The Word

It’s a word we’re not hearing enough of.  We ought to be speaking it more.  Maturity.  I am in occassional conversations with leaders who always seem to have a current story about someone in their organization who is demonstrating one of Freidman’s characteristic of family and organizational anxiety.  Remember, chronic anxiety is symptomatic of the individual’s inability to mature his or her own emotional processes.  One story I heard involved an executive who rushed to the rescue of a subordinate who faced some challenging feedback from colleagues about results from her efforts. The feedback was delivered in a professional, thoughtful and focused way.  It was positioned as constructive and delivered as important to support the organization’s mission and values.  But, the receiver prematurely left the meeting distressed.  The executive returned to the feedback group and criticized it for delivering the feedback.  There was no evidence the executive used her status with her subordinate to suggest she learn to manage feedback with less reactivity.  (The two characteristics at play here are blame displacement and reactivity.)  Result; maturation not achieved.

Leaders will do better when and as they pay attention to levels of maturity in the systems they occupy and influence.  They must begin with themselves, first.  In the story above, a leader reacted to reactivity.  Systems aren’t static.  They either mature or devolve.      

Howard

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