In his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, rabbi and psychologist, Edwin Friedman, defines the effective leader as the person who is able to maintain a “non-anxious presence” in an anxious system.

He goes on to say that all systems (organizations) are, by nature, anxious. Families are anxious. Corporations are anxious. Baseball teams are anxious. Boards of directors are anxious. Armies, committees, card clubs, charities, and churches are all anxious. Especially, churches.

Their anxiety arises from the possibility that things will change, and the fear that things won’t change. It arises from their lack of vision, and where there is a vision, it arises from the demands that the vision places upon them.

In all of these cases, the leader will be the person who …