By: Simon Bulimo on October 19, 2019
DOING VISUAL ETHNOGRAPHY A VITAL TOOL FOR RESEARCH The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (2004), defines the following terms: Visual as a noun is a picture, map, piece of film used to make an article or talk easier to understand or more interesting. Ethnography is the scientific description of different races and cultures Ethnographer is a…
By: Wallace Kamau on October 19, 2019
“The comfort zone is a psychological state in which one feels familiar, safe, secure and at ease. If you always do what is easy and choose the path of least resistance, you never step outside your comfort zone. Great things don’t come from comfort zones.”[1] We’re operating in a world of safety and comfort, where…
By: Mary Mims on October 18, 2019
The word sabotage always brings to mind espionage or even, intrigue. It is the act of someone ruining an event or project for the sole purpose of stopping advancement or progress. Many times when things go wrong at work or in ministry, the thought of sabotage comes to my mind. Ministry is supposed to be…
By: Joe Castillo on October 18, 2019
I appreciated Nohira and Khurana and their approach to leadership. Even dough they addressed a secular audience, they are very inclusive in pointing out essential elements to practical guidance. The author writes about two chapters that are very close to my heart. 1-13 – LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT At the start of every age, a new…
By: Sean Dean on October 18, 2019
Water is an amazing thing. It can dissolve more substances than any solvent – including very caustic acids. It cannot be compressed making it usable as a both a weapon and a tool, it is able to sooth burns, can absorb an outrageous amount of energy before changing states and is the most important ingredient…
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: Mario Hood on October 17, 2019
In 1983, Apple launched its computer Lisa, and the last project Jobs worked on before he was let go. Jobs released Lisa with a nine-page ad in the New York Times spelling out the computer’s technical features. It was nine pages of geek talk nobody outside NASA was interested in. The computer bombed. When Jobs…
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: Joe Castillo on October 14, 2019
Pink touch on a very familiar topic of ethnography, which is very close to my interest. As I think of the essential keys words that couture my attention like Image-illustration of concepts, objectivity, visual anthropology, audiovisual ethnography, fiction, documentary, representation, re-enactment, photographic potentiality, media transfer, resignification, memory. I think of the words of Clifford “[…]…
