The widening gyre
Leading in the grey zone
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…
(The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats)
As I write this, I’m sitting looking out at the ocean - the expansive blue-grey water is calm yet constantly in motion. Above the water, gulls swoop low over the swell, fully aware of any motion under the surface which might signal food. They are unfazed by the constant motion of the sea, fully present to nature’s rhythms and the uncertainty inherent to their environment.
It strikes me how differently we as humans approach life’s uncertainties - how our need for control asserts itself again and again as we navigate complexity. We are driven to domesticate our problems; to bring order, dominion, and simplicity to bear whenever we are confronted by the chaotic complexity of the wilderness.
But if all we see in the wilderness are problems - and at that, problems to be solved as efficiently as possible - we may be missing something quite profound. We need to pay attention. It’s time to look again.
Welcome to the grey zone
The sages among us have always been convinced of life’s uncertainty, but the rest of us have - particularly in the West but increasingly across the globe - done our resolute best to shore ourselves up against this truth. We have distracted ourselves, addicted ourselves and shopped ourselves into a sleepwalk state. From Fukuyama to Pinker, we have sought to assuage our fears by assuring ourselves of the ultimate triumph of liberal democracy in a chaotic world.
Yet none of these perspectives help us to face our current lived reality head-on. The cultural commentator Mark Sayers in his most recent work, A Non-Anxious Presence, defines our current age as a grey zone; an era of seismic change - and quotes researchers and authors Robb, Manyika and Woetzel:
The shifts today are happening much faster and on a much bigger scale. Because they are so interlinked – urbanisation and consumption, technology and competition, ageing and labour – and because they amplify one another, the changes are harder to anticipate and more powerful in their impact. And they challenge our imaginations as much as they do our competencies and skills.
The grey zone, as defined by Sayers, is an in-between phase (the term borrowed from the study of 21st century warfare.) It describes an overlap of two eras: the passing of one and the forming of another.
So, if the failure of leaders in the grey zone will not be so much a failure of competencies and skills as a failure of imagination - where do we go from here? If the old rules no longer serve us, what are the alternatives?
The possibilities for leadership within the grey zone
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek - Joseph Campbell
In this widening gyre, there is a very real fear that the ‘falcon cannot hear the falconer’ - that we are losing control, out of touch with reality, unable to navigate the environment in which we have found ourselves. It’s all too easy to see the future of Yeats’ prophetic imagination in the news that we digest every day, to conjure up the ‘rough beast[s]’ that may emerge in this moment in history. But perhaps, to echo Joseph Campbell’s famous line, there is a possibility for transformation and hope inherent in this moment.
As Adam Grant recently said on Threads: ‘It’s not enough to collect facts. The future belongs to those who connect dots.’ Seeing patterns and synthesising information is the hallmark of leadership in our new era. To that end, a pattern of possibility for the grey zone is proposed:
Leading in the discomfort zone
There is a deep discomfort with the instability inherent to the grey zone. This discomfort leads us to the classic flight, freeze, or fight dilemma: we run away, we numb and distract, or we quickly pivot and innovate our way out of anxiety and into the safety of received wisdom and shibboleths. While the first two responses to discomfort are generally acknowledged as unhelpful, leaders may not be aware of the true dangers of the third response: isn’t ‘moving fast and breaking things’ what we’re supposed to do?
Being able to bring order to bear on complexity and quickly organise our way out of chaos are inherently useful skills - but not if we engage in them too early and (especially) not if they do not ultimately serve those we lead. It’s entirely possible for an organisation to set SMART goals which they efficiently and pragmatically follow down a dead end. It’s entirely possible for institutions to devise complex and wide-ranging strategies without understanding the true needs of the communities they are serving.
It sounds counter-intuitive, but in the grey zone we need to slow down, not move faster. We need to be open to diverse and challenging voices in our decision-making processes - and open conversations up wider, earlier and for longer - in order to fully grasp the ‘wicked problems’ of our moment, rather than simply resist or reduce complexity to easy and quick answers. Ultimately, it is a necessity for leaders to embrace and welcome discomfort, recognising that there are many ways we may intuitively pull away from this, particularly when we may have been unconsciously taught the myth that we can lead while staying in our comfort zones.
2) Leading with a non-anxious presence
We are also emotionally ill-equipped to deal with discomfort. We are an increasingly anxious generation, a byproduct of the scope and speed of change in our society (Edwin Friedman in Sayers, p.42). Our connected digital world has socially siloed us into disconnection with ourselves and each other and we remain addicted to it, even though smart phones and social media have been demonstrated, time and time again to increase mental illness and anxiety.
In our anxious age, Sayers contends, one of the most powerful stances we can take as leaders is a leadership concept first proposed by rabbi and family therapist Edwin Friedman - that of a ‘non-anxious presence’ (Sayers, p.100).
A non-anxious presence acts like antibodies in a system (read: society, organisation, family) corroded by anxiety, with the fundamental principle being the ability of a leader to ‘remain present within the unhealthy environment while enduring the sabotage, backlash and undermining that leaders inevitably face … in anxious social systems’ (Sayers, 101).
The leader’s chief tool then, is their presence. While it’s important for leaders to be authentic, we must recognise that panic, fear, control, and a scarcity mindset are all highly corrosive forces within the delicate eco-system of a team. By contrast, cultivating a non-anxious presence within the team allows leaders to both rise above the anxieties of our systems and cultural contexts in order to see new possibilities, while also acting as a necessary corrective to the contagion of anxiety that can occur at the inter-personal level (for more on this, read our previous Leadership Letter on the importance of leading on both the balcony and the dance floor).
3) Leading in a state of responsiveness
Alongside the non-anxious presence we must also understand the importance of responsiveness - encapsulated by the idea of ‘Being-With.’
In Escape from Freedom, psychotherapist Erich Fromm theorised on the societal impact of two primary human drives: one for belonging, safety and connection and one for freedom, adventure and exploration. Attachment theory seems to bear this up - family therapists and researchers Hoffman, Cooper and Powell, coined the term ‘Circle of Security’ for the concept that human attachment needs can be encapsulated in a circle with the top representing the secure base (from which we go to explore and adventure) and the bottom being the safe haven (offering protection, comfort and the organisation of difficult feelings). This is where ‘Being-With’ comes in.
Being-With is ‘not a technique [but] … a state of mind’ (Hoffman et al, p.91). It’s following the needs of the person in front of you. It’s non-anxious and calm, yes - but it’s also an active and adaptable state of being, a state of responsiveness. Where we (and those around us) fall within the imagined ‘circle’ of this attachment cycle is an individual concern, but we (and everyone we know) are constantly moving around the circle. We have our default positions - our comfort zones - within this circle, but are capable of experiencing needs at any point in the circle.
The key for leaders, if we draw from the Circle of Security model, is to be both responsive to (aware) of our own position in the circle and to be attuned or responsive to the cues of those around us, in order to avoid rupturing relationships (or in the case of the inevitable ruptures, to be able to perform the necessary repair). Above all, how do we as leaders demonstrate that we are with the people that we serve, that we are attuned to their needs and see them (even perhaps, delight in them)?
The ‘good enough’ leader
The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers, those who are still breastfeeding their babies. - Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings *
There is much more that could be explored here - but one final, important point must be made: in an anxious culture, the temptation is often to strive for perfection, to set ourselves the impossible task of assimilating all the available data and information. To be the best of the best, and accept nothing less from ourselves and those we work with. Our models and theories, as helpful as they can be, can sometimes drive us to despair.
If the possibilities of leading in discomfort, non-anxious presence and responsiveness all sound like they require a kind of superhuman effort reserved for only the most enlightened leaders, the famed British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicot offers us a lifeline.
Based on his research on mothers and babies in the 1950s, Winnicot came to an astounding conclusion: that parents who aimed for ‘good enough’ (as opposed to striving for perfection) ultimately produced the happiest, most well-attached children. In fact, when he strove to quantify his findings, he estimated that even parents who were only responsive to their children 30% of the time still formed healthy attachments - and the children were more resilient as a result. Might there be something we can learn as leaders here?
Being ‘good enough’ doesn’t mean excusing poor behaviour or negligence - rather, it’s an acknowledgement that the world is an imperfect place, and we are imperfect people. It’s an acknowledgement that sometimes as leaders we will miss cues - and that’s ok, as long as we see it and move to repair the rupture - in fact, such a rupture and repair may even lead to greater resilience and trust in those we lead.
We have had our eras of specialists, experts and perfectionists. We have seen the corrosive impact of anxious systems based on command, control and compliance. Is there, in this grey zone moment, a new opportunity for leaders to be ‘ready for anything’ by stepping out of comfort and into non-anxious responsiveness? And is this grey zone actually a place ripe with possibility for leaders wise enough to accept the mantle of ‘good enough’ rather than striving for perfection? That indeed, would be a novel approach to our cultural anxieties - a new mindset fit for a new era.
*as cited in Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
What comes up for you when you read about the ‘grey zone’? Do you feel anxiety? Fear? A sense of possibility?
Can you think of examples where you or teams you have been part of have moved too quickly out of discomfort into certainty? Was critical information or insight missed as a consequence?
How does the suggestion of ‘slowing down’ within the grey zone sit with you? What possibilities might slowing down generate?
If both anxiety and non-anxious presence ‘set the temperature’ for our eco-systems, what is the temperature gauge showing in your current context(s)?
And finally, quite simply: how comfortable are you with being ‘good enough’?
FURTHER READING
Brooks, David (2011). The Social Animal. Short Books Ltd.
Fromm, Erich. Escape From Freedom. (1994). H. Holt Publishers.
Fukuyama, Francis (1989). The End of History? The National Interest.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027184
Hoffman, K., Cooper, G., & Powell, B. Raising A Secure Child. (2017). Guilford Publications.
Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment Now. (2019). Penguin.
Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature. (2012). Penguin.
Sayers, Mark. A Non-Anxious Presence. (2022) Moody Books.
Yeats, W.B. ‘The Second Coming’ published in The Dial collection. (1920).