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 life that I had the privilege of witnessing. I took my family to a still-divided Berlin when my daughters were very young. My youngest was 5 years old and entering an educational journey that would remain a part of her life for the next 20 years. This would be her first day of school in a German-speaking class. She had no German language skills as we had just arrived. I remember that as we entered her classroom, we were helped by a very nice Kindergarten teacher with only a cursory set of English language skills. She kindly looked at my daughter and told her; You can hang your jacket there, you can put your pencil box there, and you can sit over there. So began her quest by following her teacher’s instructions. The teacher pulled me aside to inquire about my daughter’s educational needs and temperament. As the teacher and I spoke, my daughter curiously looked around the room. Soon after, the other students began to arrive. As her teacher and I spoke, we were both struck by what sounded like impeccable English being spoken. To our surprise, what we witnessed next took us both by surprise. There was my young daughter standing at the door of the classroom, giving instructions to each student as they entered as to where they could hang their jackets, where to place their pencil boxes, and where they could sit. The teacher and I both just watched with amazement as each child followed her instructions to the T. The teacher later told me that day was her most leisurely opening day in her somewhat short career as a teacher. Just as I was about to leave, my daughter motioned me aside and, a bit confusingly, said to me, “I don’t think these children understand English.” I reminded her of several conversations leading up to that day that her classes and classmates would all be speaking German and not English. She looked at me and said, “What in the world am I doing here?” I reminded her that we were there as Ambassadors of the King and that He would lead and guide us as we represent Him to these people.<\/p>\n
So why does Friedman’s book remind me of this story in my life? Friedman reminds all of us that while leaders may or may not be born, they are certainly grown naturally, and it is not a process that can be forced or even sped along. I loved his quote about fixing problems, which in my experience is an essential skill in collaboration with others. “This is generally a process that cannot be willed, any more than one can make a bean grow by pulling on it.” Leadership is a superbly organic process, and it matures by having the right seed, soil, sustenance, and shepherding.<\/p>\n
Friedman touches on a very important aspect of leadership. Good leaders have a unique ability to grasp a vision, break it into its constituent parts, employ the right kinds of people to deal with those parts as a part of an orchestra, and to keep the vision on track and within the parameters of the original. When all is said and done, the leader is the keeper of the vision. He can delegate component parts, but he can never delegate his responsibility for it, any more than he can delegate his responsibilities for the welfare of the men and women under his sacred stewardship.<\/p>\n
Bringing it back to the original story, my daughter caught the vision. Knowing where to hang jackets, place pencil boxes, and where to sit were not the vision; they were merely components of a loosely constructed human-designed organization designed to get the group to where it needed to be. The vision was to conduct ourselves as Ambassadors of the King and to grow in a manner that was worthy of His name. To finish the story, within 3 months, she was near-fluency in German, that is, for a 5-year-old. She, along with my equally as gifted other daughters, attended schools in 8 different countries, and she is a teacher, teaching Latin. Above all else, she holds tightly the vision of her ambassadorship, and she is passing that vision on to not only her daughters but to a whole new generation of Christian students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[2113],"class_list":["post-40882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-edwin-h-friedman","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40882","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\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40882"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40896,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40882\/revisions\/40896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}