{"id":3110,"date":"2014-10-31T10:02:25","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T10:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=3110"},"modified":"2014-11-01T05:04:02","modified_gmt":"2014-11-01T05:04:02","slug":"leadership-in-the-age-of-the-quick-fix-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leadership-in-the-age-of-the-quick-fix-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his book <em>Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix: A Failure of Nerve<\/em>, Edwin H Friedman presents unprecedented insight on leadership from his great wealth of experience working as a pulpit rabbi, organizational consultant, and family therapist. Friedman uncovers the failure of leadership affecting America\u2019s civilization today, which he refers to as a \u201cfailure of nerve.\u201d Friedman finds the failure of leadership in all institutions of the American society\u2014in government and corporations, in the church, synagogue, hospital, library, school boards, and families. He contends, \u201cFor whenever a \u201cfamily\u201d is driven by anxiety, what will also always be present is a failure of nerve among its leaders\u201d (p.2). Thus, for Friedman there is a connection between the wellbeing of the families and their leaders. Friedman believes that \u201cthere exists throughout American today a rampant sabotaging of leaders who try to stand tall amid the raging anxiety storms of our time\u201d(2). This made me wonder why is the society sabotaging instead of encouraging and supporting the creative, imaginative and motivated leaders?<\/p>\n<p>Another challenge of leadership in the land of the quick fix Friedman confronts is the society\u2019s failure to choose leaders who might calm its anxiety. Instead they set \u201cagendas and where adaptation is constantly toward weakness rather than strength, thus leveraging power to the recalcitrant.\u201d (p.12). The question is: How do we help our society leverage power toward the energetic, the visionary, the imaginative, and the motivated?<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, Friedman attacks \u201ca devaluation of the process of individuation so that leaders tend to rely more on expertise than on their own capacity to be decisive\u201d (p.12). A tendency to rely on expertise is a common challenge among Christian churches as well. Leaders spend more time developing seminars or conferences on how to do missions but never clearly articulate practical ways to build relationship with the community they want to serve. We then become obsessed with data and techniques, which are nothing, but inhibit our capacity to be decisive when needed. Thus, Friedman confronts the society\u2019s wide spread triumphing of \u201cdata over maturity, technique over stamina, and empathy over personal responsibility\u201d (p.2). Instead, to overcome this kind of \u201ctoxic-emotional climate,\u201d Friedman recommends we develop clear, decisive, well-defined leadership.<\/p>\n<p>Another helpful insight from Friedman is how to deal with people with destructive personalities in families and institutions. He confronts the idea that toxic people can be regulated through \u201creasonableness, love, insight, role-modeling,..\u201d; but instead Friedman suggests leaders take a stand and make right decisions even if it\u00a0\u00a0 displeases those who lack self-regulation. I do not assume the task of challenging toxic members is easy; but leaders need to take necessary action for the health of the organization. We need to go beyond being fearful of displeasing others but do what is right with integrity.<\/p>\n<p>For Friedman, leadership essentially is an emotional processes which takes into account and emphasizes the importance of the leader\u2019s own self-differentiation (p.4). What does a <em>well-differentiated leader <\/em>mean? Friedman makes clear that a <em>well-differentiated leader<\/em> does not mean an autocrat who tells others what to do but \u201csomeone who has clarity about his or her own life goals, and, therefore, someone who is likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about \u201d(p.14). As leaders we need to learn how to stay connected while still maintaining well defined stands as a non-anxious presence. As Friedman says, no one does this easily and the good thing is we can grow and improve our capacity to become a well-differentiated leader.<\/p>\n<p>I appreciate Friedman\u2019s challenging leaders to \u201cfocus first on their own integrity and on the nature of their own presence rather than through techniques for manipulating or motivating others\u201d(p.13). Integrity is very critical in leadership. People would like to see us walk the talk. Likewise, presence is imperative in any relationship. From my own experience working with churches, I know how powerful personal relationship is more than other modes of communication.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his book Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix: A Failure of Nerve, Edwin H Friedman presents unprecedented insight on leadership from his great wealth of experience working as a pulpit rabbi, organizational consultant, and family therapist. Friedman uncovers the failure of leadership affecting America\u2019s civilization today, which he refers to as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"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":[239],"class_list":["post-3110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-freidman","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3111,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110\/revisions\/3111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}