A Failure of Nerve -- Chapter 9
-Bouncing Balls and Crumbling Cookies-
Crisis and Sabotage: The Keys to The Kingdom

All leadership begins with the management of one's own health (Read "My Crisis" - Pg 292).

Leadership Through Self-Differentiation

• Management of Information
  • Having information and expertise does not take the place of making decisions.
  • Being informed, if that takes over, can be overrated.
  • Experts are not clear with you about what is a fact, what is a hypothesis, and what is a finding.
• Management of the Relationship System
  A diagram of the interlocking triangles would include all of these elements, and more:
  • Neurologist
  • Cardiologist
  • Vascular surgeon #1
  • Cardiac Surgeon
  • Arteriogram person
  • Internist
  • Vascular surgeon #2
  • Orthopod
• Management of Anxiety
• Management of Self
  Management of self is the effort to remain clear.
  Principles of functioning:
  • Keep up your functioning; don't let crisis become the axis around which your world revolves.
  • Develop a support system outside of the work system, such as professional helpers, family, and friends.
  • Stay focused on long-term goals.
  • Deep breathing, prayer, or meditation.
  • Listen to your body.
  • Watch the triangles.
  • Work out the balance between being responsible for self and being labeled obstreperous.
  • Keep the system loose through humor.
  • It's time to make decisions when the same question brings no new information.
  • Accept the possibility that one's own functioning brought it on, which means that one may be able to influence one's recuperation.

Sabotage

Self-differentiation always triggers reactivity.

The important thing to remember about the phenomenon of sabotage is that it is a systemic part of leadership- part and parcel of the leadership process.

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Friedman, E. H.  A failure of nerve:  Leadership in the age of the quick fix.