By: Glyn Barrett on March 4, 2025
In RARE Leadership,[i] Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder provide a framework for leaders to build emotional resilience and thriving teams. By integrating principles from neuroscience and theology to offer strategies that enhance leadership effectiveness, RARE Leadership emphasises that emotionally mature leaders cultivate trust and engagement, creating environments where individuals and organisations flourish. Warner and Wilder…
By: Jennifer Eckert on March 4, 2025
Back in the 1920s, minister and Methodist camp leader George William Cooke had something to teach us about joy through a catchy little song called Joy in My Heart.[1] Years later, contemporary neuroscience would confirm his findings about the healing power of joy. Joy is not only a feeling but, in fact, a mechanism for…
By: Diane Tuttle on March 3, 2025
This may be stating the obvious but throughout our readings over the last couple of semesters, many books have confirmed that leadership is more about the character of the leader rather than the skills that person might have. Early on, reading Leading out of Who You Are, The Undefended Leader, author Simon Walker, D Prof…
By: Jeff Styer on March 3, 2025
In this post I am going to look at Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder’s book Rare Leadership book and the importance of knowing and acting out your identity.[1]. Much of this post centers around a conversation with my youngest son, Josiah. Josiah came home from a meeting at church one evening while I was in…
By: Christy on March 3, 2025
In 15 seconds, this is how I share my testimony: There was once a time in my life when I was anxious and fearful of death, then Jesus came into my life and freed me. Now, I experience peace and am confident in my identity in Christ. My husband is very involved in evangelism ministry…
By: Ivan Ostrovsky on February 28, 2025
“A Failure of Nerve” by Edwin H. Friedman is definitely my favorite book of the semester so far! It’s been a challenging week for me, and it truly feels as though this book was written just for someone like me. As a new leader here in Hawaii, I’m navigating the beautiful journey of leading in…
By: Joel Zantingh on February 28, 2025
In our Doctoral program, there has been ample space to think through the models of leadership that exist, and how we as leaders will shape our influence to meet the complexities of the world. But what can be learned by not beginning with the leader or their qualities, but with the complexities themselves? This is where…
By: Noel Liemam on February 27, 2025
Introduction: “EXPLORING WICKED PROBLEMS: What They Are and Why Thet Are important,” by Joseph Bentley, PhD and Michael Toth, PhD not only gave us different perspectives on how we look at problems, but some practical ways to deal with it. In the introduction, they gave us the reason this book is necessary by stating that…
By: Daren Jaime on February 27, 2025
According to the U.S Census, in 2023, the official poverty rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 11.1 percent. There were 36.8 million people in poverty in 2023. As poverty remains on the decline for most of my home city of Syracuse, New York has a poverty crisis. It leads the nation in extreme concentrated poverty…
By: Jess Bashioum on February 27, 2025
Reading a failure of nerve by Edwin Freeman[1] was encouraging to me. One of the main reasons I am pursuing this Doctorate is my excitement for adventure. I work in a field that can very much get stuck in its own orientation[2]. In efforts to make change we end up seeing a lot of tired…
By: Michael Hansen on February 27, 2025
It had already been a twelve-hour day when the text came across my Blackberry: the infamous Sev-1 (Severity One) alert. For our fulfillment center, it signified that part of our automation and/or sortation systems were offline, putting customer experience at risk, as orders might not reach their intended destination in time. I headed to the…
By: Chad Warren on February 27, 2025
What if loneliness became so overwhelming that people started renting families just to feel connected? In Japan, this isn’t just a hypothetical—it’s a reality. Companies like Family Romance provide actors to fill roles as family members, friends, or romantic partners for people craving human connection.[1] While this may seem extreme, it highlights a larger issue…
By: David Weston on February 27, 2025
So far, this book by Edwin H. Friedman entitled A Failure of Nerve has been my favorite reading. Having been in many different forms of leadership for well over half a century, I deeply resonate with his thinking patterns and the lessons he is proposing. This book reminds me of an incident in my own…
By: Jeremiah Gómez on February 27, 2025
My favorite definition of “leadership” these days is one from Ronald Heifetz: “disappointing people at a rate they can absorb.”[1] This definition came to mind throughout my reading of A Failure of Nerve, especially as Friedman interacted with the concepts of sabotage, systemic toxicity, and how people and organizations can strongly (negatively!) react simply because…
By: Julie O'Hara on February 27, 2025
It happened almost immediately. I started reading about Wicked Problems, and I could feel the metaphorical head smack followed by the thought, “How have I never heard of this before?” I was further surprised by reading about the many ways that a Wicked Problems framework is popular and widely applied across many disciplines. I may…
By: Elysse Burns on February 27, 2025
“Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1)—a verse that comes to mind when reflecting on Joseph Bentley and Michael Toth’s Exploring Wicked Problems. Drawing from the work of social scientists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, Bentley and Toth distinguish between two categories: tame problems and wicked problems. Tame…
By: Kari on February 27, 2025
I live in a breeding ground for wicked problems. My host country is in the Sahara. It is listed as the fifty-sixth poorest country in the World.[1] Limited resources are a daily struggle for everyone living here. Conflicting values in the country stem from topics such as slavery, ethnic conflict, and colonialism. The country receives…
By: Debbie Owen on February 27, 2025
I have a deep passion for spiritual formation and discipleship. However, I have found that before discussing discipleship with someone, I must begin by clarifying with which of the many definitions they are most familiar. With so many interpretations of discipleship, there is a lot of ambiguity regarding “what” it is, “how” to do it,…
By: Christian Swails on February 27, 2025
I really do not want to take on the task of critiquing Edwin Friedman’s masterpiece, A Failure of Nerve. And honestly, I’ll spend most of this article relating to the brilliance of his work rather than combatting it. I agree with William H. Dorherty’s endorsement, “Reading this book is like discovering an unpublished Beethoven sonata…
By: Darren Banek on February 27, 2025
I have had the privilege of attending our current church for about twenty-three years. In that time, I have seen the congregation of around one thousand people regularly functioning as the hands and feet of Jesus in desperate times. Some have lost all their worldly possessions in a matter of hours due to house fires,…
