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

by Edwin H. Friedman

This point is illustrated by the following tale. A woman found her husband to be passive and recalcitrant about every suggestion she made. Energetic herself, she wanted to have adventures and to meet people, but she wound up in constant conflict precisely because she made her functioning dependent on his. It was suggested to her that instead of trying to coerce her husband or allowing herself to be seduced into arguments about right/wrong or control, she should simply start making her own plans and invite him to join her if he wished, but go in her own direction when he did not. Trying to put this suggestion to work, she said to her husband, “They have invited us to dinner and I have decided to go.” Whereupon he responded, “Why do you force me to do things like this?” It was the inability of either one to differentiate and thus separate from the other that put her into a bind and made him respond as he did. In such a personal relationship, if the wife will take responsibility for herself, often the husband will begin to function in the marriage at a higher level. In fact, the well-differentiated partner will probably always have to be the one to take the initiative to enhance the functioning of the togetherness. Societal regression reinforces the dysfunction of the togetherness or immaturity. To be a leader, one must both have and embody a vision of where one wants to go. It is not a matter of knowing or believing one is right; it is a matter of taking the first step.