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elfsEdwin Friedman's last book, Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, is a highly frustrating read. He has a very good idea, wrapped in an unfortunate analogy that has metastasized into its own Idea. Friedman's core idea, the very good idea, is this:
The frustration with the book comes from Friedman's insistence on analogizing the idea of integrity as an emotional human being, with refusing to compromise one's principles, with the idea of bodily integrity. The book is full of blather about biological principles, of comparing emotionally dysfunctional institutions to eukaryotic organisms with no clear boundaries and emotionally functional ones to prokaryotic organisms with clear boundaries. He takes a popular notion of the immune system and compares it how successful organizations reject pathologization through systemic integrity.
He makes a good point that leadership is best when within the hierarchy of leaders each leader has a clear idea of his goals and principles within an organization, and how leadership falters when those principles are sacrificed in the name of "community harmony." He obscures that point time and again with that ill-informed and frankly silly analogy.
When I fail to distinguish "who I am" from the organizations to which I belong, then I begin to identify more with the organization than I do with my own principles and goals. As a consequence, I lose the capacity to challenge the worst and weakest within the organization, and enable the organization's most pathological and emotionally needy members to set the agenda, because they can express their needs more forcefully than I can my principles and goals. I should choose to lead an organization only if its principles and goals align closely with my own, and should express my leadership only in terms of the goals of the organization, not in terms of the members' emotional statesHe goes on to quantify the way people who are in positions of leadership often do or do not lead (he calls the substitution of the word "managing" for "leading" one of the core tragedies of the 20th century) set themselves up for sabotage, and it can be summarized thusly:
If Alice has a leadership relationship, or indeed any relationship, with Bob and Carol, and Bob and Carol have a conflict then Alice can retain a working relationship with Bob and with Carol. However, if Alice develops a relationship with the conflict then Alice has surrendered her capacity to lead, advise, and encourage to maturity either Bob or Carol.These are actually two very good expressions of a idea of leadership and self-possession that all too often we forget. Friedman's fairly harsh on modern management styles, reminding leaders that they are most emphatically not peacemakers within their organizations, but leaders.
The frustration with the book comes from Friedman's insistence on analogizing the idea of integrity as an emotional human being, with refusing to compromise one's principles, with the idea of bodily integrity. The book is full of blather about biological principles, of comparing emotionally dysfunctional institutions to eukaryotic organisms with no clear boundaries and emotionally functional ones to prokaryotic organisms with clear boundaries. He takes a popular notion of the immune system and compares it how successful organizations reject pathologization through systemic integrity.
He makes a good point that leadership is best when within the hierarchy of leaders each leader has a clear idea of his goals and principles within an organization, and how leadership falters when those principles are sacrificed in the name of "community harmony." He obscures that point time and again with that ill-informed and frankly silly analogy.
