A Failure of Nerve
Introduction

The more immediate threat to the regeneration, and perhaps even the survival, of the American Civilization is internal, not external.

There exists a connection between the stuckness that leaders experience and the stuckness in the thinking processes of those who would get them unstuck.

America's leadership rut has both a conceptual and an emotional dimension.  The emotional dimension is the chronic anxiety that currently ricochets from sea to shining sea.  The conceptual dimension is the inadequacy of the social science construction of reality.

The social science construction of reality is a world view that focuses on classifications such as the psychological diagnosis of individuals or their "personality profiles".

Four major similarities in the thinking and functioning of America's families and institutions at the heart of the problem of contempory America's orientation toward leadership:

1. A regressive, counter-evolutionary trend
2. A demeaning and devaluing of the individuation that goes into self
3. An almost panicky obsession with data technique
4. A widespread misunderstanding about the relational nature of destructive processes in families and institutions

Leadership As an Emotional Process

Leadership is essentially an emotional process rather than a cognitive phenomenon.

The bottom-line concept of this entire work:

"In any type of institution whatsoever, when a self-directed, imaginative, energetic or creative member is being consistently frustrated and sabotaged rather than encouraged and supported, what will turn out to be true 100 percent of the time, regardless of whether the disrupters are supervisors, subordinates or peers, is that the person at the very top of that institution is a peace-monger.  By that I mean a highly anxious risk-avoider, someone who is more concerned with good feelings than with progress, someone whose life revolves around the axis of consensus, a "middler," someone who is so incapable of taking well-defined stands that their "disability" seems to be genetic, someone who functions as if they had been filleted of their backbone, someone who treats conflict or anxiety like mustard gas -- one whiff, on goes the emotional gas mask, and they flit.  Such leaders are often "nice," if not charming.

The functioning of leaders somehow affect the institution they lead on a far more fundamental level than could be accounted for by traditional psychological concepts.

What counts is the leader's presence and being, not his  or her technique and know-how.

Leadership Training

It is the integrity of the leader that promotes the integrity or prevents the "dis-integr-ation" of the system he or she is leading.

Contempory illusions that need to be discarded which have to do with the erosion of self and the denial of emotional process:

• Focusing on data rather than maturity
• Valuing empathy over responsibility
• Associating strong self with narcissism and autocracy, rather than with individuation and integrity

Resistance to the reorientation tends to take three forms:

• Polarization
• Reductionism
• Politicizing

Part one calls into question the following assumptions:

• That individuals are driven by their personality
• That culture and gender are critical variables in the ways individuals function in relationships
• That the influence of the past is primarily the impact of the preceding generation rather than its overlapping into the present
• That it is useful for leaders to think in either/or distinctions such as male/female, leader/follower, this age/a previous time, mind/body, present/past, and so on, rather than in continuous, organic, systemic terms.

Part one emphasizes these new models:

• That institutions are emotional fields that generally affect the functioning of their members more than the members affect the field
• That institutions are self-organizing structures that involve forces which cannot be reduced to individual model dynamics and which acquire their own level of inquiry
• That what humans have in common with life on this planet may be more important for understanding human colonization than how we are different from other species
• That much can be learned about the connection between leaders and institutions from several new understandings of the human organism -- for example, neuropsychology, psychoimmunology, evolutionary theory

Six interlocking characteristics of leadership through self-differentiation:

• Clarity about one's beliefs
• Self-definition in relationships
• Toleration of solitariness
• Preservation of connectedness
• Stamina and persistence
• Self-regulation in the face of sabotage

Family problems can often be resolved by having parents or partners focus on and work at unresolved issues in their families of origin.  Leaders must understand that the problems they encounter may stem from their own unresolved family issues, their organization's past, sabotage in response to their effective leadership, or a combination of these factors.

< Back

Friedman, E. H.  A failure of nerve:  Leadership in the age of the quick fix.