Calm Is Not the Same as Regulated

Michael knew that this board meeting would be a tough one. His mentor, Roger, the man whom he had modeled his whole working life on, had died about three weeks ago. He hadn’t spoken to Roger in several months and hadn’t worked for him for more than ten years, but his death hit hard. Whenever Michael’s agency landed a big grant, or sent a press release with updated impact numbers, Roger was always the first one to call. His advice was always spot on. His decline was so quick that none of his friends had much time to say goodbye and tell him how much he meant to them. They all hoped that he knew.

The monthly board meeting was rarely contentious, but his directors were very active, and they all cared deeply about the population they served. A mix of professionals, impacted family members, large donors, and community representatives, the board deserved and required his full focus. When people started questioning the treasurer on her report, Michael could feel himself shutting down. “Stay calm,” he told himself. When the treasurer asked him to clarify something as support for her report, all he could muster was, “Yes. That’s right.” His eyes rested on whoever was speaking, but he wasn’t really looking at anyone. Later in the meeting, a discussion about whether to have a booth at an upcoming event went just a little bit too long for his patience. “Let’s continue this offline,” he said, and the conversation stopped immediately. All this work was important, but he couldn’t take his mind off Roger’s funeral tomorrow. When the meeting ended, he went straight back to his office and shut the door.

Most people watching would have called that composure. He stayed in his chair. He kept the meeting on schedule. He didn't cry, didn't raise his voice, didn't say anything he'd have to walk back later. By the standards a lot of leaders were trained in, he did fine.

But look at what actually happened in the room. His sentences got shorter. A discussion his board cared about ended with one sentence from him. His eyes landed on people without seeing them, and people noticed and didn't mention it. Those are the marks of a leader whose feeling is running the meeting from underneath, steering toward the quickest exit so that nothing has to show. The fear of being seen as emotional made the decisions. He just signed them.

A lot of performed calm turns out to be exactly this. From across the room it looks like regulation. Up close, it's a man holding his breath.

Some of it comes from a phrase. Edwin Friedman taught a generation of clergy and organizational leaders to aim for a "non-anxious presence," and the phrase has traveled far beyond the books that introduced it. Somewhere along the way it got heard as an instruction to show nothing. Stay level. Keep your face still. Let the system churn while you remain unmoved.

That was never the idea, and Friedman knew it. Nobody is non-anxious, and he eventually clarified that the honest aim is to be less anxious than the system around you, connected enough to stay in the room and steady enough not to be swept along. His teacher, Murray Bowen, described differentiation as the capacity to tell thinking from feeling. Tell them apart. Bowen never asked anyone to get rid of the feeling, which is just as well, because it can't be done. Well, it can be hidden. That's a different project.

And hiding has a price. A leader's feeling in a moment of loss is information. It tells the people around him that something real happened, that it mattered, that he's in it with them. When he goes flat, the room loses that information and fills the gap with its own guesses. Usually, the guess is distance. He doesn't care, or he cares more about the agenda than about what we lost. People who sense that tend to push harder to get a reaction, and the anxiety in the room climbs.

Deliberation shrinks too. When a feeling can't be shown, the leader needs the conversation to end before it surfaces, so decisions get made at the speed of avoidance. And the grief itself doesn't leave. Like all grief that nobody makes room for, it goes underground, and it comes back.

Later in the day, Michael sat with his senior staff for their board meeting debrief. When they noticed that he still seemed distracted, his CFO asked, “Hey, are you OK? What’s going on?” Michael took a breath. He shook his head and said, “You all know how much I loved Roger, and how important he was to me. His funeral is tomorrow and I just found it hard to stay present this morning.” He looked around the room, and everyone had a knowing look. They were all willing to give him some slack in his grief. As his eyes passed over Janet, the Development Director, he remembered a similar scene in this room a few months ago when her sister had passed away. In response to a similar question she managed to say only, “I’m fine,” and refocused.

What Michael noticed is worth thinking about, because it complicates everything above. Janet never got the room's slack, because she never risked asking for it. She may have known something Michael has never had to learn. The room to show feeling isn't handed out evenly. When a man in authority lets grief show, people often read it as strength, a sign that he's human, even admirable. When a woman does the same thing, the verdict is frequently fragility, or too much. Leaders of color, especially when the feeling is anger, can pay a steeper price still. Same feeling, same size, different reception.

So regulation is partly a question of privilege. Some leaders swallow what they feel out of habit or training. Others swallow it because they've learned exactly what showing it will cost. Those are different situations, and treating them as the same would be naive. For a leader with more room, part of the work is recognizing that the room itself is a kind of authority, and that how he responds when others show what they feel helps decide how much room they'll have next time.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is often credited with a line preachers pass around: preach from your scars, not your wounds. It travels well beyond the pulpit. A scar is a wound you've tended long enough that you can show it without needing the room to tend it for you. A wound still asks for something.

Brené Brown has a name for the other ditch. She calls it floodlighting, oversharing that tries to force a closeness the relationship hasn't earned. Floodlighting is no more regulated than going flat. Both let the feeling decide. Between them is grief that has been worked with long enough to be offered rather than dumped, visible enough to be true and settled enough that it doesn't take over the meeting.

That's what regulation looks like from the outside. Sometimes it looks like tears.

If you're leading in a season of loss, it may be worth noticing what your face does when the hard news comes, and what your meetings do afterward. Where have you gone flat and called it calm? What feeling has been waiting for a little room? And who around you is paying more than you are for the same honesty?

More will emerge.
For now, this is enough.