In my review of the year, I mentioned Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve. It’s a strange book, about the science of leadership.
The book is terribly written and probably needs a modern explainer writing. This post is an attempt not to summarise it but to highlight some things that stood out to me. These seven points are not ‘I’ve got well worn wisdom’ but ‘my interpretation of Friedman’s well-worn wisdom.
There are seven of them because Christians stop writing lists when they get to seven. It’s fitting.
1. Anxiety is everywhere
Anxiety is systemic. The way technology networks us probably makes it harder to not be caught up in the ambient anxiety. Friedman wrote this before the social internet existed, I think we can turn ‘probably’ into definitely. Mark Sayers’ work on Friedman (A Non-Anxious Presence) has made this very clear.
By anxiety Friedman doesn’t mean exactly what medical practitioners do. He means all the reasons that organisations turn inward rather than move forward, all the ‘but what ifs’ and ‘we’ve always’ that stop us just trying something. It’s not cognitive—and I’m no expert but I imagine that medical anxiety may well be cognitive—rather it’s emotional, a sort of circular stuckness that prevents forward movement.
We live in a deeply anxious age, but anxiety also exists in systems, like a family or a church. If change in an organisation is hard, Friedman would say we should look for the emotional dynamics and then reframe the questions people are asking. Anxiety, in the systems sense, comes from looking the wrong way and asking the wrong questions.
2. Presence changes things, not strategy.
He calls it being well-differentiated. We might instead speak of character, or identity, or security. If I know that Jesus loves me despite myself and that gets right down into my bones then I take responsibility for my own sin in the relational dynamic and I can stop myself from getting sucked into the whirlwind of others emotions.
The solution to an anxious system is not a set of strategies that will enable people to operate out of them, it’s a person who is able to differentiate themselves from the anxiety and their presence in the system changes things.
This is counter-intuitive, exactly what we see Jesus keep doing in the gospels, and difficult. It means that the solution isn’t to do a new thing, but be a new thing. It means that leadership is more about culture than strategy (or ‘vibes’ as we call it these days), though Friedman is in favour of adventurous action. In fact he think s that the non-anxious presence, which sounds calm and therapeutic, is an adventurous presence that goes does something without being concerned by the anxiety.
Good thing we know someone who can make new creations, or we’d be sunk.
3. It’s hard to be a non-anxious presence
I have been an anxious presence in an anxious system. I realised and managed to differentiate myself from it. However, what I managed to do was make myself a non-anxious non-presence. Friedman says its hard to remain near systemic anxiety and not be caught in its loops. He’s sanguine about our ability, as we’re not going to achieve complete disentanglement while staying present.
He is not advocating moving away from anxious systems or people, but staying with them without allowing their anxiety to determine the choices and moves we make.
In church leadership this will often mean striking out in a new direction despite people’s fears about change or about the possibility of failure. Leadership entails the possibility of failure.
But, and this is important, that doesn’t mean you disengage from those who are caught in the anxiety inherent in the system. You stay close and keep moving anyway. This requires you to know who you are, have clear goals, and stick to your guns. The phrase that struck me most in the book was ‘the only way out is through.’ There’s a resonance here with the truth that the Christian life, and Christian leadership, is death and resurrection, exile and exodus, as the dominating pattern. Everything worth doing is hard. You have to keep going.
4. Teach people responsibility
Maturity for Friedman is the willingness to take responsibility for your own emotional being and destiny. He describes what he’s against as ‘empathy’ which is, I think, I terrible term for what he’s getting at. Essentially, he wants to say that in his therapeutic work he would not simply side with someone, agreeing with why they feel like they do, and getting sucked into their negative whirl. Instead, he would remain close, but differentiated, encouraging them to take responsibility and find agency. He reframes situations to ask what they can do, and then helps them do that.
In Christian Pastoring we want to both/and this dichotomy, I think. We must weep with those who weep. True grief needs to be sat in. Friedman’s toughness often lacks compassion. At the same time, I suspect we’ve been influenced by the surrounding culture to such a degree that we don’t encourage people to take responsibility for themselves.
I’ve had helpful counselling that helped me understand and reframe my emotions. I’ve had helpful prayer counselling that helped me take them to Jesus. But moving forwards from some of those things required coaching that reframed the situation such that I could seek and find agency. Which is therapeutic speak for ‘take responsibility for the things I could change.’
I think Pastoring needs to include encouraging people to take responsibility where they can. Of course false responsibility exists, of course this can be overused, of course there are horror stories; that doesn’t strike out the basic principle.
5. Change requires Nerve
Trying harder doesn’t make you unstuck, instead we need to reorient things and ask different questions. To change anything is hard and requires what Friedman calls ‘the spirit of adventure,’ or just ‘nerve.’
You have to try stuff. You have to be willing to fail. You have to persist despite those in the organisation who are resistant to change. You have to hold your nerve.
I think we are dispositionally bad at this in England. I think we are equally bad at this in evangelicalism. Put the two together and we don’t manage to change anything. Of course, plenty of really bad leadership looks like this too, it can sound like a bull-headed refusal to listen or a deliberate decision to offend people. The thing is you can’t tell the difference between that and good leadership from the outside.
That might sound scary. I think it probably should. But our current moment is making leadership very difficult. We must keep going.
6. Opposition Happens
Leading will mean opposition—Friedman constantly asserts that leadership always earns opposition, for all opposition doesn’t mean that good leadership is happening—you can’t be a good Pastor if you want everyone to like you.
The presence of opposition doesn’t tell you anything, you’ll find it in good leadership and bad leadership. It happening doesn’t mean you should change course necessarily. Of course, if leading is like working with an editor, as I’ve argued elsewhere, you should approach that opposition with the assumption that there’s something for you to learn in the middle of it, even if it’s not what those opposing you think it is.
That does mean that is there is no opposition at all, you probably aren’t leading anywhere. That’s a sobering thing for Pastors. It probably isn’t welcome news, but it is important we hear it. If everyone likes us and things we’re doing an amazing job, it’s likely we aren’t.
7. Narcissism looks a lot like good leadership
Friedman’s point is that good leaders get accused of being narcissists. He things you should wear it is a badge of pride and just carry one. I’ve worked alongside someone diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and so would be less flippant. I think Friedman has seen something true but got it backwards.
Why are we suddenly noticing so many leading in what we would call ‘narcissistic’ ways through the explosion of the wider church’s leadership crisis? Because narcissism looks a bit like good leadership. That’s why so many who exhibit those behaviours end up in leadership positions.
That’s a concerning thing, because how do you tell the difference? Honestly, you probably only can from the inside, since the difference is humility. I’d say that plural eldership is supposed to guard against this, but all the examples I know well (whether my story, or friends, or those in press) comes from a plural eldership scenario so it clearly doesn’t. Good governance is part of the answer, but governance that ties us in knots so that we can’t lead at all isn’t.
Is that helpful?
I think it’s still an important book, even so long after its publication, but its lessons are difficult to learn. They point in two directions. They don’t drive down to pithy sentences. This post seems to contradict itself.
I think that’s because its wise, though not well-expressed. Reflection is vital, we must mature, we have to keep going, but our ‘presence’ is what matters.
In Christian terms I’d put it differently: leadership is not about technique but about character.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
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