Edwin H. Friedman Quote
It may be in the ubiquitous phenomenon of terrorism that one can most easily see how universal emotional processes transcend the conventional categories of the social science construction of reality. According to the latter, families are different from nations, profit-making corporations are different from nonprofit corporations, medical institutions are different from school systems, one nation’s infrastructure is different from another’s, and so on. Yet whether we are considering any family, any institution, or any nation, for terrorism to hold sway the same three emotional prerequisites must always persist in that relationship system. There must be a sense that no one is in charge—in other words, the overall emotional atmosphere must convey that there is no leader with nerve. The system must be vulnerable to a hostage situation. That is, its leaders must be hamstrung by a vulnerability of their own, a vulnerability to which the terrorist—whether a bomber, a client, an employee, or a child—is always exquisitely sensitive. There must be among both the leaders and those they lead an unreasonable faith in being reasonable. From an emotional process view of leadership, whether we are talking about families or the family of nations, these three emotional characteristics of a system are the differences that count.
It may be in the ubiquitous phenomenon of terrorism that one can most easily see how universal emotional processes transcend the conventional categories of the social science construction of reality. According to the latter, families are different from nations, profit-making corporations are different from nonprofit corporations, medical institutions are different from school systems, one nation’s infrastructure is different from another’s, and so on. Yet whether we are considering any family, any institution, or any nation, for terrorism to hold sway the same three emotional prerequisites must always persist in that relationship system. There must be a sense that no one is in charge—in other words, the overall emotional atmosphere must convey that there is no leader with nerve. The system must be vulnerable to a hostage situation. That is, its leaders must be hamstrung by a vulnerability of their own, a vulnerability to which the terrorist—whether a bomber, a client, an employee, or a child—is always exquisitely sensitive. There must be among both the leaders and those they lead an unreasonable faith in being reasonable. From an emotional process view of leadership, whether we are talking about families or the family of nations, these three emotional characteristics of a system are the differences that count.