DUNAMI

leadership from the inside out...

A friend of mine wrote the following for his Thesis. he is looking at Self-differentiation as a tool for developing leaders. I was struck by this, because a lot of work that I do is to help individuals understand how they got "stuck" and to encourage them to move forward with Faith. I'm reminded of the practicalness of "family of origin" information, as I recently spoke with a Trainer for teams that travel the country raising money for their Non-Profit. He uses family of origin training to: affirm, encourage, and empower the individual to have a greater self-awareness as they are "on the job" traveling the country.

Just before his death, Friedman began broadening these leadership concepts in A Failure of Nerve—Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (1999). The work he completed is available in manuscript form. It is here that Friedman made the point that leadership is self-differentiation and stated that leadership capacity can be enhanced by improving one’s self-differentiation. Self-differentiation is characterized by the ability to remain calm in the presence of others’ emotions (ER), the ability to take a stand when others are pressuring conformity or herding (IP), the ability to stay in contact with those that are in or causing emotional pain (EC), and the ability to stay a self when others are promoting togetherness (FO). The ability to maintain all of this in balance is leading—it is being self-differentiated (Friedman, 1999). Further, it is the family of origin who serves as the base for how well any individual is able to be self-differentiated. Returning to the family of origin, to the extent possible, allows an individual to work through any residue or unfinished family business left within the family relationships. Working through the residue allows one to relate more fully to other family members and others in general (Friedman, 1985). Thus, an understanding of one’s own family processes will assist one in leading the self as well as leading others through similar processes that lead toward self-differentiation in them.

Labels: family of origin, leadership, MFT

posted by Gman and Julz @ 10:23 AM