4. triangles

In this episode of For the Love of Leadership, the team continues their journey through Edwin Friedman’s influential book *A Failure of Nerve*, unpacking one of its most important ideas: emotional triangles.

Most leaders focus on strategy, systems, and structures—but Friedman argues that the real battleground of leadership is presence. The team explores what it means to be a “non-anxious presence” and how a leader’s internal stability can matter more than their best plans when it comes to navigating change, resistance, and what Friedman calls “sabotage.”

From there, the conversation turns to triangles—the idea that there is almost never such a thing as a simple two-person relationship. There is always a third factor at play: a past experience, a family pattern, an unspoken offense, a side conversation, or another person entirely. Using real-world examples from work, marriage, parenting, and ministry, they show how understanding triangles can:

- Reveal the hidden dynamics beneath recurring conflicts  
- Keep leaders from absorbing everyone else’s stress and anxiety  
- Help people take responsibility for their own relationships  
- Move conversations from merely fixing behavior to addressing root causes  

You’ll hear practical guidance on how to recognize when you’re in a triangle, refuse the pull toward mere peacekeeping, and stay present without over-functioning or rescuing. The team also shares some of their own practices for regaining peace—like intentional rhythms with family, prayer, and solitude—so that those they lead don’t become responsible for their emotional stability.

Along the way, they connect these leadership insights to Scripture and spiritual formation: how identity is shaped in community, why God’s questions in the Garden matter for our conflicts today, and how the kingdom of God offers us a new “family” with new values.

If you’re a leader in any capacity—at church, at work, or at home—this episode will give you language, tools, and a fresh framework for navigating relational complexity without burning out, shutting down, or trying to control everyone around you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, what's up, everybody? Want to take a moment and welcome you to a new internal podcast we are doing called For the Love of Leadership. This is a podcast hosted by myself and Pastor James Crocker, and we're making this available to all the members of Cathedral. The reason we're doing this podcast is because we want to help promote the value of leadership in our church. We want to help you even change the way that you think about yourself as somebody who is worth developing as a leader and to help you grow in your love for your appreciation of the power of good leadership happening in your life. And so we're going to be sending out these episodes weekly on Thursdays, most likely. And we hope that you'll tune in and allow yourself to be challenged and through that allow yourself to grow into all that God has for you. And uh, we're very excited. So enjoy the show. We'll see you around. We are back at For the Love of Leadership. I'm sitting here with the paid team. Say what's up, everybody. We're back at For the Love of Leadership. The whole idea behind this podcast is that we want to promote a love for leadership and to promote the appreciation of the role of leaders so that we would all grow in our desire to lead in whatever capacity that God may call us to do that. 100%. We've been going through this book, A Failure of Nerve, by a man named Edwin Friedman, who has since passed. Uh really, really powerful book. Uh basically, the whole premise of it is effective leadership doesn't ultimately come down to systems, doesn't ultimately come down to structures or techniques or strategies. Ultimately, the effect and the effectiveness of leadership comes down to our presence as a leader amongst the people that we're leading.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

And whether or not we have the ability to be a non-anxious presence so that we have a certain resolve, clarity around what direction we're leading the people, that we're uh we're, you know, being able to define where we're going and being able to deal with the term that Friedman uses is sabotage. Yes, which is basically just his term to summarize all the different kinds of responses and reactions that people have to change. Yes. To vision, to lead action. And so if we can manage ourselves well and be that kind of presence, then we're gonna be able to overcome all kinds of obstacles and lead people where we want to take them.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Yeah, he would he would say that um that strategy is not a bad thing. Uh, vision's not a bad thing. But if you rely on those things only, you're going to miss the emotional part of leading people. And if you don't address uh the fact that people are averse to change, then you'll be unaware of the sabotage that is happening. And so so often leaders rely solely on strategy to make a change and they forget about the fact that leadership boils down to the fact you are leading people. Yes. And people are complex and they have emotions. And so instead of being inadvertently sucked into those, how do we be proactive in our approach? Exactly. And he lands the whole book after talking through all the different examples and all the different ways you can fall into this trap by introducing this idea of triangles. And so we're going to be able to do like the geometric case. We uh we have shifted from emotion to. We're doing math here, ladies. The mathing is the math is about to math. Uh it is, it is, it is geometry time.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Uh and oddly enough, the team here is holding up Illuminati in Timberless.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

So get the demons out in Jesus' name. Everyone pull out a dollar bill right now. There's a pyramid. Um so he's he he does actually, uh funnily enough, encourage leaders to, when they're when they're approached and they they're feeling stuck, to draw a circle on a piece of to sorry, not a circle, a triangle on a piece of paper. Because he says that uh there may be no such thing as a two-person relationship.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Okay. There's no such thing as a two-person relationship. So, like, you know, in my marriage, it's not when I'm interacting with my sweet wife over here. Yes. Yo, you it's not, it's not just me interacting with her. There's another dynamic going on.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Okay, same more.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Yeah. So uh an example could be uh I'm I'm frustrated with my child's behavior and how how Henry is treating Kirsten. And so I try to address how Henry is treating Kirsten and address that rather than first looking at the fact that I'm actually a part of this equation. And so, really, maybe the reason why Henry's behavior towards Kirsten is wrong because my behavior towards Henry is wrong. There's always a third factor in the relationship. He doesn't limit it to people. It could be a conversation that was had behind somebody's back. It could be a strategy, it could be another person or something else.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Maybe an experience in their upbringing.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Exactly. Yeah. Leadership stress is not uh primarily about how much you carry, it's about the position where you stand in the triangle. So this is where we fall into the trap that he so often uses of absorbing people's stress. Or anxiety. So exactly, or anxiety. And so here an example that he uses is there's two coworkers and they go to their boss to resolve their conflict. And so in that moment, the boss absorbs the stress and of the situation, the anxiety of the situation, the hard time of it. The two seem to get along and then they go and fall straight back into the same pattern of butting heads because the manager has absorbed what those two should have worked out together. This is the third person in the triangle. So instead of letting relationships work themselves out, leaders tend to step into the middle of it, and that's where the trap begins. So the moment that you take responsibility for the relationship, rather than realizing where the responsibility falls within the triangle, you're now falling into the trap of inserting yourself too much. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Okay. Let me pause there and make sure that I'm tracking with you. So um, because like when I when I hear you talk about the leadership triangle, what my mind goes to is um if I'm interacting with uh somebody that I'm leading and I need to have a conversation about a particular subject. Yep. Um, maybe it's an issue that I need to address. I'm thinking that when I'm going to have that conversation, it is wise for me to understand that I'm not just talking to this person about the issue.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

As much as those are the people who are engaged in the conversation. Yes. I'm also talking to a silent partner.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Uh so like I'm I'm talking to this person about just let's just use a basic example. Let's say they're they're frequently tardy. Yes. Um, and so I need to talk about this frequency of lateness. And as I'm having that conversation, I'm actually also talking to, unbeknownst to me as the leader, their mom. Correct. Who was also always late.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

And because that was their family of origin, tardiness is the value that they absorbed. Correct. And so I'm addressing this thing. And if I don't recognize that, then uh then what? Like the conversation doesn't go as far as it needed to, or maybe my approach is wrong, or help me understand.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Yeah, in that moment there, you may uh it's so funny because we just had this parenting deep dive, but you might address the behavior in that moment, but you're not gonna fix the root cause of what's causing this stressor in the in the relationship. So that person may be on time for a week. And then they're gonna slip back into that because we didn't address the fact that this is this is totally okay to them because this is how they were brought up.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Right. Uh, okay, cool. So this reminds me of like what they talk about in the other half of church. Um, where and we cited that book um very frequently in the message that I brought on uh right-brained Christianity. And one of the things that we talked about is the power of group to form our identity. Yes. Um, at the end of the day, our identity is not determined from the inside out, it is received from the people that we call family, that we call community. And so they talk about uh when you're bringing correction in the context of community, you always want to speak in in terms of who we are, not just, hey, you need to change that behavior. Interesting. And so who this person is is somebody who is frequently late because that's the value that they learned from their family of origin. But here's the power of the kingdom we are brought into a new family. And this family operates this way.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

And these are our values, and so it's a conversation around, hey, this is who we are, and you're a part of us. So this is who we all are. And so it's beginning to address the character part of themselves, not just the surface level behavior aspect.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Is that relate to what that's totally it? Because what you're doing there, think about it from uh the level of even in the garden. One of my it's oh man, the garden of Eden is one of my favorite moments. Post sin, Jesus walks in the cool, uh, God walks in the cool of the night to spend time with Adam and Eve. And what does he do? Questions.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Where are you?

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Where are you? Who told you you were naked? He's trying to, instead of just going, come out, here's the behavior you need to fix. He's trying to get to the bottom of where this came from. Really good. And this is the triangles are not not something that we should be ready to approach um randomly because they're gonna sometimes pop up. Freeman would argue a relationship can't stand on two things alone. There's always a third factor.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Let me rephrase that just to make sure we got what you're saying. Yeah. We should not be casual about the reality of triangles.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

It's not a matter of if there is a relationship triangle, there is always a relationship triangle.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Because none of us, none of us grow up in a in like a greenhouse as a solo plant.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Like we are all the result of an environment.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Exactly. And once you understand that, it's quite liberating.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

There are invisible forces that are acting upon us that have made us who we are, and we will be more successful as leaders when we can enter into the corrective conversations or the encouraging conversations or whatever kinds of conversations we're having, with the understanding that I'm not just talking to this person. I'm talking to this person and the past 36 years of their life.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Exactly. And that and that that's very liberating because now I'm not trying to avoid this triangle. I'm just trying to recognize my position in it. I might have some responsibility in this. Back to my family example. Um, it very might well be because I haven't taught Henry how to honor Kirsten, and that's why he's misbehaving.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Ooh, okay, this is good. So the triangle can be like let's say it's you and me. The triangle can be me, you, and the thing I said to you five years ago. 100%. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Yes. Everything is deeper than it really is on the surface.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Yeah, the problem is never the problem.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

The problem is never, but honestly, it's never the problem. Right. And so what Friedman is trying to do is trying to give you a framework in order to draw out the root cause of the problem so you can weed it out and you can move forward. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

You said you can have really healthy conversations and actually be able to uh solve the issues at the heart level and be able to move forward in a united way.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Exactly. And so let's talk about how we do this. Okay. So he outlines a few different uh steps. Number one, recognize the triangle. I think we talked about that. Just realize in the moment when you start feeling like, oh my gosh, what do I do in this moment? Go, oh, I could be in a triangle right now. And the word could is you are in a triangle right now. And and so so ask yourself, what am I getting pulled into the middle of right now? And what part, where am I in this? And um, and then the other thing is kind of what he shared throughout this book is refusing the togetherness position. So when we're in the triangle, don't fall into the trap of going for, hey, I'm going for harmony here.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

I'm not going to um I'm not going to just stop at empathy.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Is that is that another way of saying like peacekeeping?

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Yes. Okay. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Like that would be the So when you're experiencing the tension, maybe our gut instinct is like, oh, how do I smooth this over? Really? Correct. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

So we don't want to fall for that trap. And so the first thing you do is, okay, I'm in this. What part do I play? And then reminding yourself, okay, I'm not I'm not going for peacekeeping, I'm a peacemaker. So I might have to crack some eggs here. But that's okay. So I can make a really tasty. Exactly. Because I'm responsible for keeping everybody aligned. And I love a good omelette. Um, and then here's the thing as a leader, we need to stay present without over-functioning. So don't withdraw, but don't over-rescue.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Have you ever felt that tension when you're trying to like navigate that? How do you help that when you're like, okay, I just want to fix this for you?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

100%. Yeah. I feel that all the time. Um, I mean, I think one of the things that I've learned has been uh pausing before responding. It's great. And this is something that I feel like you model uh really, really well. My personality type, um, I am what a therapist would call an anxious attachment style, which means that like I just want to fix. Right. Let's talk about this, let's deal with this. Yeah. And so I've learned a lot of value uh and power in just being able to pause, give some space to let my own thoughts form and be able to move forward in a way that is actually going to promote the outcome that I want, not just engage in an immediate conversation that my flesh desires.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Yeah. So that's that's really interesting. And I I wish I was smart enough to dive into the triangle you just described in general.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Bro, that that is that is triangles within triangles. Exactly. It's an inception of triangles.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

My triangles got triangles, yeah. Um, but I love that staying present without the. We just went hexagon. Um uh yeah, so you're you're you're not withdrawing, you're staying present, but you're also not rescuing. And that's a that's a tough thing to do. I think one of the best ways you can do that is remembering that I'm here to serve. And sometimes when we go to fix, yes, I'm actually serving myself. Yeah. Because I don't like feeling this. Right. And I don't like the fact that you two are going at each other and it's all it's all affecting me. Really good. And so I need to, but okay, but I'm not here for me.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Okay, this is good. You as a leader, you need strategies to achieve your own peace so that the person that you're leading doesn't that you don't make them responsible for your peace. Yes. Right? If you're making the person you're leading responsible for your peace, then you are approached that relationship in a way that's, like you said, is ultimately self-serving. Correct. So when they are acting in a way that is causing you to get anxious because there's just insecurity in the relationship or in whatever you know direction you're trying to head, we need to have strategies as leaders as what is going to help me recover my peace. Yes. And so, like for me, we have all kinds of strategies in our lives. One of the things that Nicole and I do is on a we try to do at least once a week, sit down and just like in the morning share a bowl of yogurt together, have some like honest dialogue, talk to one another about how we're doing, how we're feeling. Um, and this is uh like an agreed upon space that we have uh to just share our hearts openly with one another. And as we do that, it helps both of us kind of come back to a place of equilibrium, which is really helpful. Obviously, in the Christian life, prayer, yes, uh, getting away into silence and solitude. There are all kinds of disciplines that we have been uh given through the Christian tradition that put us in a context, right? Because the discipline itself doesn't change you, the discipline puts you in a context where you can experience the presence of God who does change you.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Um, so coming again back to that face language, coming before the face of God, you need a strategy in your leadership. So good. You know, like I think I was thinking it was um uh John Wesley's mom, uh, who used to, she had lots and lots of kids. She would put a cloth over her head. And when she put a cloth over her head, her kids knew, don't bother mommy right now. Mommy's in the prayer closet, but really she was in the prayer cloth. She had she had no place to get away. She had no, no, so she just put a cloth over her head. And this was this is her strat her strategy. You know, she wouldn't have used this terminology because it's kind of modern terminology that we're using, but this is her strategy of kind of like recovering that equilibrium of peace within herself so that she could do what God had called her to do in um in her kids' lives. So you need those strategies as a leader.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Um, otherwise, you will make the people you're leading, whether it's parents, you'll make your kids responsible for your peace. And you don't want to make that mistake.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

No, right. Yeah, because the ultimate goal is that we would serve them, right? Like I love what um Elijah said on Sunday, the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus is mourning Lazarus, the disciples are coming back from ministry, and then it's like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to feed all these people. No, no, no, I'm serving. Right. This is what we do. But they had rhythms of Jesus would constantly draw away, remove himself, spend time with the Father so that in those moments he would have the right source to respond from. And the same is with our leadership. Okay, so we recognize the triangle, recognize our place in it, refuse the together. We're not going for peacekeeping, we're peacemakers, staying present without overfunctioning. So I'm not here to rescue you, I'm here to draw out the truth of the situation. And then the last thing is you make people responsible for their own relationships. So, not by force, but by not by taking it on yourself, you allow the person, you guide this moment towards who is ultimately responsible for this. Because once you've uncovered what it is, then there's a moment where again, empathy, helping people understand what they're feeling, we don't leave them there, we guide them out of it. This is the triangle dynamic. Should we do some real world exploring?

SPEAKER_01 17:28

I want you to say more say more about what you just spoke on.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Yeah. So when we when we get people to the point at the at the triangle where um you're having, let's use some of the examples we've used. We've used uh a boss navigating tension between two employees. Okay. Once you've gotten the place to make every single one of the employees understand their responsibility in this triangle, then they are now the ones who have done the work to understand how they got into this mess. Me as the boss, I actually wasn't involved in this conflict. I'm here not to take your conflict on, I'm here to help you guys work this out together. And so now I've given you the tools to be able to do this. You need to take responsibility for this and discover what your next steps are.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

I see. So, like in the negative example of this, the boss is kind of just left um to be responsible for solving the problem that those two employees are bringing to him or her. Yep. Um, and those employee employees leave, kind of going, cool, I've told them about this, they're gonna deal with it, they're gonna correct this person the next time they do that, and they're both thinking that about one another.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

In the positive example, the uh boss is able to turn the conversation back to those two employees and say, Hey, there's this is about more than just, you know, the the two things that y'all are doing that are getting on each other's nerves. There's something deeper here, and you need to do some exploratory work with one another and really get to the bottom of this. Yeah. Is that yeah, exactly. Uh let's say there's a tri you're you're saying, hey, there's a triangle here between you guys, and you need to be able to resolve that.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Exactly. Let's say uh Rane and Dare come come to me and they say, Renee's like, you know, I really I'm I'm frustrated with Dari because he just does not respond to emails.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Which Dari would never respond.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Which he would never. But just that's why I'm using him as a high example. Hypothetical. And I can just correct that. Dari, I need you to respond to emails within 12 hours. I haven't identified what the actual what if the reason why Rane's really frustrated with him is because it's not really that he doesn't respond to emails, although maybe he's a little slow on his emails, it's that it's it's never about accomplishing the goal of what we're trying to go after. And that he's always late on delivering deadlines. And Renee really feels like he's not being a team player.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Uh there's deeper frustrations.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

There's deeper frustrations because there's a third element here. It's not really the fact that he's not responding to the emails, it's something way deeper.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

And so if you turn Rene towards Dare and say, Hey, have a conversation about this thing and allow Dare to ask you questions in return, then together you will get to the bottom of like what really is the frustration.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

And you in that moment might have to help them. Hey, Renee, is it is it truly if if Dare started responding to emails within two hours, would that fix everything that you're feeling right now? And and Renee would say, No, actually, if he responded to his emails within two minutes, I still wouldn't feel supported. Ah, okay. And so you might help to help guide this, but ultimately you're helping them take responsibility for this. And so what you're leading Dare towards realizing is that it's not just him not responding to emails, it's him not taking his job seriously. It's him not leveling, left living up to the level of expectation on the contributions that he has to what we're trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah, gotcha. Okay, that's helpful. All right. What questions or thoughts do you guys have?

SPEAKER_00 20:51

It's so helpful hearing about the triangle and knowing that that first step is to recognize it. I am curious if there are any questions that you guys have developed or kind of found useful in a myriad of situations to be an opening question that can help bring light to the triangle. Or like even if you guys know there's a triangle, but you don't know what the third part is. Are there any questions that you found helpful to figure out what it is?

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Yes. My one of my favorite phrases when I want to talk to somebody about something that might be, you know, an uncomfortable conversation for whatever reason is I'll use the phrase a lot. I want to open up a dialogue about, or I want to open up a conversation about. Um, and what that phrase does has a lot of power. Number one, it frames the conversation as exploratory. So I'm I'm here as a curious person who wants to learn more about this particular issue or behavior or or theme, right? Um so I really like that because now I'm kind of situating myself alongside of them saying, Hey, I'm seeing this and I want to open up a conversation about it because there's some things that I I want to you know figure out. The second thing that that phrase does is it removes the pressure to have to resolve the issue in one 45-minute coffee. Very good. I want to open up a conversation about means now I'm not under the gun with this person to have to explore every single nook and cranny of the thing that I think needs addressing. Now I'm just, hey, and uh what does that communicate? It communicates I'm with you for the long haul. Yes. We're in a relationship.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

Security.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Um and we're this might take us 10 meeting meetings to sort out. Or maybe I'm not the person who ultimately walks through that when we do some exploratory work, we go, ah, actually, I really need to connect you with this person so they can journey, whatever it is. So it just frames the conversation in a way that I think is inviting, that's non-threatening, um, and that ultimately communicates love, care, and longevity in terms of the relationship.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Love that. Yes. And the only way you're going to get better at asking questions is by putting the reps in. I've found that. Um listening to everyone has like an internal dialogue as the conversation is going on. And so some of those things are the Holy Spirit, some of them are you, and some of them are just completely wrong. But the only way you do that is by asking um, by asking questions. And so I I tend to, I try not to rabbit trail a lot, but I tend to ask questions if I'm starting to feel something like, oh, there's an underlying tension around this not feeling really related to what we're talking about. I want to explore where this feeling is coming from. Or this person's body language shifts every time we talk about this topic. I'm going to ask some questions in regards to that. Hey, I noticed that you're you you tense. Oh no, my back is sore. Okay. Well, then it wasn't it. But at least now I know that you're not actually visibly angry. Your back gets sore every time we talk about this.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Every time I every time I say email, your back tenses. Um we should wrap this episode up. Good stuff. Man, thank you so much for walking us through triangles. That was brilliant. It was a great book. So helpful.