Are you reacting or responding when stress hits your team? Discover why anxiety spreads like wildfire in organizations and families, and how your instinctive reactions might be more predictable—and manageable—than you think. Explore the five classic patterns of reactivity under stress, and learn how to spot them in yourself and others. Plus, get practical questions and assignments to help you move from anxious reaction to thoughtful leadership.

Highlights

• Why no one is an island: the power of emotional systems in work and life
• How anxiety spreads through teams and families (and why it’s so contagious)
• The story of Illuminations Corporation: a case study in leadership under pressure
• Five predictable relationship patterns when stress rises:
  • Increased togetherness
  • Visible conflict
  • Distancing and emotional cutoff
  • Over-functioning and under-functioning
  • Triangling
• How to recognize your own default stress response
• Why anxious reactivity is a search for relief, not wisdom
• The leader’s real job: managing yourself, not eliminating anxiety
• A practical assignment to observe your own patterns

Chapters

• 00:00 — Introduction: Leadership through the lens of Bowen Family Systems Theory
• 00:35 — People as part of emotional systems
• 01:58 — How anxiety shows up and spreads in groups
• 03:26 — Two key ideas about anxious reactivity
• 04:34 — The contagious nature of anxiousness
• 05:31 — Case Study: Illuminations Corporation under stress
• 09:40 — The executive team’s reactions and system dynamics
• 12:42 — Understanding anxiety as relational, not individual
• 14:49 — Holiday table example: how tension spreads in families
• 16:26 — External and internal threats to systems
• 18:08 — The quick, emotional nature of our reactions
• 19:58 — Five predictable patterns of reactivity under stress
• 21:09 — Pattern 1: Increased togetherness
• 23:00 — Pattern 2: Visible conflict
• 25:36 — Pattern 3: Distancing and emotional cutoff
• 28:02 — Pattern 4: Over-functioning and under-functioning
• 31:20 — Pattern 5: Triangling
• 33:20 — Revisiting the case study with the five patterns
• 35:57 — The leader’s challenge: staying thoughtful under pressure
• 36:48 — Stress as information, not pathology
• 37:49 — The work of leadership: being a less anxious presence
• 38:35 — Assignment: Observe your own stress responses
• 39:15 — What’s next: Differentiation of self

Resources Mentioned

• Bowen Family Systems Theory: Bowen Center for the Study of the Family
  
  

Want to know how Systems Theory could be leveraged in your business? Contact us at https://iridiumleadership.com/ to learn more.