Get To Know The Family Ghosts In Your Leadership

My ghost hangs out in a recycling bin. You see, in my small family (mom, sister, me) I was the “Toter woman.” I carried the heavy Toter brand recycling bin up our hilly driveway every week, without fail. There was no man to do it. I was competent and strong. I did things myself. Who needed a man around? Toter woman is my leadership ghost. She’s powerful— but also exhausting, controlling, and limiting. I battle the ghost of Toter woman every day but I love her too.

Do you bring “ghosts” to work? Probably. Family ghosts are the fundamental attitudes and behaviors that evolved from your family of origin and that follow you into the present. Some are good and some are bad but they are core to who we are, because we grow up playing roles in our families. We repeat these roles as adults and sometimes build our careers around them. And if our ghosts are keeping us stuck in unhelpful patterns, we can exorcise them.

Deborah Ancona is my guest this week. Ancona, collaborating with Dennis Harris, says the first step is identifying your ghosts so you can see these ghosts playing out and determine what’s triggering behaviors or familiar roles. Here are some common ghosts I discussed with Ancona- see if any ring a bell for you!

Peacemaker. Ancona grew up as the peacemaker in her family. As she grew into academic leadership, this experience really helped. “I ran a lot of committees where I brought disparate people together and we created great things and a lot of synergy. Bringing folks together to create books or articles or papers was great, but is that really what I wanted to be doing all the time? Probably not. So part of where ghosts come in is that we are good at certain things and we gravitate to them. What (famous family systems therapist) Virginia Satir would say is that we replicate our family patterns even when they're not functional for us at the moment, but they're comfortable.” Like being Toter woman, being the peacemaker is a good ghost, but it’s limiting.

Joker or Clown. Some of our ghosts are immature; they never grew up. We have different parts of ourselves that might be stuck, and some ghosts get in the way of our progress. Ancona coached an executive who had been her family’s family comic relief. “She got everybody to be more comfortable and she developed a really great sense of humor. And that mode of mastering her environment worked really well for her for quite a long time. When she became part of the senior leadership team, that humorous role did not work so well for her. She found that people were looking at her in odd ways, and so it was ‘Okay, I think this worked in a previous setting. It doesn't really work now.’”

Authority Worshipper. If you grow up in a household where there is one way to be, what Satir calls a hierarchical model where some dominate and some don't, you will be well conditioned to defer to authority figures. “And when you're new to a senior leadership team and that's part of your core belief system, then you can't speak your voice to authority,” notes Ancona. You can't interrupt, you can't say, ‘I think you're wrong.’ Your mind does not have a sense of an equality of membership. You always think in terms of the better and the worse, the powerful and the not so powerful. And that's just how your mind works.” Obviously, this limits leaders and demands some new ways of thinking.

Keep My Head Down. Perhaps you’re comfortable with pain, threats, or disruption. I've had several recent conversations about why so many of us are drawn to work cultures that aren't good for us. A lot of us are survivors. When we grow up in painful environments,  it just may feel comfortable, says Ancona. We think: “I know how to operate in a toxic environment. I grew up in a toxic environment. I know how to keep my head down when I have to keep my head down. I know how to be a Machiavellian when I need to operate in that way. I know how to keep secrets. I know how to figure out what the winning team is.”

Safety First. This ghost might be another holdover from a risky childhood. Don't take risks, stay with the traditional, don't innovate. Don't go against authority. “Some people come from families in which there was bankruptcy or they were on the edge. They want safety, they want control, and they don't want to replicate the family pattern that was so difficult for them early on. And obviously playing safe lends itself to certain kinds of organizations and roles.” However,  picking the safe option does not necessarily get you ready for this moment of exponential change in the world, notes Ancona, and the need to innovate and take risks. Safety only gets you so far.

Adherence to Symbols and Values. I had a friend whose ambition was to work for the same white shoe law firm that had rejected his father years ago for being Jewish. My friend grew up with this story, and righting his father’s wrong was hugely symbolic. Many families prize money. Others prize traits like grit or loyalty or a certain prestigious college, or profession. Even if the value is not a fit, or even if it’s bad for us, we may persist. You are willing to pay the price or you think you are. Ancona has seen “senior executives, presidents, people who are making enormous amounts of money who are still trying to please their parents and seeking the love that they think comes from accomplishment. And so these become arenas in which you are still replaying some again of those family patterns.”

Sometimes symbols and values are positive. For example, the value of being a caretaker is one that people in Ancona’s workshops credit as a good factor in their leadership. She says, “It’s the idea that in our family, we take care of others. We're very good at empathy and compassion.” These people are a very good fit with servant leadership. They're known for their generosity, for their ability to connect. So that's a good ghost.

A popular bad ghost? Never Good Enough. This is the workaholic. “I can't stop. I'm not good enough unless I am maxing out… enough is never enough. I have to do whatever it takes to be number one to get through this. These are perhaps your anxious achievers.” A related ghost is You Are Not Enough. You have to achieve to prove yourself. These are folks who no matter what they do, feel a fear of disappointing others. They can't ever recognize their own accomplishment.

It’s All Up to Me. I find anxious achievers also inhabit this ghost! This is my Toter woman. Ancona notes, often in a household where help was scarce or you were on your own, “you create patterns of taking responsibility for everything. You don't want to bother anyone. There's a sense of, no, I can't bother anyone. Again, in a world of distributed leadership where you have to empower and delegate, that's probably not a great space to be in.”

There is no shame in having ghosts. We all have them. Getting to know your family ghosts is a powerful thing to do. Ancona recommends spending some time here. Sometimes these ghosts are automatic. You're not even aware that that's what's operating in you. You just know that you cannot for whatever reason, speak up in those meetings. But why? It's a question that you can't necessarily answer. And so you need to look at it.”

Morra

PS: Here’s some further reading on family systems theory:

About Virginia Satir

Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite by Ancona and Dennis N.T Perkins in the Harvard Business Review