Written by: Chad Warren on November 19, 2025

Revisiting Edwin Friedman and Simon Walker this semester reshaped my understanding of leadership at a structural and deeply personal level. Their frameworks—one systemic, one psychological—have become interpretive keys through which I now perceive congregational dynamics, cultural patterns, and my own pastoral identity. Friedman gave me language for the emotional processes that shape every community, and even more immediately the one I began pastoring just over two years ago; Walker disclosed the ego architecture that shapes every leader. Together they formed a consilient lens, helping me see leadership as an interplay of identity, presence, and power within anxious and defended systems.

Friedman Reconsidered: Differentiation as Presence, Not Distance

Friedman’s core insights struck me with renewed clarity. His claim that differentiation is not withdrawal or detachment but the capacity to remain rooted in one’s identity while staying connected to others[1] has become a governing interpretive principle. In this season of ministry, differentiation no longer appears as an abstract theory but as the decisive variable in whether a system moves toward maturity or regression. My first year as Senior Pastor revealed a chronically anxious congregational system—reactivity, blame displacement, quick-fix demands, and herding around the least mature voices. These were not primarily theological or organizational failures; they were the predictable consequences of a non-differentiated leadership climate.

Friedman’s language gave me a new pastoral lens. Anxiety, I learned, spreads through emotional process, not doctrinal disagreement. Change is resisted not because people reject ideas but because systems instinctively seek equilibrium. And the most powerful intervention a leader makes is not a strategy but a presence. His emphasis on the “non-anxious presence” no longer reads as advice to remain calm but as a summons to courageous self-definition in the midst of reactivity—clarity without coercion, connection without capitulation, conviction without combativeness.

Walker Reconsidered: Undefendedness as the Foundation of Flourishing

Walker’s work opened a complementary and essential dimension. His notion of “undefended leadership” reaches beyond common conversations about vulnerability; it is about leading from a secured ego—a self whose identity is stable enough not to require constant protection.[2] His frontstage/backstage framework illuminated the inner dynamics beneath the surface of ministry: how leaders hide wounds, manage impressions, and construct defenses not out of pride but fear. I now see rugged individualism, male isolation, pastoral fatigue, and the refusal to be known as expressions of defended ego-structures—not merely bad habits but psychological and spiritual barriers to healthy leadership.

Where Friedman showed me the dynamics of anxious systems, Walker revealed why leaders absorb that anxiety: defendedness. A defended leader reacts rather than responds, over-functions rather than defines themselves, and collapses into isolation rather than remain relationally present. But an undefended leader, grounded in a secure identity, can stay connected without being controlled, present without becoming reactive, and exposed without becoming destabilized. In my own pastoral work and doctoral research, especially with men shaped by rugged individualism, Walker’s insights have become indispensable. Emotional maturity does not begin with technique but with healing. Differentiation is impossible without ego security.

Convergence and Dissonance: The Cruciform Integration

The deepest learning this semester came where the two models met in tension. At first glance, Friedman’s emphasis on differentiation and boundaries appears to conflict with Walker’s emphasis on vulnerability and exposure. But the tension itself revealed a threshold concept: leadership requires both strength and surrender, clarity and openness, conviction and humility. The non-anxious presence Friedman describes cannot be performed; it must be formed. And the undefended identity Walker describes cannot become passive; it must take responsibility.

This integration crystallizes in a cruciform model of leadership. Jesus embodies both differentiation (“My food is to do the will of the Father”)[3] and undefendedness (“Not my will but yours be done”)[4]. High identity security meets high vulnerability. High authority meets high exposure. The intersection of Friedman and Walker is not a compromise but a deeper synthesis—leadership shaped by the cross.

Consilience Across the Semester’s Readings

As I broadened to the rest of the course readings, a pattern of consilience became impossible to ignore. Schein’s Humble Leadership affirmed Walker’s backstage thesis: trust grows when leaders offer relational access, not image management.[5] Boghossian and Lindsay’s principles for difficult conversations only function in the hands of a differentiated leader who can remain curious without collapsing into reactivity.[6]  Historical and cultural works—from Holland’s Dominion[7] to Biggar and Black’s examinations of power[8]—demonstrated that anxious systems and defended leaders have always distorted communities and institutions.

Even empirical flourishing research from VanderWeele[9] and the cultural diagnoses of Haidt,[10] Agarwal,[11] and Saad[12] mapped seamlessly onto Friedman and Walker: anxiety, fragmentation, and isolation in modern Western society reflect entire populations caught between chronic anxiety and defended selves. The result is diminished flourishing, weakened resilience, and distorted power. In contrast, a cruciform model of leadership rooted in secure identity and undefended presence aligns with both ancient theology and contemporary psychology.

Presence, Power, and Resilience Reimagined

This convergence reshaped how I now understand leadership presence, power, and resilience. Presence is not charisma or emotional neutrality; it is a formative reality that shapes the entire system’s emotional process. Power is not control or authority; it is the stewardship of presence exercised through identity security and vulnerability.[13] Resilience is not grit or stoicism; it is the capacity to remain undefended, differentiated, and relationally grounded under pressure.

Conclusion: Toward a New Leadership Identity

The consilience of Friedman and Walker has reshaped my theology and practice of leadership. I now understand leadership as the expression of a secure, undefended self, operating as a differentiated, non-anxious presence within anxious systems, grounded in the cruciform story of Christ. This shift is not merely intellectual; it is a threshold crossing that is changing my identity as a pastor and deepening my calling to shepherd communities toward relational, emotional, and spiritual flourishing.

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[1]  Friedman, Edwin H., A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2017), 194-195.

[2] Simon Walker, The Undefended Leader, (Piquant Editions, 2010), 55.

[3] John 4:34

[4] Luke 22:42

[5] Edgar H. Scheinand Peter A. Schein,  Humble Leadership, Second Edition: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust. (N.p.: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2023).

[6] Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide, (New York: Hachette Books, 2019).

[7] Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, (London, UK: Little Brown, 2019).

[8] Nigel Biggar, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, (London: William Collins, 2023), 12.

[9] Tyler J. VanderWeele, “On the promotion of human flourishing.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 2017. 31:8148-8156. http://www.pnas.org/content/114/31/8148.full.pdf.

[10] Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. New York: Penguin Press, 2024.

[11] Pragya Agarwal, Sway: Unraveling Unconscious Bias. London: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020.

[12] Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense. New York: Regnery, 2020.

[13] Andy Crouch, Strong and Weak, Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2016.

About the Author

Chad Warren

A husband, father, pastor, teacher, and student seeking to help others flourish.