Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs with Steve Cuss
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Today we're talking about anxiety, not clinical anxiety. We're talking about five false narratives that leaders are tempted to believe. This is going to be an extremely helpful conversation because we have an expert in the studio with us today. Joining us to discuss this important topic is author, speaker, and leadership coach Steve Cuss. Welcome to the podcast, Steve.
Steve Cuss (01:55):
Great to be with you, Andy.
Andy Stanley (01:56):
Hey, Steve is the founder of Capable Life and Online Coaching Community for Leaders. He's a native Australian, as you may have just picked up on who now calls the United States Home. He's a former hospital chaplain. We're going to hear a little bit about that. Former pastor, he has served a variety of companies including Clorox, Magnolia Home Furnishings, and Chick-fil-A. But the reason Steve is with us today is because his book, managing Leadership Anxiety has been so helpful for our staff and so many of our staff members read it. We invited him to come spend a couple of days with our staff and it has been amazing. And after this conversation, you may want to invite him to come and do the same for you. So Steve, let's jump in. But to begin with, Steve, I want you to talk a little bit about your training as a hospital chaplain, and then you tell a story about your first day on the job. And I think for our listeners, this is going to kind of create the context for why they should take you seriously, because Wow.
Steve Cuss (02:54):
Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, I was 24 years of age. I'd been married for six days, so the last day of my honeymoon was the first day on the job. It was my first full-time job out of college, and my first day on the job was a 28 hour overnight shift. So a lot of people
Andy Stanley (03:11):
28 hours,
Steve Cuss (03:12):
28 hours. So my wife dropped me off at eight in the morning and then picked me up at noon the next day. People don't realize that hospital chaplains do the same marathon shifts that the medical residents do. We sleep overnight at the hospital. And so I walked in first day on the job. I'd never seen a dead body before. I had no experience with grief. Every other chaplain resident had had previous chaplain experience, and I was green. So they put all the beepers on my belt for the different parts of the hospital and we're just touring around maybe 40 minutes in. And the blue beeper goes off. And I asked the supervisor, I said, which one's the blue beeper? And he said, that's the code team. So somebody's heart had stopped, and the chaplain's job is to be with the family while the doctors work on the patient.
(04:01):
So I said, okay, okay, great. What do I do? And he said, well, we're all about to find out aren't we? And that was kind of confusing. And so I said, well, wait a minute. That was the first moment I realized he's not coming with me, he's just sending me in to good. And so I said, well, what if I make a mistake? And he said, yeah, you're going to make a lot of mistakes this year. And that was my entire orientation. And about three minutes later, I was in an intensive care waiting lounge with 12 screeching people. They were screeching at the top of their lungs. One lady was headbutting a wall over and over. One lady was throwing up into a trash can and the doctors and nurses left because the chaplain showed up. So they got out of there, and it's just me and this screeching family, and I have no idea what,
Andy Stanley (04:50):
And you were how old again?
Steve Cuss (04:51):
- Oh, wow. And the day before I was on my honeymoon.
Andy Stanley (04:53):
Yeah, you were the youngest person in the room Probably
Steve Cuss (04:55):
Very much. And when I don't know what to do, I immediately feel stupid and exposed. So that was going on. I'm a people pleaser. The nurse came in and she's trying to pressure me to get the family in to visit their dead mom. She needs to change the sheets on the bed. So this is really where my journey and anxiety management began. I would not have described myself as an anxious person, but I had the nurse's expectation, my own feeling of stupidity. Andy, there were 40 or 50 people waiting in the waiting lounge. They're catching all the anxiety. So now mean from that one experience in my year as a chaplain and a bunch of study, I now teach people how do you locate the reactivity in the room and how do you manage it? But yeah, it was definitely a baptism by fire for sure.
Andy Stanley (05:44):
Yeah. Well, you just introduced a couple of terms that we're going to talk about, especially the term reactivity. So this morning Steve spoke to a group of our staff, about 60 of us, and I could just tell in the room when you introduce that idea that we'll get to in a minute, that was a new, well, for me, it was new to all of us, and it clarified so much of what we experience in leadership with anxiety. So I want us to back up a little bit and address the elephant in the room, whic h is many leaders would say they don't have anxiety Issues, but they would be quick to say that they work with people who do. So there's other people who have anxiety. Now we have stress, we deal with loneliness, lots of demands, but not anxiety. And to that you say,
Steve Cuss (06:30):
Yeah, so most leaders, particularly a type driven leader, which I would describe myself, I'm naturally kind of, let's get after it. We say, I'm not anxious. We think of worry and fear and we're not really that worried. We're not afraid. But if you introduce the word reactivity now you say, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, I get reactive.
(06:50):
And so that's the type of anxiety. So the problem with the word anxiety, it's one word that covers so many different types of conditions, but reactivity is a type of anxiety, and it's the only kind of anxiety that's contagious. So we catch it and spread it, and it's always based on a false need. So back to being a chaplain, I located my false need to make people feel better. That's what was going on in me. Well, if I'm not managing that as a chaplain, I'm bringing that into the room. I'm no longer able to help people because I'm busy reactively trying to manage my false needs, that kind of stuff. So particularly for the leader that doesn't think they're reactive, I would invite them to ask their team or maybe their loved ones. You could just ask your team, how do you know I'm reactive before I know I'm reactive?
Andy Stanley (07:40):
Well, when you talked about it this morning, I didn't doubt it. I've just never equated anxiety with my internal reaction to certain kinds of people, certain kinds of environments, certain kinds of expectations, not everything. But as soon as you began talking about it, it wasn't long before, I'm like, I know exactly what Steve's talking about and everybody in the room did, and their definition or their experiences are different. So just a little bit more on reactive. When you say reactive, what are you talking about?
Steve Cuss (08:10):
Yeah, so reactivity, humans go one or two ways. So if human size is in the middle, we either get bigger than human or we get smaller than human. When we're in a reactive state, I am prone to get bigger than human.
Andy Stanley (08:23):
So you power up,
Steve Cuss (08:24):
I power up, I get more aggressive. I interrupt when people are speaking. I'm no longer listening to learn. I'm now listening to defend or fix. That'd be an example, getting bigger. There'd be two classic examples. Somebody who's too prone to advice, somebody
Andy Stanley (08:40):
To give advice,
Steve Cuss (08:40):
To give advice. Somebody gives you two minutes of context, you give them 20 minutes of advice that would be getting bigger. You're shrinking the problem down. But then some people get smaller than human. They kind of move into like a turtle in the shell, they want to make sure they're not really noticed. They stop speaking up. So what you could do with your team, for example, is you could start thinking to yourself, who uses the most words in any meeting, who never speaks up unless they're called on, who has their own secret meeting after the meeting, it's always the same people. So we tend to fall into predictable reactive patterns. And if a leader can manage reactivity, it actually makes you way more efficient. The reactivity that depletes us all reactivity is the reason people leave jobs. They're kind of fed up. So what generates reactivity, false needs and false beliefs, it's a false need that your nervous system believes as a real threat. So for me, people pleasing for you as you identified this morning, perfectionism, and we can get into all the false needs, but those would be a couple of examples.
Andy Stanley (09:46):
So lemme say it back to make sure I have it. So when I go home and tell Sandra what I learned today because I'm a perfectionist, and one of the things you said today was perfectionists think once they've heard something, they need to be proficient in explaining it and become the expert in it. And I am like, how did he know? How many times have I gone home with half baked information and I'm sharing as if I've written a book on this right on it? So most people will say, have something that causes us to react or we go out or in. And this is what was so helpful, and I'm going to ask you to be specific in a minute when we recognize what that is. And we just talked about my perfectionism and you said yours was the
Steve Cuss (10:27):
Yeah, I've got three of them. But people-pleasing is one.
Andy Stanley (10:30):
Yeah. And you're going to give us the five in just a minute. And here's what I want our podcast audience to listen for. When we identify which of these five are true of us, and then we're able to in the moment connect, I'm reacting not to this person necessarily. I'm not even reacting to this expectation or what I'm hearing. I'm reacting to what you call a false need. And when I can identify that and recontextualize what I'm experiencing, then I dunno a better version of myself. I'm more down in the middle. I'm not powering up, I'm not shrinking back that,
Steve Cuss (11:07):
Yep. For a perfectionist, very well done, say pretty good. I
Andy Stanley (11:11):
Can go home and I tell Sandra, look how smart I'm,
Steve Cuss (11:14):
Look at what you did
Andy Stanley (11:14):
Well as you talk this morning and as I read the book, this was so helpful. Anyway. And so then to the point you just made, if we can appropriately discover the false needs or the reactivity of the people we work with, then we know what's going on. Because my tendency is to take it personally,
Steve Cuss (11:33):
That's right.
Andy Stanley (11:34):
They're powering up, I take it personally, they shrink back and won't respond. I take it personally. So again, this was such an extraordinarily helpful framework for leaders. So talk a little bit more about the false needs, Yeah,
Steve Cuss (11:46):
It's so wild. So if you're into movies, there are some showrunners that they employ a narrative device called the unreliable narrator. So like M Night Shyamalan with a sixth sense, you're watching the movie Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, hate to spoil the movie, but it's 30 years old. Well, that's known as an unreliable narrator. And Christopher Nolan movies often use an unreliable. They're deceiving the audience for the sake of drama. Your reactivity is an unreliable narrator. So if you're driving along on the interstate and you have to break hard and swerve, that's clinically called acute anxiety, you're actually in danger. Your body is designed by God to get you to safety
Andy Stanley (12:26):
Instinct.
Steve Cuss (12:27):
You get a big dose of adrenaline. You hear about people being able to lift a car off somebody, stuff like that. That's all the way we were designed to get to safety. But a false need, the problem with it feels real in the moment. So you and I can sit here now and talk comfortably about being a perfectionist until you actually make a mistake that affects somebody else. And then your nervous system acts as if you're in danger when you're in no danger at all. For me, people pleasing, another one of mine is being there for people when they're hurting. I am prone to rush in and save the day. I would describe it as being anxiously helpful. So it's hard for me to tell the difference between your need and my need to be needed. Oh, wow. It gets really confusing for me every time. I mean, I've been working on this for years, but in the moment it happens again. So what I have to learn to do is...
Andy Stanley (13:21):
And that is a form of anxiety, is the point.
Steve Cuss (13:23):
Yes. It's one of the big fives, the Anxious need to save the day. I had an intern that worked for me once, and she would always be surprised. She'd drop everything, rush in, and then she'd go have coffee with someone and they'd be like, why are we even meeting? And she's like, why are we meeting? You need me? And they're like, no, no, I was just telling you about my day. But her brain is telling her, you must go in and make them feel better.
Andy Stanley (13:46):
You got to solve this problem.
Steve Cuss (13:47):
That's one of my false needs as well. One of mine is knowing the answer, it's very hard for me to tell somebody I don't know when a telemarketer calls me, and I think it's a robot, not a human. I need to prove to the robot. I know it's a robot. It's crazy. And I'll actually ask it a trick question. I wish I was making this up. I'll say, Hey, before you talk about solar panels on my roof, if you could be any color balloon, what color balloon would you be? I know whoever programmed the robot,
Andy Stanley (14:17):
There's a script,
Steve Cuss (14:17):
Did not think of that. And then they keep going on with their sales call. And I'll say, I know you're a robot. Because when you need to always know the answer, being tricked is a big trigger. And I don't like to be tricked because that proves that I'm stupid. So I'll prove to the robot, I know it's a robot, and then I hang up and I'm all smug. And then my wife will look at me like, congratulations buddy. Why did you do that? Negotiating with Aruba?
Andy Stanley (14:43):
So the faults needs are, if I have this right, is control, perfectionism. We need to come back to control a lot of leaders. We high need to control, control perfectionism. Having the answer you just mentioned, that one, being there for others and then high need for approval, people's approval.
(15:03):
So to say this back, if my false need is control and I feel out of control, that's when I'm going to power up, shrink back. That's my anxiety, that's my leadership anxiety. Or in my case, as a perfectionist, my need for things to be perfect makes me very slow. I edit text and I drive people crazy. But recognizing that as an anxiety, but more specifically a false need, I'm not in danger. The world is not going to come to an end. Most people aren't going to notice either way. And then again, having the answer. That's an interesting one, feeling like you always have to have the answer. But we know people like that. We've met people no matter what the question is, they have to chime in as the expert.
Steve Cuss (15:44):
Oh, Andy, I had to be the smartest guy in the room for years. It's mortifying when I think about it. My poor team, I needed them to know I'm a smart person. And then we haven't covered control much. Your average control freak, there's two ways you can tell. If you invite a control freak to a party, they always want to drive separately. They don't like to be trapped. So where's the exit? When can I leave?
Andy Stanley (16:06):
They sit on the end of the aisle in church, always 100. They sit there first and they get up and let people go past them. They're never going to slide in.
Steve Cuss (16:15):
That's right. And then another example for a control freak would be if they're in a meeting and it's not their meeting, they're anxious about how everyone's experiencing the meeting. So if Jim is going on and on and on in the meeting, it's not their meeting, but they're still worried. What's interesting about the big five, God is all five. So God is in control. So there's a God size and a human size to all of this. God is in control. Humans get to trust. God is perfect. Humans get to make mistakes and grow. God knows everything there is to know He's omniscient. I think there's too much news available nowadays. So our nervous systems can't manage all that we know. So it's even interesting back in the genesis, what are we able to know and not know as humans? God is there for everybody. If somebody tries to be there for everybody, they actually call it a God complex.
Andy Stanley (17:07):
Yeah, a Messiah complex.
Steve Cuss (17:09):
And then God gives us our approval. So it's the effort for a human to become human sized. And then this may be a bit more advanced, but perfectionism has a human sized equivalent, which is a gift. So yeah, most perfectionists, their contribution to the world is taking something and making it better. But then you start to realize you never get enough perfection for your soul to relax.
Andy Stanley (17:32):
That is true. Again, while you were talking this morning with the staff, I've never equated my perfectionism with anxiety,
(17:40):
But it is the primary source of my anxiety. And then to connect that to the fact that it's a false need, I'm not in danger. There's really virtually nothing at risk. And just that thought was almost like not a solution, but something to retreat to in those moments because I can get so amped up. And then as we're going to talk about, and you've already mentioned, that gets transferred to the people around me because then it becomes the what would Andy do? And we got to make Andy happy and let's all look at it 12 times, and I don't want that, but I create that when my false need drives, whatever it is that gets communicated. That's right. And I counseling myself is I
Steve Cuss (18:28):
Think you're genuinely doing a great job in real time processing this.
Andy Stanley (18:33):
Well, it's so important for leaders because people take their emotional cues from us and life cues, all kinds of things. So to get this right and then to be able to leverage it with a team just seems like it's extremely important.
Steve Cuss (18:47):
Everybody has an emotional field, and I think the leader's primary responsibility is to manage my own emotional field so that I'm the kind of person everyone wants to work for. And then ideally, as a leader, I'm trying to help my team and manage their emotional field. I would like to work with them. I would rather not have difficult conversations and corrective conversations. So it's fascinating. I practiced this for 12 years at my church where we just set up cohorts where everybody could explore their emotional impact, and our management load went way down because everyone is doing the best they can to take responsibility for their own. We all have these rough edges. And so it's tempting to say, well, if Andy would get it together, but actually the question for everybody is, well, what should I get together? I'll trust that Andy's doing his work. I'll do my work. And now even better, if let's say I worked for you, if my posture was I would like to help Andy and he's helping me, oh my goodness. Some of these long-term patterns dissolve really quickly.
Andy Stanley (19:48):
In the book, you talk about reframing anxiety, and I guess this is part of what we're talking about. So unpack that a little bit.
Steve Cuss (19:55):
Anxiety makes you prone to exaggerate. When you speak, you use the superlative. You always do this. I never get this, these kind of hard edge words. So I train my coaches to listen to the vocabulary of a person, and that measures their anxiety and the more generalizations and extremes. So reframing is the attempt to help somebody see it for the size it really is.
Andy Stanley (20:21):
Let's do an example. So I'm trying to finish a book and I'm so slow, and yesterday I'm so frustrated, and that frustration gets transferred to Sandra A. Little bit. We're doing things, and then Suzy is going to ask me later, how's it going? And so there it is. So how does that get reframed? Is that a good example?
Steve Cuss (20:43):
I think that's a fine example. So what you have do is if your superpower is improvement, rather than chasing perfection, see if you can chase improvement. And if you chase improvement, you've hit the target. That would be a reframe. So yesterday,
Andy Stanley (21:00):
Susie, if you'd write that down, please, No, that's good improvement as opposed to perfection.
Steve Cuss (21:07):
Because you can, as a recovering perfectionist, which is what we're going to call you now you have what one day of sobriety or possibly you have, what do they call it, in 12 step? You have the desire.
Andy Stanley (21:17):
Yeah,
Steve Cuss (21:18):
The desire
Andy Stanley (21:18):
Chip and I could get a chip.
Steve Cuss (21:20):
Yeah, you get a chip for the desire.
Andy Stanley (21:22):
So improvement versus, yeah, that's good.
Steve Cuss (21:25):
If you say so,
Andy Stanley (21:26):
That's reframing. Yeah,
Steve Cuss (21:27):
That's one example of reframing. Another one would be if you have a loud mouth employee, when the time they're done speaking, no one else speaks up, they just have a strong opinion, they give it strongly. It shuts down the conversation. You can reframe that person and say, Hey, Jim, I think we all know that you tend to have a lot of passion when you speak. My concern is that when you speak, it shuts everyone down. I'm sure that's not what you mean to do. So what does everyone else think? That would be a reframe. If you're noticing, oh, this same guy's always dominating, that's another example of a reframe.
Andy Stanley (22:02):
And so what are you giving him to think about? In that case,
Steve Cuss (22:05):
I'm inviting that man to manage his emotional field, like, Hey, Jim. Because usually when someone's on a rant, they get drunk on it And they feel strong. So they don't think they're anxious, they feel energized. And so I'm trying to help him see, and ideally I'm doing it one-on-one rather than in the group, but I've done it publicly. If the person doesn't manage it after one-on-one conversations, because button it up real quick. If I'm saying, listen, Jim, everybody knows you have a strong opinion all the time, and that's fine. I'm not asking you to change your passion, but I am concerned with the way it stops others sharing. I'm sure you're concerned about that too, right, Jim? And it's kind of a gentle way of saying, why don't you manage your own crap, man? Because we're all tired of managing it. So this is maybe more advanced, but I'm always looking, whenever I'm brought into consult, who's generating the anxiety, who's carrying the anxiety? And then how do you make the person generate it, generating it, learn to carry their own? So in the general rule, the minority of the team generate it, the majority carry it. If you are generating anxiety and you're not made to carry it, you don't feel it. Therefore you don't change.
Andy Stanley (23:17):
Well, I think that's why at the beginning I said to leaders, Hey, you don't struggle with anxiety, but you deal with people who do. In fact, Suzy, our producer, was I guess a year and a half, a year ago, I guess I heard you speak. And she said, you began by asking all the leaders in the room who struggle with anxiety to raise their hand. And very few hands went up. And then when you finished, you ask all the leaders in the room who struggle with anxiety to raise their hand. And all hands went up because you've helped us label it for what it is, both in terms of how we carry it, and then how we transfer it to people around us when we don't manage it well or when we're not able to reframe it. And anyway, all these ideas overlap. You talk about the anxiety gap that leaders often face the space between, I guess not knowing what to do and having to do something. Anyway, talk a little bit about that, because that's a huge leadership thing and it feels like a different topic, but it's not
Steve Cuss (24:14):
Right. That's right. And I think both of us were in situations when we were young, me most famously in chaplaincy. But you must have been in this where you are responsible and you have to make the decision, but you don't have enough information.
Andy Stanley (24:25):
And that creates anxiety because all eyes are, most of the eyes are on you, all the information's in or as much as information as you're going to get. And you have to make a decision.
Steve Cuss (24:35):
You have to be responsible for it, right or wrong.
Andy Stanley (24:37):
And you call that an anxiety gap.
Steve Cuss (24:39):
It's an anxiety gap because what's going on under the surface in you is everything in that moment. So to me, a good leader doesn't necessarily know what to do. They just take responsibility for whatever needs to be done the best they can. So yeah, when I'm doing leadership development with my young leaders, when as a lead pastor, we had college interns, we would prescribe them leadership scenarios where they were the one that knew the least in the room. So one of my interns, we built a prayer labyrinth on our church property, and he didn't know anything about prayer, labyrinths, landscape architecture or the city approval process. So we built for him a team of experts. We had architects in the room, people who had city approval experience. And this 22-year-old young man had to lead that team to get this project done to help him practice being the authority without being the expert.
Andy Stanley (25:28):
Oh, wow.
Steve Cuss (25:29):
Yeah, because most leaders were rightly afraid. But I don't know how else to build a leader other than to put them in situations where they don't know what to do, and they now have to figure it out.
Andy Stanley (25:39):
You shared an example this morning about, it wasn't an intern,
Steve Cuss (25:42):
a college intern.
Andy Stanley (25:42):
A college intern. You asked to order food for a big gathering and insisted they overorder and let them make the mistake That was a, you don't have to tell the whole story again, but again, it was an example,
Steve Cuss (25:55):
Would prescribe a mistake, especially for a perfectionist, typically what you're trying to
Andy Stanley (25:59):
Prescribe. Yeah, I would've just quit.
Steve Cuss (26:01):
Yeah. Well, I mean, he was very anxious
Andy Stanley (26:02):
About it, I'm sure,
Steve Cuss (26:03):
Because his nervous system is telling him, ordering too much food is the end of the world and the end of the tend out to be a tremendous blessing
(26:12):
For me, letting someone down end of the world. Therefore, what I did is I practiced meeting with my bully critics, my harshest critics. I would have coffee with them and I would throw them a softball. I would say, Hey, I just wanted to hear, as you think about how the church is going and what you see, what concerns do you have? Well, that's throwing a softball to a bully critic. And I would let them rail on me, and I would refuse explaining myself to practice being okay, because what I tried to do before was incessantly explain myself, which all that does is give them more ammunition. They're already twisting my words. And that was really freeing for me. And then they kind of lost their power over me because it turned out that they weren't the problem. My attempted solution was the problem. So in this theory, there's this wonderful therapist named Jay Haley, and he coined the phrase, the attempted solution. People would come into him for therapy in the 1960s, and they would say, here's our problem. And Jay Haley would say, oh, I don't treat problems. I only treat your attempted solutions to problems. And just that shift in perspective. So I encourage leaders to become aware of what attempted solutions aren't working. Like if Jim's always 12 minutes late to a meeting and you're a conflict avoider, that's an attempted solution. You're not calling him on it. Most of us get stuck because of our attempted solutions to problems.
Andy Stanley (27:43):
That's a lot to think about.
Steve Cuss (27:44):
There's a lot there.
Andy Stanley (27:45):
And how do we even know that we're doing that?
Steve Cuss (27:48):
The two signs of an attempted solution are more of the same and try harder. That's the way.
Andy Stanley (27:53):
So nothing changes. It's not working,
Steve Cuss (27:56):
And you are working harder. So my bully critics
Andy Stanley (27:59):
say it again. Say it again. Say it again.
Steve Cuss (28:00):
Yeah. My critics have a problem with me. I meet with them, explain myself. It doesn't change things. So I meet with them more, explain myself more, try harder. And now I'm the problem. My middle son, he gives me permission to share this. When he came home from middle school with basketball practice, he said, dad, William's a ball hog. He's never passing the ball. So that's the problem. And I said, well, what do you do about it, Andrew? And he said, well, if William's not going to pass the ball to me, I'm not passing the ball to William. Well, now we have an attempted solution. And of course, now Andrew is the problem. He's the problem. But when you are trying to solve it in an anxious state, you can't see that. So a good leader can always look at the systemic patterns of emotional field in their organization, and it changes everything.
Andy Stanley (28:48):
And from what I understand, there's actually more to that story,
Steve Cuss (28:51):
Right? So Andrew's frustrated, and what you're trying to do as a leader is notice points of resistance and figure out how do I dissolve resistance? So the more Andrew withholds the ball from William, the more William's going to withhold the ball. Of course. And what's interesting is most leaders use content to try to solve it, talk about It.
(29:11):
But really what you're got to do is use process. You have to change the dynamic.
Andy Stanley (29:15):
Now, you talk a lot about this in the book, so dive a little deeper on that. I think this is super helpful.
Steve Cuss (29:19):
Yeah,
Andy Stanley (29:20):
Content versus process.
Steve Cuss (29:21):
Yeah. You picture two middle school boys in basketball trying to have a logical conversation. It's not going to work. It's going to devolve into fourth grade. But the process, what we're trying to do is break the dynamic. So if the predictable pattern is that Andrew and William both withhold the ball from each other, and when I go to a game, you'd see it like three kids are on the court playing. Andrew and William are playing an altogether different game of keep away. So what I'm trying to do is help Andrew realize his attempted solution is making it worse. His well-meaning effort is making it worse. Well, now he has to do a reversal. So I told Andrew, if you want to break the pattern, next game, only pass to William. Even if Caden's open, don't pass to Caden, wait for William to be open, pass to William. Now, Andrew rightly is going to resist this idea because Andrew's false need is justice.
(30:15):
He is trying to single handedly write the injustice of the ball Hog, and he feels like his own dad is now tipping the scales the wrong way. Well, when you're a leader, you should expect resistance that way when it happens, you won't catch it. So I assured Andrew, I'm his dad. I love him. I'm for him. And just gently saying, but your solution isn't working. And now if Andrew's on this podcast, he would say, I thought dad was crazy, system series nuts. But I love my dad. I respect my dad. So I gave it a shot. So in the next game, I had prescribed to Andrew to pass the ball six times in a row to William. That would usually break a pattern. And you can see it like we saw it on the court. Andrew got the ball. Caden was literally open under the basket.
Andy Stanley (31:03):
Poor guy didn't know what's going on.
Steve Cuss (31:04):
No. And then Andrew looks back at the stands to me, which I was expecting. I give him the big double thumbs up, come on, man. And he passed the ball to William, and then he did it again and again, and it broke the pattern. The coach was never involved. There was no parent meeting. Andrew, William didn't talk about it. This is the power of this level of noticing the anxious patterns, and it is more advanced. I write about it in the book on how to do it, but the first step for a leader is notice the pattern and notice if you are stuck. So this doesn't work with problems. This only works with stuck problems. And most leaders are actually really good at resolving problems. But if you find yourself in a predictable pattern
Andy Stanley (31:48):
With people or if a person,
Steve Cuss (31:49):
Or within your particular case with this perfectionism, that would be another predictive pattern
Andy Stanley (31:54):
Gotcha. To break that, because I respond to it the same way over and over.
Steve Cuss (31:57):
My attempted solution is incessantly checking text. So learning pattern recognition is a game changer. There's a lot there.
Andy Stanley (32:07):
Last thing I know, we're jumping around and the book is so good, and again, this could be easily misunderstood. You talk about differentiation, like being fully yourself while staying fully connected to others, but staying fully connected to others by differentiation. In fact, what I have in my notes is you call it the most foundational, but also one of the most difficult tools. You write differentiation most powerfully comes into play when you lead a group of people where they do not want to go, but they must go. So you're the leader. There's some clarity about what needs to happen, they're resisting. Take it from there
Steve Cuss (32:42):
Yeah. So throughout history, some of our most famous revered leaders are well differentiated. This is not a faith-based theory, but the people who teach this theory say that Jesus of Nazareth is the most differentiated human ever to live. And they're like, what was the secret? How did he do it? You start realizing all of the anxiety coming at him, all of the hostility, and he kept defining himself. That was really his core trait. He said, this is what I'm doing. This is where I'm going and come follow me. But he never coerced anybody. He never really tried to convince. He just went about what he was called to do. So a well differentiated leader spends more attention on defining themselves, which means, here's who I am, these are my values, this is what I am going to do. Or maybe defining the organization and less attention on convincing and coercing.
Andy Stanley (33:36):
Or pleasing.
Steve Cuss (33:37):
Or pleasing, and so the two opposites of differentiation are enmeshment. That's what I'm prone to. When there's anxiety in the room, I tend to try to get closer to it to solve it. And that's a problem.
Andy Stanley (33:48):
Wait, say that again.
Steve Cuss (33:50):
So if people are not Well, I tend to rush in and become codependent. So my typical default posture, Andy, is if you were really anxious, I would be prone to catch it. And I now can't tell the difference between your problems and my problems. Let's say you have a flat tire, and let's say you're on the side of the road and you call me Steve. I've got a flat tie because I'm prone to enmeshment. I'm already Googling discount tire without even asking you what you need. Your flat tire is now my flat tire, and I'm not letting you tell me what you need. You might be just saying, I just wanted you to know I'm late for the meeting.
(34:26):
Wait for me,
(34:26):
Or whatever. But I'm saying, Andy, Andy, I'll be right there. And you'll be like, I don't need you to come, but I'm already on my way.
Andy Stanley (34:33):
Wow.
Steve Cuss (34:33):
Now, the other opposite is a detached response. Some people solve the problem of anxiety by creating distance from it. Andy, good luck with that tire, man, I'm too busy. And again, they're not connected. Then no one's saying, Andy, what do you need? And you might say, I need a ride. Now, somebody might say, I'm so sorry, I can't give you a ride. Or somebody might say, I'll be right there. But they're connected to you. They're actually curious. So curiosity becomes the best tool to manage reactivity.
Andy Stanley (35:05):
Yeah. One of the things that I encourage leaders, one of the most powerful questions they can ask is, what can I do to help? What can I do to help? Generally, people who work for me expect me to, they've come to help me what I'm saying. But the moment I can say, how can I help? Or what can I do to help? So is that, that's
Steve Cuss (35:22):
A great question.
Andy Stanley (35:23):
I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to let you tell me how I can help.
Steve Cuss (35:26):
Yeah. Reactivity is around a false need, and the heart of all false needs are assumptions. So rather than operating out of an assumption, let me find out what really is needed here, and maybe I can help, maybe I cannot. But at least we're having a connected conversation. So if everyone manages their own emotional field, they can actually get much closer together. If you picture an emotional field like a big hula hoop, you suddenly realize, man, I can't get very close to you before. My anxiety and your anxiety are now overlapping, and now we have a problem.
Andy Stanley (35:59):
That's amazing. Well, Steve, this conversation has been great, and the fact that you've been here for two days and then tonight you have another event with some of our volunteers. So I'm so grateful, and I just want to circle back real quick as we close to the false needs. For me, this was the starting point of integrating some of this information. And the false needs are control, perfection, having the answer, being there for others, people's approval, that those are the hidden sources of anxiety that I don't even consider anxiety, but they, they get easily transferred, and then things deteriorate from there.
Steve Cuss (36:34):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Andy Stanley (36:34):
So again, Steve, thank you so much for joining us. And to our listeners, I would encourage you to get Steve's book. It's entitled, managing Leadership Anxiety, yours and Theirs is the subtitle. Thanks for listening. And before we leave, as always, we do have one ask and that is to subscribe. When you subscribe, you actually help us grow the audience, which allows us to keep improving and bringing you great guests like Steve and great content like the content you were just exposed to. Also, be sure to visit the Andy stanley.com website where you can download the leadership podcast application guide that includes a summary of this discussion, plus questions for reflection or group discussion. And join us next week for our reverb episode where Suzy and I will talk about Steve without Steve in the studio. You don't want to miss it. Once again, thank you so much for being a part of the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.