A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix

by Edwin H. Friedman

The attempt to run a mile in less than four minutes serves as an excellent illustration of the power such emotional barriers can have. Back when the great Swedish runners Gunder Haag and Arnie Anderson kept failing to run a “four-minute mile,” despite prodigious efforts, sports pages would actually ask the question whether it was physically possible for a man (not to mention a woman) to run a mile faster than four minutes. The goal seemed so beyond their endeavors that the four-minute mile took on the character of a constant, like the speed of light, a natural barrier. But when Roger Bannister finally broke that barrier in 1957, the following year three men broke it in the same race. We tend to attribute Bannister’s feat to new training techniques rather than a capacity to get outside the emotional processes of running. But in 1994 an African runner understood. When asked how he thought his colleague was able to lower the mile record by one of the largest amounts ever accomplished in one race, he replied, “He is not caught up in the mythology of Western runners.”