|
87b40a9
|
Chronic anxiety is systemic; it is deeper and more embracing than community nervousness. Rather than something that resides within the psyche of each one, it is something that can envelope, if not actually connect, people. It is a regressive emotional process that is quite different from the more familiar, acute anxiety we experience over specific concerns. Its expression is not dependent on time or events, even though specific happenings c..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
d4337cb
|
It may be in the ubiquitous phenomenon of terrorism that one can most easily see how universal emotional processes transcend the conventional categories of the social science construction of reality. According to the latter, families are different from nations, profit-making corporations are different from nonprofit corporations, medical institutions are different from school systems, one nation's infrastructure is different from another's,..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
2b044fc
|
In 1970, an experiment was conducted in a French laboratory in which two organisms from the same species that had not developed immune systems were moved closer and closer toward one another. At a certain threshold of proximity, the smaller one began to disintegrate, and within twenty-four hours it had lost all the principles of its organization. The researchers tried to ascertain what the larger one had done to the smaller one, but in the ..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
5219050
|
the major relational problem for our species is not getting together; protoplasm loves to join. The problem is preserving self in a close relationship. No human on planet Earth does that well.
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
87d9549
|
The degree of pain we are experiencing at any time almost always includes two variables: the stimulus "causing" the discomfort, and the threshold for tolerance--that is, the capacity to overcome or perhaps reduce the sensation itself."
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
b9a7a20
|
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..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
daa076b
|
the "old world" view separates data from emotional process and focuses leaders on the "talking heads" of others, while the "new world" view focuses leaders on the nature of their own presence."
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
5737ea2
|
One of the most extraordinary examples of adaptation to immaturity in contemporary American society today is how the word abusive has replaced the words nasty and objectionable. The latter two words suggest that a person has done something distasteful, always a matter of judgment. But the use of the word abusive suggests, instead, that the person who heard or read the objectionable, nasty, or even offensive remark was somehow victimized by ..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
2bfacf4
|
Researchers who emphasize the tragic consequences of these events, however, see the effort to focus on the recovery as denial of the tragedy or its pain. The focus on pathology has become such a natural part of the thinking of social science researchers that the idea that such a focus is itself pathological is totally out of their ken. After the Kobe earthquake, twelve Japanese women tried to offer counseling help to the homeless housed in ..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
9279f4c
|
The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. If you want your child, spouse, client, or boss to shape up, stay connected while changing yourself rather than trying to fix them.
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
11b7d4e
|
Indeed, a funeral can give a subsequent event new importance for the entire family because the newly celebrated individual becomes the replacement for the family member who has just died.
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
a1ae1ae
|
It was then, after my presentations to thirty-two generals, that I first began to see how similar the approach to leadership problems was throughout our civilization. After two days of presentations, a three-star general, the commander of an entire Army corps--two panzer divisions--stood up and said to me, "You know, one of our problems is that the sergeant-majors coddle the new recruits, and we keep telling them that such helpfulness will ..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
17b115c
|
The more my perspective broadened, the more confirmed I became in my view that contemporary leadership dilemmas have less to do with the specificity of given problems, the nature of a particular technique, or the makeup of a given group than with the way everyone is framing the issues. In addition, I began to realize that this similarity in thinking processes had to do with regressive (in the sense of counter-evolutionary) emotional process..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
9418178
|
In the pages that follow I will show that America's leadership rut has both a conceptual and an emotional dimension that reinforce one another. The conceptual dimension is the inadequacy of what I shall refer to as the social science construction of reality. This construction fails to explain these emotional processes, much less to offer leaders a way of gaining some separation from their regressive influence. The emotional dimension is the..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
219a0ce
|
I have been struck by how families, corporations, and other kinds of institutions are constantly trying to cure their own chronic ills through amputations, "strong medicine," transfusions, and other forms of surgery, only to find that, even when successful for the moment, the excised tumor returns several years later in "cells" that never knew the "cells" that left."
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
f5cd483
|
I have lived and worked in the Washington, D. C., metropolitan area for almost four decades. During this period I have watched families and institutions recycle their problems for several generations, despite enormous efforts to be innovative. The opportunity to observe this firsthand was provided by my involvement in the major institutions designed by our civilization to foster change: religion, education, psychotherapy, and politics (I ha..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
6688a54
|
Explaining families and institutions in terms of the nature of their parts, I began to think, was like trying to reduce chemistry to physics. Other forces come into play when one studies "molecules" rather than "atoms," even though molecules consist of atoms. Relational processes in an institution, I concluded, cannot be reduced to psychodynamic or personality factors in the individuals of which they consist. A different level of inquiry wa..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
794b2d3
|
Although the social science construction of reality tends to emphasize how families differ from one another, I began to see that knowledge of what they have in common could be more important, as a basis both for promoting change and for enabling leaders and consultants to recognize the universal elements of emotional processes found in all institutions as well as in all families. Rather than assuming that a family's cultural background dete..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
c62cfda
|
I will begin by describing the nature of an emotional regression and showing how in any society, no matter how advanced its state of technology, chronic anxiety can induce an approach to life that is counter-evolutionary. One does not need dictators in order to create a totalitarian (that, is totalistic) society. Then, employing five characteristics of chronically anxious personal families, I will illustrate how those same characteristics a..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
270cc9b
|
By the term regression I mean to convey something far more profound than a mere loss of progress. Societal regression is about the perversion of progress into a counter-evolutionary mode. In a societal regression, evolutionary principles of life that have been basic to the development of our species become distorted, perverted, or actually reversed. Chief among those evolutionary principles are: self-regulation of instinctual drive; a..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
9c9c4fe
|
A "new world" view of the brain suggests instead that communication is itself an emotional phenomenon that depends on three interrelational rather than "mental" variables: direction, distance, and anxiety. The capacity of those with whom you are communicating to hear you depends primarily on these three variables."
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
7680fa6
|
Maternal anxiety may be the original addiction.) To some extent, the child's reaction will depend on the extent to which mother used the child as her own addiction, fusing with the child to ward off rejection or pain in her own life. The withdrawal phenomenon in a child is more severe to the extent that the child was originally mother's analgesic. Either way, the intensity of the symptom that surfaces will be proportional to the amount of p..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
e3848b1
|
Soon I began to realize that cultural camouflage also obscured the universality of emotional process in institutions. For example, frequently, the leaders of a church would come to me seeking techniques for dealing with a member of the staff or a member of the congregation who was acting obstreperously, who was ornery, and who intimidated everyone with his gruffness. I might say to them, "This is not a matter of technique; it's a matter of ..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
dcc5159
|
Leadership through self-differentiation is not easy; learning techniques and imbibing data are far easier. Nor is striving or achieving success as a leader without pain: there is the pain of isolation, the pain of loneliness, the pain of personal attacks, the pain of losing friends. That's what leadership is all about.
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
7c5fb3a
|
I eventually came to define my marriage counseling, no matter what the cultural mix, as trying to help people separate so that they would not have to "separate.")"
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
b18e0a8
|
Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away; instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the "territory" is a family or an organization. And a leader's capacity to recognize sabotage for what it is--that is, a systemic phenomenon connected to the shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system and not to the institution's specific issues, makeup, or goals--is the key to the kingdom."
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
8d3737a
|
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 one hundred 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.
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
ce56d96
|
the extent we function and grow within the context of our own souls (a lifetime project) and abet the emergence of our own selves (by a willingness to face life's challenges and oneself), our spirituality and our tradition will spring naturally from our being.
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
c6dba51
|
the key to survival is the ability of the "host" to recognize and limit the invasiveness of its viral or malignant components."
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
989ab70
|
If lack of self-regulation is the essential characteristic of organisms that are destructive, it is the presence of self-regulatory capacity that is critical to the health, survival, and evolution of an organism or an organization.
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
07924cb
|
There are always three factors involved in survival, no matter how toxic the environment. One is the physical reality; the second is dumb luck; and the third is the response of the organism, which can often modify the influence of the first two. The relationship of these three factors can be imagined as dials on an amplifier, with survival depending on the overall mix.
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
0db6d06
|
Members of highly reactive families, therefore, wind up constantly focused on the latest, most immediate crisis, and they remain almost totally incapable of gaining the distance that would enable them to see the emotional processes in which they are engulfed. The emotionally regressed family will stay fixed on its symptoms, and family thinking processes will become stuck on the content of specific issues rather than on the emotional process..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
64ca6f0
|
while the modern, human animal is capable of deep thought and, like its mammalian forebears, can nurture and play, it also is capable of behaving in an absolutely "reptilian" manner."
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
82f75f0
|
The three criteria of reptilian functioning that leaders of any family or institution can always rely on to judge madness (of others or their own) are interfering in the relationships of others; unceasingly trying to convert others to their own point of view; and being unable to relate to people who do not agree with them.
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
1b22cef
|
information does not consist of energy, and leadership is all about energy, about making an impact. Basing leadership on information theory disempowers leaders and is part of the bias toward data that was discussed earlier in this chapter. Impact, to the contrary, is about emotional process.
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
63936ca
|
In our society today, much is made of treating children as persons, human beings who have a right to be heard. But many family leaders today bend so far in the direction of consensus, in order to avoid the stigma of being authoritarian, that clarity of values and the positive, often crucial benefits of the leader's self-differentiation are almost totally missing from the system. One of the most prevalent characteristics of families with dis..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
0617cab
|
A willingness to be exposed and vulnerable. One of the major limitations of imagination's fruits is the fear of standing out. It is more than a fear of criticism. It is anxiety at being alone, of being in a position where one can rely little on others, a position that puts one's own resources to the test, a position where one will have to take total responsibility for one's own response to the environment. Leaders must not only not be afrai..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
d2df8c8
|
But no one has ever gone from slavery to freedom with the slaveholders cheering them on, nor contributed significantly to the evolution of our species by working a forty-hour week, nor achieved any significant accomplishment by taking refuge in cynicism.
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
84a34b8
|
The second attribute of imaginatively gridlocked relationship systems is a continual search for new answers to old questions rather than an effort to reframe the questions themselves. In the search for the solution to any problem, questions are always more important than answers because the way one frames the question, or the problem, already predetermines the range of answers one can conceive in response. The critical difference between
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
569cb2d
|
Those five characteristics are: 1. Reactivity: the vicious cycle of intense reactions of each member to events and to one another. 2. 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. 3. Blame displacement: an emotional state in which family members focus on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility ..
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
ad3f9be
|
Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away; instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the "territory" is a family or an organization. And a leader's capacity to recognize sabotage for what it is--that is, a systemic phenomenon connected to the shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system and not to the institution's specific issues, makeup, or goals--is the key to the kingdom." ..
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |
|
029a84a
|
the ability to allow or even make room for reactivity in the other, without reciprocating, creates the best chance that both partners can go on to their next relationships with the least amount of emotional baggage.
|
|
|
Edwin H. Friedman |
|
1e01ff5
|
Daniel Kahneman astutely observed, "No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story."
|
|
|
Edwin H Friedman |