Characteristics of Gridlocked Systems

April 30, 2008

I’ve been reading A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin H. Friedman, in preparation for my doctoral dissertation. This book is about how emotional processes are what need to be engaged when thinking about leadership and change within an organization, not logic, reason, or methodology.

Friedman, in the first chapter on “Imaginative Gridlock” deals with the characteristics of a gridlocked system, and there are three:

1. An unending treadmill of trying harder;
2. Looking for answers rather than reframing questions; and
3. either/or thinking that creates false dichotomies.

Written by David Phillips · Filed Under Books, Change Theology, Doctoral Studies, Leadership

We are Visual People

April 30, 2008

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Science and Theology

I started to title this post, “We are All Semioticians”. We are visual people. We think visually and interpret visually. We also comprehend visually. Pastors spend too much time putting together logical and reasoned arguments in their sermons when they should be incorporating visually and emotionally stimulating images that move people to action. Below is why that is the case.

Written by David Phillips · Filed Under Change Theology, Communications, Doctoral Studies

We are Primarily Emotional People

April 29, 2008

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Science and Theology

I want to move back to a discussion of thinking through a theology of transformational change by integrating theology and emerging science. In my research, I observed through the writings of Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, particularly in his book “The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life that our emotions receive sensory information first and can literally hijack us, what Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman termed the “emotional hijack”. Research into the mind and communication gave me a better understanding of the importance of all of this.