By: Joff Williams on March 4, 2025
“I’ve got your picture hangin’ on the wallBut it can’t see or come to me when I call your name.I realize it’s just a picture in a frame.Ooh, I read your letters when you’re not nearBut they don’t move me and they don’t groove meLike when I hear your sweet voice whispering in my ear.…
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: 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: 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: 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 I agree with William H. Dorherty’s endorsement, “Reading this book is like discovering an unpublished Beethoven sonata…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,…
By: Robert Radcliff on February 27, 2025
This week, I read Friedman’s classic work, Failure of Nerve. He presents differentiation as the solution to the problem: “America is stuck in the rut of trying harder and harder without obtaining significantly new results.” [1] The book’s theme is that differentiated leadership provides stability in anxious times, refuses to blame others, and sets new…
By: Alex Mwaura on February 27, 2025
I’ve always thought the topic on leadership was a one we generally agreed on until I read Friedmans’: A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Every now and then, I pick up a book or article and find some aspects polarizing and others that I agree with. This book had…
By: Betsy on February 27, 2025
Our church was growing, and new people were joining all the time. In December 2011, I met a relatively new woman in our church who wanted to meet me in a coffee shop near our children’s schools. She produced some printed paper with Google definitions of different diagnoses, including narcissistic personality disorder, psychopathic and sociopathic…
By: Joff Williams on February 26, 2025
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” Jesus, Matthew 16:26, Mark 8:36, Luke 9:25 In a 2023-2024 survey of the severity of societal risks, the World Economic Forum found the following top ten risks…
By: Rich on February 25, 2025
I worked for a mom-and-pop company. Pop was a pioneer in the industry who turned his experience and notoriety into a fledging business. Mom ran the business. It was a Friday afternoon. Pop was diabetic and was two days into a severe blood sugar imbalance. About 4:00, the cussing began. By 4:02, I was down…
By: Judith McCartney on February 23, 2025
Shaping the Future of Leadership. I read an article from Harvard long ago called “Women less inclined to self-promote than men, even for a job. My curiosity peaked when they discussed how even when a woman knows she answered 15 out of 20 questions correctly on a task and a man knows he answered 15…
By: Linda Mendez on February 20, 2025
I hired someone to manage our Unhoused Mobile Shower clinic in August of last year. However, in January, they resigned. Two weeks into the job, she requested a meeting to share concerns about my leadership. I will admit it was tough to hear. I had never had an employee challenge or question me like she…
By: Jess Bashioum on February 20, 2025
I have had leadership on my life since I was young. My mom told me that when I was 4, I would line up my dolls and stuffed animals and give them inspirational speeches about things they should do with their lives. Unfortunately, I grew up with a dad and a church community that didn’t…
By: Christian Swails on February 20, 2025
Pursuing and accepting leadership is a crash course in exposing my triggers. (so is being married and having a child). When I arrive late for an appointment, or make a scheduling mistake on a complicated work-week, or if I am questioned about….anything – my chest tightens, my breath shortens, and my body puts on…
By: Jeremiah Gómez on February 20, 2025
Scrawled across my office whiteboard is a haunting and helpful question, especially as I face painful challenges in my current leadership season: What would a GREAT leader do? How would a fantastic leader dig into my organization’s challenges and opportunities? What would they do to navigate the turbulent and dangerous waters of transition and financial…
By: Mika Harry on February 20, 2025
Completely overwhelming. As I turned the last page of Leader-smithing, I was overwhelmed. The idea of 52 action items, one for each week of the year, felt daunting.[1] Are leaders really supposed to adopt a new practice for 52 weeks straight? The sheer magnitude of such a task feels insurmountable in my current season. Much…
By: Betsy on February 20, 2025
A predecessor to Google Search for finding contacts before smartphones and search engines took over in the UK was called The Yellow Pages. It was a massive yellow book with a familiar strong smell, about the size of a small suitcase with all the contact information for different work sectors and friends and was the…
