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.

You see gridlocked systems in all kinds of relationships, from families to churches to denominations to Fortune 500 companies. Anyone who has been in a gridlocked system understands that more learning will not help the issue. Friedman says, “There must be first a shift in the emotional processes of that institution. Imagination and indeed even curiosity are at root emotional, not cognitive, phenomena. In order to imagine the unimaginable, people must be able to separate themselves from surrounding emotional processes before they can even begin to see (or hear) things differently. Without this understanding, it becomes impossible to realize how our learning can prevent us from learning more. (page 31)”

There are obvious correlations to the denomination in which I am affiliated, especially in light of the recent research that tells us we’re declining, and have been for almost 50 years. It is also evident how the people who try to control the denomination attempt to maintain power: through emotional appeals aimed at creating fear.

Yet the system is in trouble, and most of the answers being put forth deal with doing more or trying to come up with a new program. In addition, the extremes are simply shouting at each other, and it is an either/or paradigm is many people’s minds. No one is listening to a middle way, a third way, if you will. The result is an exodus for imaginative leadership who feel they are being sabotaged and not supported by a poorly differentiated leader or leaders.

The conversation needs to be reframed. Doing more is not the answer. In our gridlocked system, it is not about doing, but becoming. We have to be able to deal with the emotional baggage that we bring to the conversation. Otherwise, the system will not change.