What theories do you have about leadership? How do they guide the work you do? Whether we can articulate them or not, we all have assumptions about human behavior and how people change and what good leadership looks like. When we can make them explicit and test them in our experience, we are able to be more thoughtful and intentional about how we lead.
Bowen Family Systems Theory
Part 1
Bowen Family Systems Theory #1
This is the first in a series of conversations about Bowen Family Systems Theory, a theory that has deeply influenced us and our book The Leader’s Journey. You may have heard about triangling or about being a less anxious presence or about being defined and connected without knowing much about the deeper theory that underlies those popular ideas. In this episode, we cover a lot of ground as we look at two of the eight concepts of Bowen theory: the nuclear family emotional system and differentiation of self. This sets us up to talk about the rest of the theory in future episodes and to make application to leadership at every level.
Part 2
Bowen Family Systems Theory #2
Can you see the triangles in your family and your organization? How do you manage yourself in them? What role does distancing and cutoff have in your relationships over time? Can you imagine a different way of showing up in these intense and anxious relationships?
Part 3
Bowen Family Systems Theory #3
How did the role you played in your family shape who you became? How does it shape your leadership? How do the people in your organization express the role they learned in their families? We invite you to consider how your family helped you shape the self that you bring to your leadership as well as how these concepts show up in the organization that you lead.
Part 4
Bowen Theory’s Absolutely Unique Take on Leadership
Want to know what convinced me that Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST) provides a powerful resource for leaders of all sorts?
When our family embarked on the journey of fostering and adopting a nine-year-old boy. Employed well, Bowen Theory focuses our curiosity, sharpens our observations, and lends to better self-management in times of heightened anxiety.
Part 5
Bowen Family Systems Theory #4
Leadership issues as close to home as sibling position and as big-picture as societal regression — Bowen Family Systems Theory has it all.
In the 4th episode in this series, we talk about how our birth order powerfully shapes our behavior as leaders as well as the behavior of those we lead. Then we explore how anxiety shows up in our society in ways that we all recognize from today’s headlines and we consider what less-anxious leadership looks like in times of upheaval and uncertainty.
Part 6
Bowen Family Systems Theory #5
After talking about each of the 8 core concepts of Bowen Family Systems Theory in previous episodes, we come back together in this episode to ask some final questions about the theory and its usefulness to us as leaders.
We wonder about the relationship of the theory to our spirituality. What do we have to learn about faith from this theory? How can we approach our faith and the faith of others with curiosity and objectivity?
