I saw this from a lifehack post entitled How to stifle your creativity in 10 easy steps and I thought, “hmm…I’m seeing this from folks in my denomination and from those in denominational leadership.” So I’m posting a few relevant ones for you. Continue Reading

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.

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I have just uploaded my last research paper before I begin my dissertation. The title of the paper was Designing Communications that Effect Change. I look at how the brain construct our reality, how meaning is constructed, how the brain processes information, and elements of communication that bring behavioral change. I discovered that reason is emotionally constructed (we are emotional beings who think, not the other way around), and thus not nearly effective as stories that touch the heart. We learn predominantly through images, and as a result are all innate semioticians, as the brain processes through neural imagery.

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