I wanted to follow up one of my last posts to provide some explanation for something that on the face would have been hard to understand and appreciate. And if you stop by this blog from time to time, I’ll reference Friedman and his thoughts and this is a good distinction to make if you’re new to Friedman or the systems world.
I quoted an Edwin Friedman quote where he was denigrating leadership that preferred empathy over responsibility. In Friedman’s literature and theory, empathy is toxic – as he defines it.
How can empathy be bad? After all, it’s one of the five characteristics or character qualities that author Daniel Goleman ascribed to “Emotional Intelligence.”
Friedman’s concept of empathy is equivalent to more of what is often referred to as co-dependence, or the kind of “care” that has no boundaries and in which one person loses their “self” to someone else’s unregulated irresponsibility. That is the essence of what he deems to be at the heart of society’s struggles and he coins the phenomena “A Failure of Nerve” and wrote a fantastic book by that title, which is a must read.
So Friedman is not against love and compassion, but against behaviors and action that undermines self and responsibility. And I would add that Friedman’s and Goleman’s thoughts are compatible in that they emphasize self-regulation and responsibility as essential for mature and healthy functioning.
If you want to read more about this train of thought you can click on “Beav’s Bookstore” above and check out the books in the Family and Organizational Systems and Leadership tab. Or you can download this pdf of some more extended thoughts and writing I’ve done in this area.
So it is Super Bowl week and I just heard there is going to a remake or spoof of the “Super Bowl Shuffle” in one of this years Super Bowl commercials starring some of the old school ‘85 Bears. Mike Singletary and Jimmy Mac are in the mix. Word is there’s also going to be a Maury Buford sighting as well as Steve Fuller so they were digging deep to find enough Bears that were willing to participate.
Superbowl XX continues to be the greatest Super Bowl of all time and I will honor it by posting the Superbowl Shuffle here for your viewing in case your feeling nostalgic. If you’ve never seen it, it’s become a classic piece of Sports history…and it’s awesome.
Now, wasn’t that fun? (another reference to another well known piece of Bears Advertising lore – picture Jim McMahon with the shades).
I’d rather watch Superbowl XX again this Sunday instead of this year’s version, but I doubt I could get anyone to watch it with me as a Superbowl alternative.
I am halfway through reading Edwin Friedman’s The Myth of the Shiksa, which was published posthumously a couple of years ago as a collection of essays and lectures from Friedman.
The first essay is a classic entitled, “An Interview with the First Family Counselor.” What makes this a unique work is that Friedman identifies the First Family Counselor as none other than Satan. This 30 page essay is really a “Screwtape Letters” from a Family Systems perspective as “Satan” shares his strategies for undermining maturity and increasing anxiety in systems.
At one point “Satan” discloses that “My primary tactic is to get flesh and blood to focus on the wrong information, on data, for example, rather than maturity, or on empathy rather than responsibility, or on self as a category of narcissism rather than a matter of integrity.” (8)
He later adds, “…the more anxious I can make society, the easier it becomes for me to tempt creatures into violating the nature of their being, and that’s when I’ve really got them.” (11)
So what are the important things people should focus on and dwell on?
He writes, “The important categories of the soul (and they are the real bridges to community) are:
Knowing what you believe. I mean not only what you live for but what you’d die for.
Knowing where you begin and where other people who are important to you end.
Being able to preserve your own self, that is, having integrity, in a close relationship.
Having horizons that are not limited by what you can actually see.
Being able to stay on course when others sabotage you. By that I mean mustering up the self-regulation not to be reactive to the reactivity of others when you succeed at the above.
And, as I said earlier, making your own salvation dependent upon your own functioning rather than on using or saving others.
These are the information categories that count and they totally transcend social science data.” (14-15)
I love reading Friedman’s stuff. There’s a directness and irreverence that I really am drawn to. This is a great follow up to A Failure of Nerve. I would recommend reading A Failure of Nerve first, but this is a great follow up and I’ve enjoyed reading some shorter, more focused essays.
There’s more to come, but what do you think about the above “categories of the soul?”
I first read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed my senior year of college. Freire is a South American educator and in many ways a theologian. I was on the verge of graduating in under three years and wasn’t ready to deal with the real world yet so I added a Political Science major to the History major I had almost finished. I ended up taking classes that at the time were a big thorn in my side, but looking back I seriously under-appreciated some of them – but I’m amazed how some of those classes are the ones I remember the most (at least the ones I showed up for).
I kept Pedagogy of the Oppressed because it had some serious depth to it and I experienced it even then as a hope giving work in political and education theory that was seeking to find ways to liberate people from being marginalized and oppressed by power dynamics expressed throughout culture and society. I just came across a reference to it in one of the books I’ve been reading by Robert Pazmino dealing with the nature of what is transformational education:
“Transformation is a liberating education that treats learners as subjects, as active agents, and not as objects or passive recipients of the wisdom shared. Students are thus viewed as active, creative subjects with the capacity to examine critically, interact with, and transform their world.
Transformation is also described as problem-posing education, which encourages freedom for students in cooperative dialogue with the teacher and other students. In contrast to transformation education is banking or problem-solving education, which imposes knowledge on passive students. In banking education, the teacher assumes an authoritarian role, prescribing what the students are to learn and how they are to think and behave.” (Pazmino, pp. 78-79 referencing Freire).
You might read that and write it off as some nice statement about how we should teach and communicate in empowering ways as opposed to static and boring ways. But think about liberating and transformational education as opposed to banking education as it relates to some of the following areas: empowering ethnic minorities who are studying, working, or serving in a majority culture context; passing on the Christian faith to the next generation, and raising up leaders who can make a transforming difference in this world.
Teaching and trainings that are controlled by people in power will most likely reinforce the way things have always been done and the status quo unless their is a commitment to releasing some of that power to free others up to contribute as equally significant voices in the community. Finding ways to truly empower people and help them learn and grow is something we need to think about just as much as what we want them to know. Otherwise we run the risk of conforming potential leaders into the majority culture’s image and we lose the opportunity to grow and change corporately from new ideas, new perspectives, and perhaps fresh courage and boldness.
It’s worth stating that if your way of doing things resembles “banking,” you’re directly or indirectly perpetuating some deep problems and issues that result in some form of oppression or powerlessness among those under your leadership. “Bankers” act, lead, and educate as if their voice is the only one that matters. “Transformational” or problem-posing educators or leaders lead with a pursuit to nurture and empower voices at all levels.
Even the most controlling leaders I’ve ever met never at a heart level would want to intentionally have a silencing and controlling legacy. So consider a shift from problem-solving to problem-posing in how you get things done. Think about shifting from banking to transformation.
Executing a lot of this is a different matter, but I’m motivated to keep learning and thinking about how to make sure everything I do has transformation and empowerment as its goal.
What are ways you are choosing transformation over banking in your leadership context? Do you see other areas where some of these thoughts pertaining to how we teach are evident? How do you see the execution of a transformational approach being lived out in your context?
So I’ve had major plumbing emergency issues of late. With the latest edition of California “Storm Watch” I came within 1/4 of an inch of having my living room flooded because water wasn’t draining in our patio right.
Turns out my patio storm drain was flat out busted due to yes – a beer can. My [...]
One of the things that annoyed me to no end about President Obama’s inauguration was how much the media coverage made an intentional effort to repeatedly denounce the past eight years in order to glamorize what the future was going to be with a new Sheriff in town. It bugged me even more because most [...]
Have to share this brief family anecdote:
We went for a family dinner tonight and doing what we normally do to try to contain our 2 year old boy in public spaces. We had one of his toy cars for him to keep him busy.
Morgan (4 years old) was itching to get her hands on it [...]
I was reading an article I found recently called “Temptations Facing the Christian Academic” by Elmer Thiessen in a journal I believe entitled Direction and thought there were several thoughts that are relevant to any of us who are in a position where we are influencing, teaching, or educating others consistently.
Here’s a few temptations for [...]
This personal blog does not reflect the opinion of any organization I am affiliated with. My content on leadership does not in any way refer to any specific individuals that I directly work with unless specifically stated to the contrary.
I am halfway through reading Edwin Friedman’s The Myth of the Shiksa, which was published posthumously a couple of years ago as a collection of essays and lectures from Friedman.
I first read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed my senior year of college. Freire is a South American educator and in many ways a theologian. I was on the verge of graduating in under three years and wasn’t ready to deal with the real world yet so I added a Political Science major to the History major I had almost finished. I ended up taking classes that at the time were a big thorn in my side, but looking back I seriously under-appreciated some of them – but I’m amazed how some of those classes are the ones I remember the most (at least the ones I showed up for).
