By: Nancy VanderRoest on October 18, 2019
Perspective – do you see yourself as a victim or a survivor? This is the key to healing – and also the key to leadership. I often paint for my clients a picture of them in the winner’s circle. Zig Ziglar once said that if you don’t see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform…
By: Harry Edwards on October 17, 2019
O wow! Reading Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve was like drinking from a fire hydrant — there’s just so much to assimilate. I found myself highlighting many parts, frequently re-reading sections, trying to comprehend his ideas about leadership. Then there were the familiar concepts we’re told not to emulate, such as empathy and togetherness1.…
By: Andrea Lathrop on October 17, 2019
I have taken my time with A Failure of Nerve and dismissed all the usual reading hacks for this one. I decided this summer that this would be one I would read and digest slowly based on the high recommendation from several mentors. I have not been disappointed. I am benefiting from Friedman’s thoughts on…
By: Digby Wilkinson on October 17, 2019
A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix was written ten years after Edwin Friedman’s death by permission of his family trust along with the editorial work of Margaret W. Treadwell and Edward W. Beal.[1] At its core, the book is an attempt to apply the societal regression theory of Murray Bowen…
By: Chris Pollock on October 17, 2019
The Biosphere, is the layer around the planet containing the sum total of all living organisms. Within this layer of life is another stratum that has been referred to as ‘the “Ethnosphere”, the social web of life’ [1]. David Wade defines the Ethnosphere as ‘as the sum total of all thoughts and intuitions, myths and…
By: Jenn Burnett on October 17, 2019
It was a number of years ago now, while watching a parenting video, when the teacher informed me that my first job as a parent was to be in control of myself.[1] Our home was often wrought with anxiety as we navigated layers of challenging circumstances. I remember thinking of my emotional, rambunctious, sometimes rebellious…
By: Rhonda Davis on October 16, 2019
I am grateful for GPS. It gives me turn-by-turn directions, but it also gives me an estimated time of arrival. I can even let my GPS know when I need to arrive at a destination, and I will be notified when I need to leave. Since I live in an urban area that is under…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on October 16, 2019
Edwin Friedman (1932-1996) was a practicing family therapist, leadership consultant, and ordained rabbi (Reform Judaism). Friedman applied his four-decade work with family systems thinking to leadership applications. His innovative perspective on leadership was more about a way of thinking and being than about traditional leadership technique emphases. Because of his innovative approach to leadership, his…
By: Greg Reich on October 16, 2019
In the James Cameron movie Avatar, the greeting used by the Na’vi was “I See You”. As the movie unfolds it is obvious this greeting means more than seeing one physically, seeing becomes the idea that until a person sees beyond the physical into the soul of an individual, they do not exist. The main…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on October 16, 2019
I took our weekly Zoom call this week while I was on the road, somewhere in rural Virginia. “Zooming in” from my phone does not allow me to see everyone’s face at the same time, nor does it allow me to reply to the chat messages I receive (public, private or otherwise!) as quickly as…
By: Nancy Blackman on October 15, 2019
When I first introduced myself to Instagram (IG), I began clumsily. As someone who began with film and a darkroom, I found it to be clunky and structured. In time, however, God began to utilize my clumsiness for the Kingdom and kindom. The short story is that I was bedridden for six months. As I…
By: Jer Swigart on October 14, 2019
On August 9th, 2014, Ferguson Police Officer, Darren Wilson, gunned down Michael Brown in his Canfield Green neighborhood and left him lay on the sunbaked street for four hours. Rather than being an isolated event, the shooting was yet another in a long and storied stream of events that manifest the systemic oppression of Ferguson’s…
By: Steve Wingate on October 14, 2019
Polyvalent Images May Be Invisible in a World of Scapes We moved from a very nice condominium in south-central Ohio to what is called near-east Indianapolis, before the recent purchase of our new home just outside the near-east. The near-east home was located on Denny Street where during any night from January to September we…
By: Shawn Cramer on October 14, 2019
Sarah Pink, in her textbook Doing Visual Ethnography, inadvertently lays out reasons why the field of visual ethnography is itself innovative, and why the potential for future innovation in the field remains bright. As a surprising unintended consequence, she offers insights into how others might approach research more innovatively. Pink goes so far to boldly…
By: Sean Dean on October 14, 2019
As I sit to write this post there is a new meme online where the President of the United States goes on a shooting rampage in a church killing all those who oppose him. It is in every way vile. There are many things that could be said about it, but mostly I wonder what…
By: Dylan Branson on October 13, 2019
They say that a picture tells a thousand words. Captured images are snapshots of history, moments of memory that we can draw from for different purposes. It may be to quell a building nostalgia, it may be to examine evidence from a crime scene, it may be to gather information about people within a culture,…
By: Darcy Hansen on October 13, 2019
Tucked in amongst foreboding structures of world financial institutions lies St. Margaret Lothbury, a small Church of England parish church established 1185 C.E., burned in 1666, rebuilt and reinstated in 1690 C.E. The worship space is cozy and decked out in some of the finest 17th-century wood carved elements. The sturdy pews are darkly stained,…
By: Jenn Burnett on October 13, 2019
I recently returned from a trip to London and Oxford. This was my first proper trip to England and I went with a deep curiosity of what might feel familiar to my Canadian/Australian experiences and what would seem different. I would compare my sentiments to those of trying to understand my parents. While they are…
By: John Muhanji on October 13, 2019
It is incredible how Peter Frankopan, a senior research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and a historian, brings out the silk road world model that is taking shape and has been from the ancient period. Just as the Quaker church has been evolving from its inception of the 17th century, the silk road has also…
By: Mary Mims on October 12, 2019
As a youth, Peter Frankopan was disenchanted by the version of history he learned as he studied the map of the world. Frankopan was uneasy about the relentlessly narrow geographic focus of his classes at school, which concentrated solely on western Europe and the United States and left most of the rest of the world…
