Edwin Friedman on Leadership

Edwin H. Friedman’s 1999 book, “A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix”, has recently been reprinted by Seabury Books, re-edited by Margaret Treadwell and Edward Beal. It’s the book Friedman was writing when he died in 1996, incomplete but full of practical wisdom for leaders in any family system or institution.

Friedman is known for his 1985 book, “Generation to Generation”, a collection of essays about family process in religious organisations, drawing strongly on family system theories developed by Murray Bowen. Friedman’s Fables, published in 1990, presented a number of stories that had been used in his training programs and lectures, applying family theory to religious, medical, education, business and governmental institutions.

My first connection with Friedman’s work was through Peter Steinke’s book, “How Your Church Family Works: Understanding Congregations As Emotional Systems”, read at a time of great difficulty for me as a congregational leader. I was glad to make the connection between the emotional systems I’d brought from my family of origin, and the way I was responding to members of the congregation in which I was a minister. That’s led me to go on to think about systemic issues faced by denominational structures and other institutions with which I am interacting as a consultant.

Imaginative Gridlock and the Spirit of Adventure

Friedman explores the importance of imagination for the expansion of Western Europe into the Americas, examining the gridlocked systems of thought that prevented and delayed significant engagement in the New World. Imaginatively gridlocked systems are characterised by an unending treadmill of trying harder, looking for answers rather than reframing questions, and either/or thinking that creates false dichotomies. Friedman points to vital factors in the breakthrough journeys of explorers: quests driven by adventure rather than certainty, willingness to encounter serendipity (chance), and the will to overcome imaginative barriers such as the equator.

A Society in Regression

Friedman draws parallels between chronically anxious families and the greater American family. He’s concerned about institutions that show evidence of reactivity rather than regulation of instinctual drive, herding rather than adaptation towards strength, blame displacement rather than growth-producing response to challenge, quick-fix mentality rather than allowing time for processes to mature, and a failure of nerve in leadership.

Data Junkyards and Data Junkies

Friedman expresses his concern that society’s over emphasis on the acquisition of information has led to a leadership culture that is paralyzed by the constant need for more data. This obsession, he says, can be seen in the focus on pathology found in medicine, mental health, parenting and management. Friedman points out that the brain is not a central processing unit for information. The brain always processes emotional factors and data simultaneously.

Survival in a Hostile Environment: The Fallacy of Empathy

Friedman challenges Western society’s recent focus on the need for empathy, saying that leaders focused on empathy rather than responsibility can become powerless to act when they try to deal with hostile elements. Malignant forces are not responsive to empathy, he says. Friedman’s metaphors for this section include viruses, malignant cells and parasitic organisms. Individuals, families and organisations focused on surviving need a healthy dose of self, the capacity to take responsibility for one’s condition, resiliency, self-regulation of anxious reactivity, and a varied repertoire of responses.

Autocracy versus Integrity

This chapter is focused on the tension between individuality and togetherness, examining the impact of totalitarian systems that devalue the self. Friedman draws on lessons from the immune response to challenge to explain what he means by differentiation: the capacity to make a stand in an intense emotional system, saying “I” when others are demanding “we”, maintaining a non-anxious presence in the face of anxious others, knowing where one ends and another begins, being clear about one’s own personal values and goals, taking maximum responsibility for one’s own emotional being and destiny rather than blaming others.

Take Five

Friedman looks five aspects of functioning that enabled explorers to lead an entire civilization into the New World: capacity to get outside the emotional climate of the day, willingness to be exposed and vulnerable, persistence in the face of resistance and rejection, stamina in the face of sabotage, being headstrong and ruthless in the eyes of others.

Emotional Triangles

Friedman says that leaders are more likely to function well when they’re aware of the emotional triangles being played out around them. An emotional triangle is any three members of any relationship system, or any two members plus an issue or symptom.

Crisis and Sabotage: Keys to the Kingdom

Friedman uses his own experience of heart surgery to demonstrate how he attempts to apply his own principles in everyday life.

About Edwin Friedman

Edwin Friedman was born in New York in 1932. He studied at Bucknell University, American University and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, gaining a doctorate in divinity from Hebrew Union College. He founded the Bethesda Jewish Congregation in 1966 and served as rabbi there until 1979. Friedman was a charter member of the American Family Therapy Academy, a fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and a diplomate of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. He was in demand as a speaker and consultant right through to the year in which he died of a heart attack at the age of 64.