Friedman observed leadership of all levels within family, church, politics, and church. He is known for integrating therapy, organizational leadership and ministry. He also identified that problems begin in leadership when individuals do not stand firm in their beliefs. Not necessarily what you would initially identify of having lack of knowledge, skill, or technique. The ability to be able to stand firm in others reactivity is a presence and internal authority that is developed.<\/p>\n
Friedman believed that Leadership depends on emotional processing. Emotional Process is defined by, \u201cA process whereby emotional disturbances are absorbed and decline to the extent that other experiences and behavior can proceed without disruption.\u201d (1) Why is this important to define? It\u2019s important to define how we learn to process emotions and handle uncomfortable feelings and situations. If you allow it, you can use it to be more resilient. Much like emotional processing can be, leadership for the most part is a learned behavior… not innate. The Univeristy of Western Alabama psychology department identified 3 components of emotional processing:<\/p>\n
1) Subjective Experience- a stimulus…where all emotions can begin.<\/p>\n
2) Physiological Response- fight or flight reactions…Typically shown through facial expression first.<\/p>\n
3) Behavioral or Expressive Response- the expression of the emotion.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Another component to leadership according to Friedman was a well differentiated leader. Coincidentally this also involves emotional processing. What is the leaders initial reactivity and instinct response (physiological). How do they handle discomfort towards challenges and change? Do they stand firm in their beliefs at the risk of upsetting others? Their Leadership presence in their emotion is key. \u201cA leader must separate his or her own emotional being from that of his or her followers while still remaining connected.\u201d (3)\u00a0You can have read all of the leadership books in the world… but Friedman suggests that the ability to focus on being present differentiates a leader more than simply knowledge ever could. An effective leader is able to separate himself by standing out of the pack. They perceive changes and give a voice of an inner authority that telling a different story than anyone else. If you are doing the same thing that everyone else is doing, you are not leading. You have an energy that allows people to respond to. In order for anyone to hear your message they have to be moving in a direction towards you. You cannot force or coerced individuals because they will not hear you or be respective. You lead by example by being grounded, strong, confident, stable, and present. You lead by standing firm in your beliefs. You focus on your own growth and let others focus on themselves. A differentiated leader looks for long term change, and not a short term fix. They have an attitude that encourages responsibility. They are fed up with stagnancy, and love the challenge of difficult circumstances. A differentiated leader matures the system.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This brings me to my aha moment of reading different parts of Friedman. What if we looked at leadership as a system? What if we compare (Leadership) system readiness vs. (Leadership) system maturity? \u201cMany systems suffer from major problems with implementation, integration, performance and other lifecycle problems and unexpected and unacceptable behaviour often arises when they are introduced into the real world, yet the systems were believed to be \u201cready\u201d for use.\u201d(4) In the real world of rolling out a system it is deemed ready far before it actually has all of the bugs worked out to be deemed a mature system. It faces extreme problems with unexpected behaviors that require discomfort as the programers decide how to react to enhance the system to maturity.<\/p>\n
You are all leaders that are \u201cready\u201d… its up to you on how you differentiate yourself as a leader to become \u201cmature\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(1)http:\/\/emotionalprocessing.org\/definitions\/<\/p>\n
(2)https:\/\/online.uwa.edu\/news\/emotional-psychology\/<\/p>\n
(3)Friedman, Edwin H., Margaret M. Treadwell, and Edward W. Beal. \u201cPg. 40.\u201d Essay. In A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/i>. New York: Church Publishing, 2017.<\/p>\n
(4) https:\/\/dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk\/handle\/1826\/3412b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friedman observed leadership of all levels within family, church, politics, and church. He is known for integrating therapy, organizational leadership and ministry. He also identified that problems begin in leadership when individuals do not stand firm in their beliefs. Not necessarily what you would initially identify of having lack of knowledge, skill, or technique. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2347,236],"class_list":["post-29086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp01","tag-friedman","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29087,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29086\/revisions\/29087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}