the mix of those networks there are five people every leader needs to help her or him be more effective. 

You may discover these five people within your organization as work colleagues. Others may exist outside of the job environment. Regardless, they each will contribute something important to your success as a leader. 

1. The Encourager. Whether friend, second chair, spouse, deacon, or Mom, this is the person in your life, sometimes the ONE person, who says "You can do this." And because he or she genuinely believes it, you'll believe it too.  This may also be the person that helps you give yourself permission for taking a day off, or allowing yourself a "mental health day." Sometimes, this is merely the person who, regardless of circumstance, just likes you, no matter what. 

2. The Antagonist. While irksome, every leader needs an antagonist. Iron sharpens iron, and leaders may grow dull without the challenge antagonists provide. Antagonistic people may be reactive, but they are not necessarily unintelligent. If you can listen to their arguments and perspectives past the grating annoyance, they can provide correctives to your blind spots. Believe it or not, antagonists can be a resource to a leader, as long as they don't tip over into sabotage. 

3. The Skeptic. Most leaders are, by necessity and character, optimists. They likely would not have taken the job if they didn't believe in possibilities, potential, and ultimate positive outcomes. This is what helps leadership "sell" the vision that gathers others around a shared value and the tasks that make things happen. But an overly-optimistic leader with Pollyanna rose-tinted glasses does not serve an organization well. Skeptics can help you curb your enthusiasm in those times when operating out of realism is a necessity. You don't have to buy into a skeptic's perspective, but he or she can provide a balance to our tendencies for wishful thinking, self-referencing, and denial. 

4. The Lieutenant. God bless this type! Most leaders would be lost without them, and most organizations would fail to make progress without their energy, skills, and single-minded drive. The Lieutenant in the organization is the one who delivers on the dreams. She's the one who makes it happen. He or she is your "Number One." Give them a vision and they'll find the ways to make it a reality. Most of the time, the best thing a leader can do is get out of their way and let them do what needs to be done in the way THEY think best. 

5. The Sage. The best leaders tend to be smart, but none are omniscient. In fact, those who seek to be ("know-it-alls") very quickly cease to be effective as leaders. In leadership, a little bit of humility goes a long way. Yes, your staff and your constituents want, perhaps need, to believe you are smart and know what you are doing. But, the reality is that the challenges of leadership are more about knowing how to function than knowing answers. Effective leaders know there's a difference between expertise and wisdom. This is the value of the mentor, consultant, or advisor in the life of a leader. The Sage helps the leader with three critical practices: perspective, discernment, and self-understanding. 

Do you have these five people in your life? Where are they in your support networks--at the job or outside of work? Which do you need to cultivate to complete this company of the five people you need as a leader?

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 Ministry (Educational Consultants), and A Family Genogram Workbook (Educational Consultants), with Elaine Boomer and Don Reagan. Galindo contributes to the Wabash Center's blog for theological school deans.

Six "Tells" of the Differentiated Leader

I had an interesting conversation with a doctoral student during a recent trip. He was at the proposal writing stage of his study but struggling with putting his thoughts together. He said he wanted to "study something about differentiation of self and pastoral leadership." I said it sounded like he was at "the fuzzy stage of research," that point where we have a notion about what we want to write about, but not really sure what, exactly.

"Yes!" he said, "that's exactly where I'm at!"

 We talked some more about his ideas. I found it an enriching conversation, and it sparked in me some thinking on the issue. Recently, someone else had asked me "How can leaders know if they are functioning in differentiated ways?" That's a great question given (1) the limitations of our own subjectivity; (2) our propensity for self-referencing; and (3) the challenge of Bowen Family Systems Theory to "stick to observable facts" when interpreting emotional process.

One common error is the misunderstanding of striving to "be a self-differentiated leader." That is, achieving some mythic state of being. Leaders will do better to focus on what Murray Bowen called the "functional level of differentiation." I think that means that the "tell" of a differentiated leader is more about one's capacity to function in context and relationships and less about an over-focus on some internal state of being arrived at through gnosis, expertise, or practices.

Here are six ways to"tell" one is functioning as a differentiated leader: 

1. Assess your pattern of functioning over time. Is there evidence of consistent self-regulation and effective functioning over a span of periods of high-anxiety, crises, stress, and times of relative calm? 
2. Assess your repertoire for responding to rather than reacting against anxious behaviors and situations. Do have have a wider range of responsive options than you did previously? Can you both act differently and think divergently? 
3. Assess to what extent and in what ways your functioning directly influences toward the better the functioning of people most closest to you. 
4. Assess your capacity to consistently take a more principled position and hold it against the opposition of important persons in the system. Do you function consistently out of your values than out of what is expedient? 
5. Assess the extent to which your functioning is increasingly mature and non-reactive in the face of stressors that used to trigger reactivity and poorer functioning. 
6. Assess the extent to which other people close to your leadership position exhibit higher levels of functioning and less reactivity (fewer cutoffs, less enmeshment, less seriousness, reduced gossip, less secrecy, etc.). 

My new doctoral student friend thanked me for our conversation. He reported being encouraged and having some new ideas after our talk. I think he'll do well with what sounds like an interesting research project. I look forward to his research. I hope he'll discover additional evidences of a differentiated leader. I think we can always use a few more.

 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 Ministry (Educational Consultants), and A Family Genogram Workbook (Educational Consultants), with Elaine Boomer and Don Reagan. Galindo contributes to the Wabash Center's blog for theological school deans.

Marcuson's 111 Tips to Survive Music Ministry

I've worked with several church musicians over the years, in various ministry contexts. I've been fortunate that most of those working relationships have been positive, collegial, and enriching. I'm doubly grateful in that some of my most interesting coaching sessions with pastors and staff often involve issues with "the music person" at the church. Church musicians tend to be a creative and artistic lot. Often it seems the biggest challenge with working with church musicians is that they are, well, creative and artistic. But, truth be told, church musicians have it just as challenging working with overly-cerebral, left-brained, tone deaf colleagues.

Second to the congregational youth staff person, church musicians may be the most prone to be the focus of anxieties stemming from everything from tastes in styles, performance issues, aesthetic predilections, or systemic scapegoating.

Margaret Marcuson's new resource, 111 Tips to Survive Music Ministry, is a great help to those working in music ministry. The tips are "right on": common sense, intuitive, and practical. The tips are organized by categories: worship, relating to the pastor, music, leadership, learning, pastoral care, and five more.

The ebook is available from Creator for the special limited time introductory price of just $2.99. You can purchase it here.

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 Ministry (Educational Consultants), and A Family Genogram Workbook (Educational Consultants), with Elaine Boomer and Don Reagan. Galindo contributes to the Wabash Center's blog for theological school deans.

Money and What it Represents Part 2: Approaching Stewardship Education As A Spiritual Issue

I am preparing for an online course on money and ministry to be taught in the fall with author Margaret Marcuson. Money, and what it represents is a complex issue in congregations. As an educator I'm interested in how people acquire what they learn, including perspectives, values, and habits. We know that certain things need to be learned in particular ways. As such I'm intrigued how often we teach things the wrong way, or, simply teach the wrong things. On the topic of money and stewardship, this seems to be especially true.

Stewardship is about a Christian’s personal, volitional response to God's call to discipleship as part of the Body of Christ. As such, stewardship is primarily a value (an individual, but also a corporate one), a practice (behavior) only secondly, and a concept or belief, thirdly. Given that framework, most congregations seem to tend to “teach” it backward and incompletely. Too often we attempt to teach Christian stewardship by using the teaching-by-telling approach and leaving it at that, never touching on the affective and the volitional and failing to facilitate the practice. Then, we naively expect that change will happen in the life of our members related to stewardship.

Stewardship is a Spiritual Issue

Stewardship is a spiritual issue, and it must be addressed like every other spiritual issue in the life of the believer. The issue is not to TELL people that they need to give 10% of their money to the church, rather, it is to help people arrive at a conviction of value by engaging them in the dialogue of theological reflection by asking, "Share with me, how are you responding to God in your stewardship of life?"

Our failure to help our members learn—--really learn-—-stewardship has had tragic results. Our unfortunate approach to teaching stewardship in the lives of our members means that we’ve done a great disservice to them over the years by being ineffective about helping them address the stewardship dimension of discipleship (except when it's time to ask for money for the church budget we tend to not even talk about it. And all evidence is that we’ve failed even there, since most members give only 2.3% of their income to the church).3 I suspect that we, the church leaders—pastors, teachers, deacons—have been irresponsible in helping our members in this, probably because we ourselves have not dealt with our own issues related to money.

In most of our churches, a significant number of our members are under the oppressive burden of debt, so much so that they are unable to respond in responsible stewardship to God. I suspect they resent us for it, because we've been of no help whatsoever to them in dealing with financial stewardship while making them feel guilty about not giving more money to the church. We've not been prophetic about challenging the values of the world our members have embraced and the myths of materialism the world teaches. So when we once or twice a year make our pitch for money, they can’t hear it, at least, they don't hear it theologically. And then there are the church members who have bought into the values of the world's materialism: how many people in your congregation spend more on feeding and caring for their pets than they do giving to the hunger offerings at church? How many spend more monthly on their cable TV and Internet service bill than they do to missions? How many church members spend more money on their annual vacation than they do giving money to help the homeless?

It's About Values

The issue of stewardship is complex because it less about the money and more about values. I think that we ought to address the issue of stewardship in the same way we address issues about faith development and discipleship: by taking into account developmental life stages and cycles. Different epochs in life require different messages about one’s response about stewardship of life. As a specific example: mid-life calls for a stewardship of generativity (learning to face the limitation of means and beginning to invest in the next generation. In effect, learning how to give your life away.). But that is not the case for adolescents and young adults whose life stage work appropriately includes acquiring and building. And how unfair, and nonsensical to its audience, are messages about stewardship of money to young children—who have no money and no cognitive concept of percentages or of proportional giving? And end-of-life stages, and stages of senescence, call for different ethical and theological decisions about stewardship. Only through dialogical engagement can people deal with these issues authentically in their lives. I suspect we make our messages of stewardship ineffective when we assume that it is the same for everyone at the same time, and we attempt to teach everyone the same way.

In terms of educational programming, not everything is for everybody at the same time. I think we confuse and make people feel uselessly guilty when we send the message that, regardless of their life stage, their family life cycle stage, and their particular life situation, they are supposed to function and respond like "everyone else." But rarely are they given the opportunity for learning through dialogue that leads to application, and therefore, I suspect most choose to make no legitimate response at all to God’s call in this area of their lives. Stewardship is as much a value and a choice as it is a concept and a practice. Unless we address all four domains of learning--knowledge, affect, behavior, and volition---our members will never “learn” stewardship.

Adapted from: How to Be the Best Christian Study Group Leader, by Israel Galindo (Judson Press)

To learn more about the course Money and Your Ministry, check out the Center for Lifelong Learning. Join us!

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 Ministry (Educational Consultants), and A Family Genogram Workbook (Educational Consultants), with Elaine Boomer and Don Reagan. Galindo contributes to the Wabash Center's blog for theological school deans.