I’ve been reading (slowly) A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman. This book is challenging me in really deep ways. It is causing me to re-consider much of my training as a leader over the past 20+ years. One of the primary issues that Friedman is addressing is the effort to focus on techniques to get quick results. This chasing after the latest technique is stemmed from a panic in the organization. There is some kind of emotional stress that is happening, and instead of addressing the emotional stress, we are tempted to focus on a way to alleviate the stress through technique or particular skills. This is a pretty quick summary of what I have read so far.
Organizations of all kinds are dealing this temptaiton. Fortune 500 companies, Churches, families, all kinds of organizations are more than just a hierarchical flow chart. Every organization is an emotional system. And when emotional systems are experiencing anxiety, they look to alleviate the anxiety, but not necessarily to solve the deeper challenges.
Over the past several years, I can’t count how many times there has been an organization in crisis, and the solution is to fire the CEO, or the department chair, or Secretary of Whatever Department. Maybe these people should be fired, but doing that isn’t a guarantee that the problem will be solved. But it helps the people who are most upset to see that there may be some kind of accountability for what may be causing organizational anxiety. This is a kind of sabotage to any organization, and it is driven by emotions.
What Friedman calls for is leaders to learn how to be self-differentiated.
In the introduction, Friedman says that this book will, “Encourage leaders to focus first on their own integrity and on the nature of their own presence rather than on techniques for manipulating or motivating others.”1 This concept of being attending to presence was first introduced to me in Mark Sayers book, A Non-Anxious Presence, which was a tremendous blessing leading through the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than just running to a quick fix, leaders have the opportunity to slow down, learn, and lead from calling and identity rather than from panic and fear.
I’d like to share another quote from the introduction. I am currently in chapter four, but I have been reveiwing my underlines in this book and just wanted to share some things that have stood out to me. When Friedman talks about self-differentiated leaders he means:
. . . someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals and, therefore, someone who is less likeley to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can be separate while still remaining connected and, therefore, can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence. I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity in response to the automatic reactivity of others and, therefore, be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing. It is not as though some leaders can do this and some cannot. No one does this easily, and most leaders, I have learned, can improve their capacity.2
I have found this self-differentiation has been one of the hardest things to develop as a leader. Leadership is so personal and when things don’t go well, or when people are critical, it is very easy to respond from that emotional space. But when I am at my healthiest a posture of self-differentiation has made it possble to not take offense, to not lash out, and to weather difficult seasons in ministry.
So, yeah, I think y’all should read this book.
JasonDeuman.com 