{"id":5812,"date":"2015-09-17T23:08:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T06:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=5812"},"modified":"2015-09-17T23:09:21","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T06:09:21","slug":"5812-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/5812-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lie of Empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some books, the good books, call you into conversation, even when you don\u2019t necessarily agree with everything. Edwin Friedman\u2019s book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/em> does just that. His provocative approach that first intrigued me back in 2009 when I started the D.Min program with Len Sweet still draws out a resounding \u201cyes,\u201d or a skeptic \u201cno,\u201d nothing short of one extreme response to another. In fact, I had difficulty making a decision about\u00a0where I could begin some dialogue, a book rich with launching points, into a post that would be between 500-1000 words.<\/p>\n

I could talk about\u2026<\/p>\n

the definition of a leader as one who takes a stand based not on the latest technique or more information, but based on his\/her integrity of character\u2026<\/p>\n

the nature of institutions and their living systemic impact\u2026<\/p>\n

reorientation necessary for imagination to take place in uncertainty\u2026<\/p>\n

the need to move towards pain rather than avoid it\u2026<\/p>\n

integration of heart and head when it comes to leading\u2026<\/p>\n

not only being willing to be vulnerable, but loving it\u2026<\/p>\n

parenting styles and getting rid of “My child…..” bumper stickers<\/p>\n

All of these assertions reside in Friedman\u2019s book (except for maybe the bumper stickers). But when it comes down to it, if I want to stay true to what Friedman insists, I have to look at my own life first. If I’m to be a leader who has any kind of “nerve” of which I would characterize as courage, I need to start with being honest about myself. One of the best ways I\u2019ve discovered to stay honest and in a posture of learning is to not look at what attracts me, but what actually is more of an aversion.<\/p>\n

I took a prayer to heart last year. It goes as follows:\u00a0\u201cI have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it.\u00a0I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

I started to pray for it on a regular basis since I know I so easily fall prey to forgetting my shadow side\/idealized persona. \u00a0With that said, now after some deeply painful humiliations over the last year, I’ve decided that I’m not so sure I need to be praying that prayer anymore. \u00a0I figured I have seen enough significant flaws for a while.<\/p>\n

However, while reading Friedman’s book, he pushed a button. I read the section on empathy. \u00a0I’ve always considered myself an empathetic person, and actually could say I’ve boasted about it. \u00a0The fact that he took on the person who said “I am deeply hurt by your ethnocentric bias”[2]<\/a> shook me. \u00a0How could he do that? \u00a0Doesn’t he need to listen to the other person’s “I” statement? \u00a0But as I continued reading, I began to see how easily empathy becomes about controlling others, not addressing our own selves. \u00a0Here I was thinking I was concerned for other people with all my empathy, when in fact, it had turned into a tool to manipulate. \u00a0Empathy when used as manipulation doesn’t allow for self-regulation, functions more easily in darkness rather than light, and becomes\u00a0a malignant unlearning system. It\u2019s not easy to see the ugliness of a positive attribute gone bad. \u00a0In this place of aversion, I discovered something about myself.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve moved from praying for daily humiliation to a prayer for\u00a0humility which Simone Weil describes as “attentive patience.” Before reading this book, I think I would have agreed with Friedman on this definition of leadership: a self-regulating, well-differentiated, courage undergirded with integrity posture when it comes to leading others, whether in official capacities or not.\u00a0 Where my paradigm is shifting a bit after reading, with an attentive patience, is that it also requires the hard work of recognizing I\u2019m going to always be learning what it means to lead with responsibility, not necessarily empathy.<\/p>\n

At some point, I hope I find places, even in my attraction and aversion, where my buttons are no longer pushed. \u00a0By understanding myself more as I understand God more (and the other way around too), I believe I will become less attached to those things that I\u2019ve held as sacred cows \u2013 ie empathy \u2013 and begin to be a healthy presence that listens to the Spirit when it comes to leadership. As Friedman summed up what is critical to the health of an organization, “That is precisely the function of a leader within any institution: to provide the regulation through his or her non-anxious, self-defined presence.”[3]<\/a> Only by God\u2019s grace will I be able to find that non-anxious, self-defined presence.<\/p>\n

\"th\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life<\/em> (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/em> (New York: Seabury Books, 2007), 132.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid, 151.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some books, the good books, call you into conversation, even when you don\u2019t necessarily agree with everything. Edwin Friedman\u2019s book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix does just that. His provocative approach that first intrigued me back in 2009 when I started the D.Min program with Len Sweet still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"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":[236],"class_list":["post-5812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-friedman","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5812"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5815,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812\/revisions\/5815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}