Leaders both lead change and manage the resulting anxiety in order to get commitment to a shared vision.

• Leadership is in part about helping the church to care about vision, mission, purpose. (example: Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Jesus)
• When leaders attempt to help the congregation set and pursue a direction, the process of change creates anxiety.
• Leaders have to learn two skills and exercise them simultaneously - the first skill is that of achieving the mission and the second is managing self in the anxiety that mission achievement produces.
• To fully understand how leadership functions, you must understand that it takes place within a living system.
• What is a living system?
• Differences of opinion feel threatening and left to our natural reactions, we will react in anxiety.
• What does it mean to manage yourself in an anxious system? 

When we first started coaching leaders we gave almost exclusive attention to teaching individual leaders the principles of organizational change. At first, we saw some positive changes, but when we tracked the results over time, we discovered that when we as coaches pulled out of the process, the process stalled - and sometimes it devolved into destructive conflict.

As we tried to remain curious, we were convinced that leaders needed to know the principles of organizational change, but what also became clear is that this was not enough. What is also needed is the personal
transformation of the leader. That goes back to what you were saying earlier: it’s the individual and the organization; it’s the being and the doing.