Healthy Families Play

Edwin Friedman's book Failure of Nerve is an excellent diagnosis of what ails many organizations, whether they are families, businesses, churches, schools, or government agencies. He notes that our society has become what he terms "chronically anxious." He then goes on to list five characteristics of chronically anxious systems. Here is the first sign: reactivity. When Friedman uses the term "family" or "families" he is not just talking about biological families. He is talking about all systems and organizations, such as churches, businesses, biological families, clubs, etc.  Everything indented is a quote for Friedman. I bolded certain phrases.

Reactivity As a Sign of Organizational Devolution

The most blatant characteristic of chronically anxious families is the vicious cycle of intense reactivity of each member to events and to one another...This state is not to be confused with "emotionality": dogged passivity can also be a reactive response. 

Members of chronically anxious families...are constantly taking and making things "personal."

The family is easily "heated up" as feelings are confused with opinions...Family members therefore are easily brought to loggerheads over the most inconsequential issues...Members of highly reactive families wind up constantly focused on the latest, most immediate crisis. 

What also contributes to this loss of perspective is the disappearance of playfulness...Lacking the capacity to be playful, their perspective is narrowed. Lacking perspective the repertoire of responses is thin. Neither apology nor forgiveness is within their ken...The relationship between anxiety and seriousness is so predictable that the absence of playfulness in any institution is almost always a clue to the degree of its emotional regression. 

This is the most striking idea Freidman proposed in this section. Loss of laughter, humor, comedy, playing is a sign that an organization is dead or dying. Christians could translate this into loss of joy. But I like the term playfulness.  It brings the proper perspective to it. Life is a comedy. The dead rise while the living are already dead. Fools are made kings and kings are thrust down. A Jewish carpenter saves the world when a Roman Caesar could not. Dead "families" are always very serious. Living ones know that the joke is on them and can laugh about it.

The most damaging effect of intense reactivity in any family is on its capacity to produce or support a leader...Reactivity, therefore, eventually makes chronically anxious families leaderless, either because it prevents potential leaders from emerging in the first place or because it wears leaders down by sabotaging their initiatives and resolve with constant automatic responses. 

As with any chronically anxious family, there is in American society today an intense quickness to interfere in another's self-expression, to overreact to any perceived hurt, to take all disagreement too seriously, and to brand the opposition with ad hominem personal epithets. As in personal families, this hardens hearts and leaves little room for forgiveness or balanced accommodation.  

With chronic social anxiety, the major regressive effect on leaders is the same as in families. They remain in a reactive stance themselves, led by each emerging crisis rather than being able to take a proactive stance that develops out of an objective perspective or principle.

Friedman's analysis is excellent and puts a name to something that we see all around us. We are a culture that reacts. Leaders react to polls. Pastors react to parishioners. Parents react to children. Husbands react to wives. You cannot lead this way. Reactivity is the opposite of leadership. Leadership means you are going somewhere and you want people to follow you. Leadership is not bouncing from one crisis or one overreaction of your constituent or one complaint from your wife or one bad experience to another. Leadership is calm, focused, and knows what direction to go. It is not sidetracked by constant little fires that arise.

Leadership Lessons from Winston Churchill

Paul Johnson's epilogue to Churchill is the best part of the book. In a few short pages he describes what made Winston Churchill such a great leader and a man who took Britain through some of the darkest years in her history. First, though he lists Churchill's accomplishments, which are impressive.

In his ninety years, Churchill had spent fifty-five years as member of Parliament, thirty one years as a minister, and nearly nine years as prime minister. He had been present at or fought in fifteen battles, and had been awarded fourteen campaign medals, some with multiple clasps.  He had been a prominent figure in the First World War, and a dominant one in the Second. He had published nearly 10  million words, more than most professional writers in their lifetime, and painted over five hundred canvases, more than most professional painters. He had reconstructed a stately home and created a splendid garden with three lakes, which he had caused to be dug himself. He had built a cottage and a garden wall. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, an Elder Brother at Trinity House, a Lord Warden of Cinque Ports, a Royal Academician, a university chancellor, a Nobel Prizeman [for Literature], a Knight of the Garter, a Companion of Honour, and a member of the Order of Merit. Scores of towns made him an honorary citizen, dozens of universities awarded him honorary degrees, and thirteen countries gave him medals. He hunted big game and won a score of races. How many bottles of champagne he consumed is not recorded, but it may be close to twenty thousand. He had a large and much-loved family, and countless friends. 

So Winston Churchill led a full life, and few people are ever likely to equal it-its amplitude, variety and success on so many fronts.

Johnson doesn't mention in this section, but Churchill also gave many of the most memorable speeches in the history of Britain.  But what were the keys to Churchill's success. Johnson lists five lessons we can learn from Churchill's life.

1.  Always aim high. Johnson mentions his failure at school, yet his persistence in learning the English language, which gave him the ability to write well and give great speeches.

In 1940 [Churchill] aimed not only high but at the highest-to rescue a stricken country in danger of being demoralized, to put it firmly on its feet again, and to carry it to salvation and victory. He did not always meet his elevated targets, but by aiming high the always achieved something worthwhile. 

2.  There is no substitute for hard work.

He worked hart at everything to the best of his ability: Parliament, administration, geopolitics and geostrategy, writing books, painting, creating an idyllic house and garden, seeing things and if possible doing things for himself. Mistakes he made constantly, but there was never anything shoddy or idle about his work. He put tremendous energy into everything, and was able to to this because...he conserved and husbanded his energy too. There is an extraordinary paradox about his white, apparently flabby body and the amount of muscle power he put into life, always. 

3. "He did not allow mistakes, disaster-personal or national-accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism get him down." Johnson considers this his most important trait. Johnson writes about many of Churchill's humiliations, defeats, and periods of unpopularity. Churchill did not allow those things to discourage or keep him down for long.

He scrambled to his feet and worked his way back. He had courage, the most important of all virtues, and its companion, fortitude. These strengths are inborn but they can also be cultivated, and Churchill worked on them all his life. In a sense his whole career was  an exercise in how courage can be displayed, reinforced, guarded and doled out carefully, heightened and concentrated, conveyed to others. 

4. Here I will quote from Johnson:

Churchill wasted an extraordinarily small amount of his time and emotional energy on the meannesses of life: recrimination, shifting blame to others, malice, revenge seeking, dirty tricks, spreading rumors, harboring grudges, waging vendettas. Having fought hard, he washed his hands and went on to the next contest. It is one reason for his success. There is nothing more draining and exhausting than hatred. And malice is bad for judgment. Churchill love to forgive and  make up. His treatment of Baldwin and Chamberlain after he became prime minister is an object lesson in sublime magnanimity. Nothing gave him more pleasure than to replace enmity with friendship, not least with the Germans.

5. "The absence of hatred left plenty of room for joy in Churchill's life."  Churchill despite embarrassing failures and blunders and despite living in a time when Britain's existence was in question never failed to have a joke or a quote. He also love to sing, though not in tune. "He wept easily. But his tears soon dried, as strength came flooding back."

Many of us now 70 years removed from the end of the Second World War forget what a pivotal time that was in the history of the world. Not all was done well. Some things that were done should not have been. And some things should have been done that were not. However, great leaders like Churchill, are lifted up by God to perform an important work in the world. He uses them and gives them gifts that we can learn from. When World War II ended Churchill was seventy years old. God had used him to preserve Britain. Any of us who lead can be students of this man and learn from his mistakes and successes.

Adventure Trumps Safety

I am enjoying Edwin Friedman's book A Failure of Nerve. In it he attacks several common leadership ideas and replaces them with a different paradigm. One key idea in the book is that leaders take risks. An environment which limits risk ultimately limits leadership.  Risk means the possibility of failure and pain. Risk is not doing something you know everyone agrees with and will be happy about. A lot of us think we are taking risks, when really we are not.

He also hammers on what he calls "displacement." What he means by this is that people refuse to take personal responsibility, but instead "displace" their responsibility by blaming someone or something else. He points out that often the thing blamed is important, but it becomes too important in the person's emotional well-being. He ends this section with this quote, which is thought provoking.  The bold is mine.

Today the issues most vulnerable to becoming displacements are first of all, anything related to safety: product safety, traffic safety, bicycle safety, motorboat safety, jet-ski safety, workplace safety, nutritional safety, nuclear power station safety, toxic waste safety, and so on and so on.  This focus on safety has become so omnipresent in our chronically anxious civilization that there is the real danger we will come to believe that safety is the most important value in life. It is certainly important as a modifier of other initiatives, but if a society is to evolve, or if leaders are to arise, then safety can never be allowed to become more important than adventure. We are on our way to becoming a nation of "skimmers," living off the risks of previous generations and constantly taking from the top without adding significantly to its essence. Everything we enjoy as a part of our advance civilization , including discovery, exploration, and development of our country, came about because previous generations made adventure more important than safety.