On The Balcony

When Your Team's Anxiety Is Actually the Answer

Season 2 continues looking sideways — exploring frameworks that stretch Adaptive Leadership into new terrain.

In this episode, Michael Koehler sits down with Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian, a psychoanalytic psychologist and lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Candice's work focuses on systems psychodynamics — a field that helps us see the hidden life of groups.

The conversation explores what lies beneath the surface of organizational life: the unconscious patterns, projections, and anxieties that shape what happens in teams and organizations long before anyone names them.

What's fascinating is that this work sits in the background of Adaptive Leadership itself. Systems psychodynamics was one of the practices that informed Ron Heifetz's early teaching — and it remains a place where many practitioners go to sharpen their ability to consult with groups in real time.

This episode feels like stepping behind the curtain of Adaptive Leadership — into the terrain where authority, anxiety, and imagination meet.

What You'll Explore in This Episode:

What systems psychodynamics is — and why it matters

How this field helps us understand the hidden, unconscious social elements in groups that are highly impactful but intangible. The dynamics that shape whether work actually gets done.

When anxiety is data, not disruption

Why the distress in a group — the tension, reactivity, and discomfort — isn't something to manage away, but vital information about what the group actually needs. Learning to read anxiety as a signal rather than a problem to solve.

Group relations conferences

A unique learning experience where the content is the live experience of the group itself. No talks, no papers — just studying what emerges in real time as people navigate authority, roles, and group dynamics.

Consulting without memory, intent, or desire

A practice from Wilfred Bion about meeting groups with spaciousness and openness — not inserting your agenda or expectations, but listening for what the group actually needs in the moment.

The intersection with Adaptive Leadership

How systems psychodynamics deepens the practice of reading the "heat map" — understanding what the anxiety in a group is actually about, which tells you what the group needs. Anxiety isn't random noise; it's a compass pointing toward the adaptive challenge.

Why this work matters now

The origins of systems psychodynamics in studying authoritarian regimes and the Holocaust — and why these insights are resources for navigating the rise of authoritarianism today.

The role of the consultant as instrument

How practitioners open themselves as channels through which hidden, unconscious dynamics can surface and be named. When the group triggers you publicly, that's not about you — it's telling you how high the distress is in the system.

Quotes from This Episode:

"We're carrying all this stuff, and my stuff dances with your stuff dances with the third person, and it creates this whole thing in and of itself."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"These unseen forces are born from our individual histories, assumptions, and feelings, which merge to create a powerful collective dynamic that is highly impactful, but difficult to see."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"Everything is data. So if this group has found a way to trigger me in a way that actually makes me publicly reactive, that tells me that's how high the distress is. It is not about me."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"To lead effectively, we must learn to see these hidden dynamics not as personal attacks, but as vital data that reveals what the group truly needs to make progress on its most important work."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"You are paying attention to this stuff not to navel-gaze, but because you're trying to get work done. You're trying to understand more clearly what might be impeding progress."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"The experience of the group is the content of study."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

"Your instrument of self, of body, of energy, of spirit has to be in some relative open space — open a channel — so that these hidden, unconscious things can travel through you to be known."

— Dr. Candice Crawford-Zakian

Links & Resources:

A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems (Group Relations Conferences)

Season 2 of On the Balcony begins by looking sideways — exploring the frameworks that stretch Adaptive Leadership into new terrain.

In this first episode, Michael Koehler sits down with Dr. Lisa Lahey, co-author of Immunity to Change, faculty at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Minds at Work. Lisa's work on adult development has profoundly shaped how we understand leadership — not as a set of skills to acquire, but as an internal capacity to grow.

The conversation explores a question many of us wrestle with: Why do we resist the very changes we say we want?

Lisa's answer: competing commitments and big assumptions. We're not just resisting change. We're protecting something we care deeply about — even when we don't realize it.

This episode gets personal. Lisa coaches Michael through his own immunity to change around pushing his colleagues to use more AI. What emerges is a powerful demonstration of how our internal "immune system" keeps us safe — and stuck.

What You'll Explore in This Episode:

The shift from socialized to self-authoring mind

How we move from looking outside ourselves for approval to authoring our own values and commitments — and why this developmental shift matters for leadership.

The Immunity to Change framework

A practical, four-column exercise that uncovers the hidden commitments and big assumptions creating resistance to change.

A live coaching session

Lisa walks Michael through the process in real time, revealing how deeply protective mechanisms work — and how to begin testing the assumptions that hold us back.

How adult development and Adaptive Leadership are related

Both frameworks help us face complexity, hold competing commitments, and grow through challenge rather than around it.

The influence of Chris Argyris

How Argyris's work on organizational learning shaped both Lisa's thinking and the broader field of developmental leadership.

The power of the pause

A reflection on pausing not as a luxury, but as an act of deep responsibility to ourselves and the world.

Quotes from This Episode:

"You can grow your capacity to experience the world in different ways. And that difference keeps enabling you to hold greater complexity, take more perspectives, and handle greater ambiguity."

— Dr. Lisa Lahey

"There is a next place in development where you no longer are subject to meeting everybody's expectations of you. Instead, you get to be the author of your own expectations — grounded in your own sense of who you are and what you value."

— Dr. Lisa Lahey

"You have an aspiration to grow. You want to develop some capacity. And yet at the very same time, unbeknownst to you, you've got a whole inner curriculum actively working to protect yourself."

— Dr. Lisa Lahey

"The immunity to change process invites us to consider: we don't just have worries. We actually have a part of us actively committed to making sure those worries don't come true."

— Dr. Lisa Lahey

"It is not a luxury to pause. It is an act of deep responsibility to ourselves and the world."

— Tara Brach (shared by Dr. Lisa Lahey)

Links & Resources:

Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

On today’s season finale of On the Balcony, Michael Kohler welcomes Professor Ronald Heifetz, author of Leadership Without Easy Answers, the book that has formed the focus of this season. Professor Heifetz is among the world’s foremost authorities on the practice and teaching of leadership. His work addresses two challenges: developing a conceptual foundation for the analysis and practice of leadership and developing transformative methods for leadership education, training, and consultation. Heifetz  opens the episode by discussing how his own thinking in  last thirty years has been shaped by his role as a parent. He points out that parenting is fundamentally a series of adaptive challenges requiring the ability to deal with the unpredictable—a good model for thinking about the ongoing stream of challenges that organizations, companies, governments, and our societies as a whole are facing. Michael then asks Ron to reflect on the development of Leadership Without Easy Answers and how the Leadership Studies field has evolved since its publication. Heifetz shares some of the family history and personal experiences that influenced his thinking and led him to consider how charismatic authority emerges and how to teach leadership practice that would avoid the temptations of grandiosity and power. He also discusses his process of realizing that authority is not fundamentally bad or unnecessary but is an integral part of social relationships with its own virtues and significance and must be wielded with responsibility and trustworthiness.

On the subject of trust, Heifetz next points out how common it is to experience violations or abuses of trust by authority and how many of us learn to distrust it as a result. He uses the example of politicians to illustrate this, pointing out that the fear of negativity often leads to a lack of trust on both sides of the relationship with their constituents, resulting in pandering rather than transformative leadership. He also points out that the COVID pandemic provided a useful set of cases to illustrate the impact of trust, with countries with lower trust in authority having higher death rates, the US being a prime example. Heifetz goes on to discuss the work of repairing and restoring trust, including encouraging those in roles of authority to develop a mindset of ongoing repair instead of an entitlement to trust. He also focuses on the challenge of mobilizing people to do adaptive work and the importance of developing new, more empathetic strategies for creating sustainable change in the hearts and minds of those who resist it. In order to make progress, he states that it’s essential that those in positions of authority and privilege are involved in the adaptive work, so we must resist the urge to resort to a cheap binary-ism of rejection and understand the difficulty of jettisoning one’s culture and traditions wholesale. And, to close the episode and the season, Heifetz shares his thoughts on what the future holds for him and his framework, including a refocusing of Leadership Studies onto cultural innovation and evolution.

The Finer Details of This Episode:

• The adaptive challenges of parenthood
• The evolution of the Leadership Studies field
• The virtues and significance of authority
• How politicians can lead and stay alive
• Quotients of trust and the COVID pandemic
• The practice of repairing and restoring trust
• Activism and mobilizing people to do adaptive work
• The need for leadership at the micro level
• The future for Leadership Studies

Quotes:

“We can’t afford to have an allergic reaction to authority systems just because they’ve been abusive to many of us historically.”

“We all are designed to seek validation, affirmation, and even affection.”

“We see politicians change their tune—not because they’ve learned about the world and fortunately keep evolving their points of view, but simply because the constituency has changed its point of view.”

“The politician changes their point of view in order to gain the affirmation and ultimately then the authorization of that constituency.”

Links:

In this episode of On the Balcony, Michael welcomes guest Susanna Krueger, a serial social entrepreneur and former CEO of Save the Children Germany, the oldest and largest independent child’s rights organization in the world. She’s here to engage with the final chapter of Ron Heifetz’s Leadership Without Easy Answers, entitled “The Personal Challenge,” which outlines a set of reflective questions you can ask yourself to better practice leadership around difficult adaptive work. Susanna begins the conversation by highlighting Heifetz’s point about the loneliness of leadership and how feelings of frustration or helplessness vis-a-vis massive complex challenges can be mirrored at the top and in the whole organization. She then discusses how engaging with purpose is a key aspect of the art of leadership and that this requires the skill of listening to people and asking them what the current opportunity for them is. Susanna illustrates this with the example of the international podcast she set up, which became a form of cultural engagement for the Save the Children community.

Next, Susanna discusses the flaws in international aid, particularly that it too often plays to what is in the aid-givers’ interests instead of asking what those in need really want. She suggests that a change to the framework of aid, particularly in the developmental space, is needed but can only be implemented by finding the right partners and allowing for flexibility and learning. Susanna also tackles the pressures on authority to fix and solve and the difficulty of living in the ambiguity of leading people while having to navigate your own course. She brings up Heifetz’s point that people project onto their leaders and highlights the importance of distinguishing oneself from one’s role through inner development, sharing some of the methods she uses to do so. And finally, Susanna discusses the new platform she is building with the aim of connecting people who want to invest in good causes with each other and projects with sustainable development goals.

The Finer Details of This Episode:

• The loneliness of leadership
• Preserving a sense of purpose
• Shifting the framework of aid
• Living in the ambiguity of leadership
• Building a community for social change

Quotes:

“You cannot impose developmental contexts and developmental goals and impact goals from a Western point of view. It will fail because it is not what generates from the community.”

“The purpose of development can only originate in communities when they say what they want by themselves.”

“People will tell you, ‘We want more leadership. I want more direction.’ And then you have to sit in this place and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, and I will give it to you, but I will give it to you in a certain way and in a certain structure, but not as you expect.’”

“The level of listening requires us to access other things than just logic. It requires open conversation and the capacity to connect.”

“I want to be a part of changing the world into a better place in a humble way, where I can be in my fullest, and where I can connect to people, and where I can help others to be their best.”

Links:

On the eleventh episode of the On the Balcony podcast, Michael continues his conversation with George A. Papandreou, former Prime Minister of Greece, about Chapter 10 of Heifetz’s Leadership Without Easy Answers. Papandreou picks up the discussion by sharing how Heifetz inspired his decision to stage an intervention through an inclusive approach, encouraging the Greek people to take their future in their own hand. His proposal of a referendum was part of this emphasis on inclusion, but it was met by a backlash from the traditional political world, ultimately causing Papandreou’s decision to resign to allow the creation of a new coalition. Papandreou explains that he believes his actions have ultimately been viewed as the right move but that the hesitancy of the old power structures may have lost the opportunity to do deeper adaptive work in the country.

Next, Papandreou discusses his experience as Greek Foreign Minister while dealing with Turkish/Greek relations. He explains that he tackled the tension between both sides by opening a dialogue with his counterpart İsmail Cem, both men finding someone they could trust and thereby beginning to make progress in their discussions. This led to an approach they called “people’s diplomacy”, involving citizens in foreign policy and working together to reframe the countries’ relationship from animosity to one of mutual benefit. Papandreou shares his belief that these kinds of values are what should motivate good leadership, allowing for an approach to conflict that is not angry or violent but respects the dignity of the other, an important part of the adaptive challenge of making change.

The Finer Details of This Episode:

• Inclusive leadership
• Taking a hit to make progress
• Using communication to lower tensions and heat
• Building trust through “people’s diplomacy”
• Managing Pain and Loss
• The values of leadership
• Pacing the work
• Providing technical expertise while also working on the deeper issues

Quotes:

“I was giving power to our citizens: you can make the decision. And the traditional political world didn’t like this because, had the decision been a positive one in this plebiscite, in this referendum, the other parties would have no say, they would’ve lost power. And many others. So inclusion is not a simple thing. You are basically changing the power structure, and the old power structures will very possibly react to this.”

“We showed that we can rethink, reframe this relationship from one of animosity to putting it into a different frame and saying, ‘Okay, what if we can work together? What are the benefits of working together?’ And actually, one of the benefits was very, very clear: we had about three million in trade; in a few years, we had three billion in trade.”

“In times of distress, in times of difficulty and uncertainty, it may be just the values that are the anchor, or if you like, the compass. It’s not trying to find a scapegoat. It is those values where you can say, ‘I am trying to be consistent with working with these values.’”

“Democracy is a way to solve conflict through peaceful means, through debate, by respecting the dignity of the other.”

“If you can really give a sense of dignity, that people feel dignified, they feel they’re being respected, they’re being recognized, their voice is being heard, their pain is being heard, that is very important in this adaptive challenge, to make those changes.”

Links: