The Listenary

Like Generalized Anxiety when talking about the individual, anxiety can become systemic in a corporation, church, or family. Some piece of anxious material has overwhelmed the best communication pathways so other communications take over like rumors, gossip, blaming, copycatting, bullying, polarization, and triangling. If the anxious material carries over or builds up from the long-lost past, the systemic anxiety may be in a chronic state, creating even the culture of the corporation or other group.

If you work in an anxious system, or have recently become the new CEO of such a system, then its culture may hit you as shock. So first observe and think through the first set of articles posted here about difficult communication situations. Is the communication problem obviously deeper that mere differences among people? Do most of these people actually know how to communicate respectfully and try to get for each other what they each need? Is there no conflict issue you can get your fingers on, but all the issues seem too slippery to dig into with fair fighting rules?

Next ask this question: Is someone talking for someone else?

Each of the signs of chronic and systemic anxiety is a form of indirect communication. Somewhere, hidden perhaps behind layers and layers of defenses and traditions, there is a blockage of communication pathways, and indicretness has become the culture.

Rumors and gossip are filled with "he," "she," and "it" language rather than I-statements. Though the information may be factual, the communication is not true and honest, where one person truly engages and respects another person.

Blaming seeks to redirect any effort at honest communication, pointing out yet another interview needed before you find the responsible person. Copycatting may be middle management's way of directing focus outside the department or even outside the organization to find a solution so no one has to talk about the issues within.

Bullying lets people send snide remarks or barbed jokes that hit their mark but leave no door for honestly facing the issues between them. Polarization invites people to draw up sides on any issue and may have formed multiple, layered, or intertwined alliances over the years. Triangling includes marital affairs as well as refusing to talk to certain people so sending messages through third parties.

The first thing for the newcomer or newly aware to do is stop, step back, get distance. You can do this in your mind. Don't consider yourself a part of this yet.

Then observe. Notice the signs of systemic anxiety listed above. Writing them down will be helpful. If you can get yourself a good listener outside the system, you will be much stronger for talking about the anxiety to a safe person.

My work on systemic anxiety has some of its foundation in the book by Edwin H. Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York: Guilford Press, 1985.)

My next article will examine strategies to surive and perhaps change the all too common phenomenon of systemic anxiety.