Edwin Friedman: The Problem with Leadership
Introduction - The Problem of Leadership
The more immediate threat to the regeneration, and perhaps even the survival, of American civilization is internal, not external. It is our tendency to adapt to its immaturity. To come full circle, this kind of emotional climate can only be dissipated by clear, decisive, well-defined leadership. For whenever a “family” is driven by anxiety, what will also always be present is a failure of nerve among its leaders (2).
The emphasis here will be on strength, not pathology, on the challenge, not comfort; on self-differentiation, not herding for togetherness. This is a difficult perspective to maintain in a “seatbelt society” more oriented toward safety than adventure. This book is not, therefore, for those who prefer peace to progress. It is not for those who mistake another’s well-defined stand for coercion. It is not for those who fail to see how in any family or institution a perpetual concern for consensus leverages power to the extremists. And it is not for those who lack the nerve to venture out of the calm eyes of good feelings and togetherness and weather the storm of Protest that inevitably surrounds a leader’s self-definition. (3)
Here are four major similarities in the thinking and functioning of America’s families and institutions that I have observed everywhere, and which I believe are at the heart of the problem of contemporary America’s orientation toward leadership:
- A regressive, counter-evolutionary trend in which the most dependent members of any organization set the agendas and where adaptation is constantly toward weakness rather than strength, thus leveraging power to the recalcitrant, the passive-aggressive, and the most anxious members of an institution rather than toward the energetic, the visionary, the imaginative, and the motivated.
- A devaluation of the process of individuation so that leaders tend to rely more on expertise than on their own capacity to be decisive.
- An obsession with data and technique that has become a form of addiction and turns professionals into data-junkies and their information into data junkyards. As a result, decision-makers avoid or deny the very emotional processes within their families, their institutions, and within society itself that might contribute to their institution’s “persistence of form.”
- A widespread misunderstanding about the relational nature of destructive processes in families and institutions that leads leaders to assume that toxic forces can be regulated through reasonableness, love, insight, role-modeling, inculcations of values, and striving for consensus. It prevents them from taking the kind of stands that set limits to the invasiveness of those who lack self-regulation.
This book will develop an approach to leadership that goes in a different direction. It will encourage leaders to focus first on their own integrity and on the nature of their own presence rather than through techniques for manipulating or motivating others. (12-13)
I want to stress that by well-differentiated leader I do not mean an autocrat who tells others what to do or orders them around, although any leader who defines himself or herself clearly may be perceived that way by those who are not taking responsibility for their own emotional being and destiny. Rather, I mean someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals, and, therefore, someone who is less likely 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 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. (14)
Summary of Chapters 1-6
Society
- The characteristics of a chronically anxious family, organization, or society – reactivity, herding, blaming, a quick-fix mentality, lack of well-differentiated leadership – will always be descriptive of a regressed institution.
- Five characteristics of chronically anxious [families and societies]:
- Reacitivity: the vicious cycle of intense reactions of each member to events and to one another.
- Herding: a process through which the forces for togetherness triumph over the forces for individuality and move everyone to adapt to the least mature members.
- Blame displacement: an emotional state in which family members focus on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny.
- A quick-fix mentality: a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change.
- Lack of well-differentiated leadership: a failure of nerve that both stems from and contributes to the first four.
- When any institution, relationship, or society is imaginatively gridlocked, the underlying causes will always be emotional rather than cerebral.
- All pathogenic (that is destructive) organisms, forces, and institutions, whether we are considering viruses, malignant cells, chronically troubling individuals, or totalitarian nations, lack self-regulation and are therefore invasive by nature and cannot be expected to learn from their experience.
- For terrorists to have power, whether in a family or in the family of nations, three conditions must be fulfilled: (1) the absence of well-defined leadership; (2) a hostage situation to which leaders are particularly vulnerable; and (3) an unreasonable faith in reasonableness.A major criterion for juding the anxiety level of any society is the loss of its capacity to be playful.
- A society’s culture does not determine its emotional processes; rather, a society’s culture provides the medium through which a society’s emotional processes work their art.
- The basic tension that must constantly be re-balanced in any family, institution, or society is the conflict between the natural forces of togetherness and self-differentiation.
Relationships
- It is easier to be the least mature member of a highly mature system than the most mature member of a very immature system.
- Increasing one’s pain threshold for others helps them mature.
- Stress and burnout are relational rather than quantitative, and are due primarily to getting caught in a responsible position for others and their problems.
- In any partnership, the more anxious you are to see that something is done, the less motivated your partner will be to take the lead.
- In any stuck relationship between an overadequate member and an underadequate other (person or organization), the overfunctioner must change before the underfunctioner can change.
- In any relationship anywhere, the partner doing the least amount of thinking about the other is the more attractive one to the other.
- When people differ, the nature of their differences does not determine the extent or the intensity of the differing.
Self
- Trauma lies in the self-organizing quality of the system and the response of the organism rather than in the event. IN other words, the trauma is in the experience and the response to it, not in the event itself.
- The toxicity of an environment in most cases is proportional to the response of the organism or the institution, rather than to the hostility of the environment.
- What is essential are stamina, resolve, remaining connected, the capacity for self-regulation of reactivity, and having horizons beyond what one can actually see.
- There is no way out of a chronically painful condition except by being willing to go through a temporarily more acutely painful phase.
- People who are cut off from relationship systems, especially their family of origin, do not heal, no matter what their symptom.
- Most of the decisions we make in life turn out to be right or wrong not because we were prescient, but because of the way we function after the decision.
- A self is more attractive than a no-self.
Leadership
- Mature leadership begins with the leader’s capacity to take responsibility for his or her own emotional being and destiny.
- Clearly defined, non-anxious leadership promotes healthy differentiation throughout a system, while reactive, peace at all-costs, anxious leadership does the opposite.
- Differentiation in a leader will inevitably trigger sabotage from the least well-differentiated others in the system.
- Followers cannot rise above the maturity level of their mentors no matters what their mentor’s skill and knowledge-base.
- The unmotivated are notoriously invulnerable to insight.
- Madness cannot be judged from people’s ideas or their values, but rather from (1) the extent to which they interfere in other people’s relationships; (2) the degree to which they constantly try to will others to change; and (3) their inability to continue a relationship with people who disagree with them.
- People cannot hear you unless they are moving toward you, which means that as long as you are in a pursuing or rescuing position, your message will never catch up, no matter how eloquently or repeatedly you articulate your ideas.
- The children who work through the natural difficulties of growing up with the least amount of difficultly are those whose parents made them least important to their own salvation. (201-203)
Leadership Differentiated
| POORLY DIFFERENTIATED LEADERSHIP | WELL-DIFFERENTIATED LEADERSHIP |
| Focuses on pathology | Focuses on strength |
| Is obsessed with technique | Is concerned for one’s own growth |
| Works with symptomatic people | Works with motivated people |
| Betters the condition | Matures the system |
| Seeks symptomatic relief | Seeks enduring change |
| Is concerned to give insight | Is concerned to define self (take stands) |
| Is stuck on treadmill of trying harder | Is fed up with the treadmill |
| Diagnoses others | Looks at one’s own stuckness |
| Is quick to quit difficult situations | Is challenged by difficult situations |
| Is made anxious by reactivity | Recognizes that reactivity and sabotage are evidence of one’s effectiveness |
| Has a reductionist perspective | Has a universal perspective |
| Sees problems as the cause of anxiety | Sees problems as the focus of preexisting anxiety |
| Adapts toward the weak | Adapts toward strength |
| Focuses empathically on helpless victims | Has a challenging attitude that encourages responsibility |
| Is more likely to create dependent relationships | Is more likely to create intimate relationships |
