Edwin H. Friedman Quotes

United States, Rabbi
May 17, 1932 – October, 31, 1996.

Edwin Howard Friedman was an ordained Jewish 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 (both Christian and Jewish), and leadership more generally.

The ability to allow or even make room for reactivity in the other, without reciprocating, creates the best chance that both partners can go on to their next relationships with the least amount of emotional baggage.

Edwin H. Friedman
The function of a leader within any institution: to provide that regulation through his or her non-anxious, self-defined presence.

Edwin H. Friedman

But no one has ever gone from slavery to freedom with the slaveholders cheering them on, nor contributed significantly to the evolution of our species by working a forty-hour week, nor achieved any significant accomplishment by taking refuge in cynicism.

Edwin H. Friedman
Similarly, the understanding that one can get more change in a family or organization by working with the motivated members (the strengths) in the system than by focusing on the symptomatic or recalcitrant members totally obliterates the search for answers to the question of how to motivate the unmotivated.

Edwin H. Friedman
- Family
- Change
- Working
The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change.

Edwin H. Friedman