Edwin Friedman


Edwin Howard Friedman was an ordained rabbi, family therapist, and leadership consultant. He was born in New York City and worked for more than 35 years in the Washington DC area where he founded the Bethesda Jewish Congregation.
His primary areas of work were in family therapy, congregational leadership, and leadership more generally.

Approach

Friedman's approach was primarily shaped by an understanding of family systems theory. His seminal work Generation to Generation, written for the leaders of religious congregations, focused on leaders developing three main areas of themselves:
Building on his work, Generation to Generation, Friedman's family and friends published A Failure of Nerve--leadership in the age of the quick fix finishing Friedman's work on his understanding of leaders as "self-differentiated or well-differentiated."
Friedman illustrates good “self-differentiated” leadership to that present in the great Renaissance explorers, where leaders had:
Two concepts are critical in Friedman’s model: self-knowledge and self-control. Friedman attacks what he calls the failure of nerve in leaders who are “highly anxious risk-avoiders,” more concerned with good feelings than with progress–one whose life revolves around the axis of consensus. By self-differentiation, the leader maintains his/her integrity and thus promotes “the integrity or prevents the dis-integr-ation of the system he or she is leading."
In other places, Friedman argues that the well-differentiated leader:

DVD