{"id":3048,"date":"2014-10-30T22:40:08","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T22:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=3048"},"modified":"2014-10-31T00:00:05","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T00:00:05","slug":"failure-of-nerve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/failure-of-nerve\/","title":{"rendered":"Failure of Nerve&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Edwin H. Friedman wrote one of the frankest, no-nonsense books I have ever read. <em>A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix <\/em>caused me to wrinkle my forehead, squint my eyes, and stare off into space for minutes at a time as I pondered his thoughts. I was reminded of real situations as I read his words, and even felt the nerve of discomfort as he delved into emotional triangles. Memories of my adolescence as a single child navigating life between two divorced parents and ping-ponging back and forth between homes flooded my dreams for days! (Actually, they were more like nightmares!) But in reality, this was exactly what Friedman wrote \u2013 I was stuck in other people\u2019s problems! Two anxious presences surrounded me, and as a kid, I was unable to break free of the vortex of anxiety! Enough about that.<\/p>\n<p>Friedman used his prior work on multi-generational family dynamics as a catalyst to addressing his perception that our current society has become stuck in an unhealthy relational dynamic. He took an in depth look at leadership as an emotional process, describing the undercurrents that sabotage or paralyze leaders and provided some guidance for becoming \u201cunstuck.\u201d Christopher Columbus (an interesting choice) was his chosen example for illustrating creativity and imagination in an otherwise \u201cstuck\u201d society. Friedman said, our society and time in history are ready for leaders who can differentiate from the thinking of these times, who can see new vistas and who are willing to risk sailing into waters where others have been too fearful to go. Or too tunnel-visioned to even perceive.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The crux of Friedman\u2019s work was identifying four specific dynamics that cause problems for leadership in America<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The weakest or most dependent members of the organization set the agendas, \u201cleveraging power to the recalcitrant, the passive-aggressive, and the most anxious members of an institution, rather than toward the energetic, the visionary, the imaginative, and the motivated.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Individuated leadership has been devalued to the point that leaders tend to seek consultation elsewhere (consultants, endless searches of data and research on research) rather than developing \u201ctheir own capacity to be decisive.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> Imagination and creativity has been lost to quick fixes.<\/li>\n<li>Decision makers have denied the realities of emotional processes in their organizations as contributors to decision-making, instead becoming obsessed with information-seeking and gathering endless data in hopes that it will make their decisions for them.<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>People misunderstand \u201cthe relational nature of destructive processes\u201d in organizations. As a result, leaders assume that if they behave as reasonable, caring, insightful, ethical role models who seek consensus, they can actually keep toxic forces in check. This leaves their organizations vulnerable to the invasiveness of people who don&#8217;t regulate themselves.<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My dad keeps a three-word phrase up on his bathroom mirror, and I noticed it changed once or so a year. It took me years to ask him why he had the phrases posted. Instead of making up New Year\u2019s Resolutions, he gave himself a leadership goal to be his \u201cmantra\u201d throughout the 52 weeks. These three words helped him regulate himself, promote his leadership, and keep the toxic forces in check. It was something to focus him on the positive, not the negative. Of course, wanting to be just like my dad, I started doing the same thing. Several years ago, my phrase was \u201cbe here now\u201d to remind me to not be distracted by all that is going on around me, or the past mistakes or the future to-do list, but instead to live in the present, here and now. Next was to \u201cchoose joy,\u201d as I hoped to be in control of my outlook and emotions in life. I choose to be joyous in all things and celebrate, instead of dwelling on the negative or the downtrodden. In 2012, I began living with an \u201cattitude of gratitude,\u201d giving thanks for all things great and small, and then in 2013 my\u00a0three words became \u201cmake it count.\u201d That same year, I had the wonderful opportunity to keynote a college conference in Texas, and the theme of the week came from Romans 12. Since then I have held the second verse of this chapter close to my heart:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAnd do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As I began the thought process of forming my three words for 2014, the words \u201cbe transformed\u201d plagued my thoughts for the longest time; however, during one of my airline journeys, flying somewhere over Tennessee, the phrase \u201cbe the change\u201d continued to be placed upon my heart. Indeed, Mahatma Gandhi urged:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cBe the change that you wish to see in the world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Instead of getting stuck in other\u2019s problems, what if we become the well-differentiated leaders? What if we, as leaders, be the change? As Friedman wrote, differentiated leaders tolerate other people\u2019s discomfort because it encourages them to take personal responsibility. Their leadership has the ability to diffuse the anxiety. By being a non-anxious presence, it makes others take responsibility for themselves. By being a well-differentiated leader, they are being the change they wish to see around them. Differentiated leadership is a direction in life, a direction in maturity. It requires us to take care of ourselves, challenge ourselves, focus ourselves, and as this video concluded, to follow the call to love our neighbor, just as we love ourselves.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RgdcljNV-Ew\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RgdcljNV-Ew<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>(I found this video while I was waiting for my iPad to revive&#8230; My dead iPad was holding my Kindle version of <em>A\u00a0Failure of Nerve<\/em> hostage&#8230;)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Edwin Friedman, <em>A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix <\/em>(New York: Church Publishing, Inc., 2007), Loc. 1045.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Ibid., Loc. 293-310.<\/p>\n<p>[3] Ibid., Loc. 298.<\/p>\n<p>[4] Ibid., Loc. 302.<\/p>\n<p>[5] Ibid., Loc. 306.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Ibid., Loc. 310.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edwin H. Friedman wrote one of the frankest, no-nonsense books I have ever read. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix caused me to wrinkle my forehead, squint my eyes, and stare off into space for minutes at a time as I pondered his thoughts. I was reminded of real [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"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":[2,236,481],"class_list":["post-3048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-friedman","tag-lgp4-2","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3048"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3053,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048\/revisions\/3053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}