Groups and Leaders Under Stress

Organizations and leaders under stress tend to find fixes for the moment and focus on momentary survival. This 5-minute segment is the last of a four part series. Earl Braxton, Ph.D. shares his thinking on leadership and Kurt Lewin’s influence on our understanding of it. I’m here to tell you, I think this man knows what he’s talking about.

Common characteristics of groups under stress:

• An insistence on maintaining past comfortable positions and defending against new ideas or experiences.
• Becoming overly organized and rigidly defensive of their historical position. The rigidity will prevent new data from entering the system.

Common characteristics of managers (or leaders by other names) under stress:

• Selectively perceiving information and only seeing what confirms their earlier biases.
• Becoming very intolerant of ambiguity and demanding only “right” answers.
• Fixating on a single approach to a problem.
• Overestimating how fast time is passing. Hence they often feel rushed.
• Adopting short-term perspective or crisis mentality and ceasing to consider long-term implications.
• Decreasing ability to consult with and listen to others.
• Having less ability to make fine distinctions in problems so that complexity and nuances are missed.

Earl also shares what leaders or consultants need to provide in order to support those under stress:

• Provide conditions of safety.
• Be available psychologically, emotionally, and physically to the group.
• Be neither intrusive nor abandoning.
• Be able to take criticism and use it productively.
• Have good boundary management skills.

Thank you to Earl Braxton for his thoughtful analysis, to Joseph Lennox for hosting, Brenda Jones for facilitating and to the Lewin Center for Research and Social Justice that convened this forum and is doing important work in the world.