The Learning Organization, Volume 9, Number 5, 2002

The Learning Organization Volume 9, Number 5, 2002 ISSN 0969-6474 This issue is part of a comprehensive multiple acces...

Author: Peter Smith

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The Learning Organization Volume 9, Number 5, 2002

ISSN 0969-6474

This issue is part of a comprehensive multiple access information service comprising: Paper format The Learning Organization includes five issues in traditional paper format. The contents of this issue are detailed below.

Internet Online Publishing with Archive, Active Reference Linking, Emerald WIRE, Key Readings, Research Register, Institution-wide Licence, E-mail Alerting Service and Usage Statistics. Access via the Emerald Web site: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ft See overleaf for full details of subscriber entitlements.

Energy and emotion in organizations that learn Guest Editor: Peter Smith

Contents 194 Access to The Learning Organization online 195 Abstracts & keywords 196 Awards for Excellence

Feature articles 197 Rationalizing the promotion of non-rational behaviors in organizations Peter A.C. Smith and Meenakshi Sharma 202 Contact styles Trevor Bentley

206 Leading with the Tao: the energizing power of respect Diane E. Dreher 214 Emotion, learning and organizing Yiannis Gabriel and Dorothy S. Griffiths 223 Author and title index to volume 9, 2002

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Contact styles

Abstracts & keywords

Trevor Bentley Keywords Gestalt psychology, Individual behaviour, Self-development Indicates ways in which contact styles can significantly enhance and interrupt learning. Claims there is considerable benefit to be obtained by everyone assessing their contact style tendencies and then moderating them so that they become more helpful in maintaining contact and learning. Discusses six contact styles that impact on our contact and engagement with people and ideas. Leading with the Tao: the energizing power of respect Diane E. Dreher Keywords Organizational learning, Leadership, Information, Groups, Development Written over 25 centuries ago in ancient China, the Tao Te Ching offers ideational principles and practical guidelines for today’s learning organizations. By portraying the energy patterns that recur throughout creation, the Tao provides new insights for planning and problem solving. By focusing on process, the Tao reveals the vital connection between personal growth and growth in organizations. Unlike mechanistic management that treats people like replaceable parts, leading with the Tao respects people and process, leveraging positive personal and organizational change to produce greater energy, innovation, and productivity.

Rationalizing the promotion of non-rational behaviors in organizations Peter A.C. Smith and Meenakshi Sharma Keywords Leadership, Counselling, Gestalt psychology, Employee development Contends that organizations designed according to current theories require that traits of leadership and personal responsibility be developed in employees at all levels of the organization, not just the formal leaders. Asserts that to develop these traits, organizations must strike an adequate balance between rationality/technical efficiency and non-rational factors such as emotion. States that organizations currently operate with a facade of rationality, ignoring emotional reality. Argues that leverage for such change lies in working at team/group level meetings, changing the quality of interactions to enhance authenticity and create emotional openness. Maintains that action learning has so far proven the best vehicle for releasing emotional energy into the workplace if facilitators are utilized who can enrich the action learning process with skills drawn from disciplines such as counseling, Gestalt, psychodynamics, and psychoanalysis. Claims that familiarity with the principles of Eastern philosophies is also helpful.

Emotion, learning and organizing Yiannis Gabriel and Dorothy S. Griffiths Keywords Personnel psychology, Organizational behaviour, Anxiety, Motivation Far from being emotional deserts, organizations are full of emotion and passion. Increasingly, management has sought to harness emotion to increase work motivation, enhance customer service and work performance and the ‘‘emotional intelligence’’ advocates have sought to develop a toolkit for the smarter deployment of emotions in organizations. Using social constructionist and psychoanalytic ideas, the author argues that the management of emotions is problematic and precarious. Some emotions may be contained or re-directed, but many arise from deeper unconscious sources and are impervious to learning. Two specific emotions, anxiety and love, are discussed.

The Learning Organization Volume 9 . Number 5 . 2002 . Abstracts & keywords # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0969-6474

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Literati Club

Awards for Excellence Barry Corbett Department of Social Security, UK and

Brian Kenny University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK

are the recipients of the journal’s Outstanding Paper Award for Excellence for their paper

‘‘Appraisal and learning in a government agency’’ which appeared in The Learning Organization, Vol. 8 No. 1, 2001

Barry Corbett is an Operations Manager with the Department of Work and Pensions. He has been involved in ‘‘learning’’ at work as a belief and way of conduct for the last 30 years! He is a pupil of Brian Kenny the co-author – whose tutorship he greatly enjoyed. Brian’s hobby is C1900 Studio ceramics and he publishes a quarterly newsletter on this subject in research partnership with his wife Angela. Brian Kenny, Professor Emeritus, joined (the then) Polytechnic of Huddersfield in 1978 as a Senior Lecturer, after several years in high technology industries (including defence), largely in sales and marketing roles. At the time the article was published, he was Professor of Strategic Management, in the Department of Economics and Business Studies, University of Huddersfield Business School. In addition to organizational learning, research interest includes: strategy/structure in high tech industries (including defence) and transition in Central and Eastern Europe.

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Introduction

Rationalizing the promotion of non-rational behaviors in organizations Peter A.C. Smith and Meenakshi Sharma

The authors Peter A.C. Smith is President of The Leadership Alliance, Ontario, Canada. Meenakshi Sharma is a Consultant with Sharma Consulting, Stroud, UK. Keywords Leadership, Counselling, Gestalt psychology, Employee development Abstract Contends that organizations designed according to current theories require that traits of leadership and personal responsibility be developed in employees at all levels of the organization, not just the formal leaders. Asserts that to develop these traits, organizations must strike an adequate balance between rationality/technical efficiency and non-rational factors such as emotion. States that organizations currently operate with a facade of rationality, ignoring emotional reality. Argues that leverage for such change lies in working at team/group level meetings, changing the quality of interactions to enhance authenticity and create emotional openness. Maintains that action learning has so far proven the best vehicle for releasing emotional energy into the workplace if facilitators are utilized who can enrich the action learning process with skills drawn from disciplines such as counseling, Gestalt, psychodynamics, and psychoanalysis. Claims that familiarity with the principles of Eastern philosophies is also helpful. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0969-6474.htm The Learning Organization Volume 9 . Number 5 . 2002 . pp. 197–201 # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0969-6474 DOI 10.1108/09696470210442132

If current experts in the field of organizational design have it right (for example Senge, 1990), and we believe that they do, then organizations must become high-alignment/ high-autonomy environments if they are to remain viable (Smith and Saint-Onge, 1996; Smith and Sharma, 2002). Such a shift implies that it will be critical for all employees, not just its formal leaders, to take responsibility for shaping the organization and its resultant performance. In this sense employee leadership is a matter of taking personal responsibility for trying to fulfill all the various needs of the community, rather than a social-influence process emphasizing direction-setting and authority. The means by which organizations can operationalize this notion of leadership and personal responsibility for all employees have been detailed elsewhere, together with an identification of issues related to these contexts (Smith and Sharma, 2002). This paper deals specifically with a very important non-logical factor that must be addressed if this concept of leadership and personal responsibility at all levels is to be realized; namely emotion (or more typically its suppression) in the workplace.

Emotion in the workplace In 1973 Egan wrote: ‘‘Emotional repression is undoubtedly still a far greater problem than emotional overindulgence’’ (Egan, 1973, p. 61), and 30 years later this statement is as true as ever; society still equates emotional maturity with the control or repression of feelings, continuing to use the word ‘‘emotional’’ in a derogatory sense. Indeed, those who are guarded in their feelings prefer others to behave in the same way: ‘‘It is thought uncivil, rude, unconventional, unwarranted, and even obscene to express feelings toward others. Emotional insulation parades under such euphemisms as ‘respect for others’ and ‘the dignity of privacy’’’ (Egan, 1973, p. 64). There is still a strong tendency for society in general to discourage emotionalism, and organizations routinely operate with a fac¸ade of rationality that over-emphasizes the goalorientation that drives them, whilst undervaluing the expressive arenas of life; this, in spite of a large influx of women into the workforce. Organizational emphasis continues to be on the production of tangible

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Rationalizing the promotion of non-rational behaviors in organizations

The Learning Organization Volume 9 . Number 5 . 2002 . 197–201

Peter A.C. Smith and Meenakshi Sharma

‘‘evidence’’ such as vision and mission statements, action plans, tools, skills, and the like; emotion is seen as antithetical to performance. Lutz summed it up well: ‘‘In addition to treating emotion as a physiological state, people regard emotion as a value-laden concept which is often treated as ‘inappropriate’ for organizational life. In particular, emotional reactions are often seen as ‘disruptive’, ‘illogical’, ‘biased’ and ‘weak’. Emotion, then, becomes a deviation from what is seen as intelligent’’ (Putnam and Mumby, 1993; p. 36; attributed to Lutz, 1988; p. 62). A growing issue is that so much interpersonal communication is no longer face-to-face but ‘‘second-hand’’ – mediated through technology, e.g. e-mail, and ‘‘Technology makes it easy to fake authenticity, to manipulate it, to have encounters that seem authentic but are not’’ (Lukensmeyer and Parlett, 1997, p. 7). Such virtual encounters have become the norm for those currently joining the workforce who unfortunately lack awareness of anything lost or distorted. In addition, group experiences that proliferated in the 1970s focusing on feelings, emotions, touch, sensory awareness and the like, often operated in an irresponsible manner. The derogatory term ‘‘touchy-feely’’ then became associated with all initiatives dealing with non-rational phenomena. Based on myths borne of this era, perhaps there is a fear in organizations that focusing on emotional energy leads to loss of control; this is not the case: Organizations do not need to abandon instrumental goals, productivity, or rationality to develop alternative modes of discourse. Emphasizing work feelings calls for including what is currently ignored or marginalized in organizational life. Rationality is not an objective, immutable state. Rather it is socially constructed and cast as the dominant mode of organizing. Rationality and technical efficiency, however, should be embedded in a larger system of community and interrelatedness. Perhaps organizations of the future could offer society a new alternative, one shaped by emotionallyconnected creativity and mutual understanding as necessary elements for human growth (Putnam and Mumby, 1993, p. 55).

The rational/emotional balance: the way forward Social systems are highly complex and there is no guarantee that a particular, seemingly

desirable, starting condition will result in a desirable end-state. We do believe though that a step in the right direction would be to redirect the emotional labour that employees currently expend in subverting authoritarianism and emotional control, and channel it such that they display leadership in, and take personal responsibility for, shaping their own self-organizing system. ‘‘Here, ideally, people would give up some of their uniqueness to help build the edifice or common system, rather than clamoring for more power for their system, which then gets experienced as power over other people’’ (Lukensmeyer and Parlett, 1997, p. 13). Furthermore, human nature being what it is, we do not believe that it is possible to build a paradise where an organization will fully succeed in dealing appropriately with all the complexities of the interactions within its social systems. We do believe however that an organization can strike an adequate balance between rationality/technical efficiency and non-rational factors, such that each field contributes to, and supports the other in, optimizing performance (Smith and Sharma, 2002). As noted above, in our view suppression of emotional reality engages energy that could be diverted more productively to shaping a culture promoting personal responsibility and leadership. We believe that a natural place to start to change the emotional culture is in the various formal and informal group settings in which all employees meet. Organizations run on meetings and for good reason. This is by and large how human beings like to work and interact – people are social animals. These meetings do not need to be face-to-face, but this is typically the case, because people like it that way. If they are run appropriately such meetings provide a natural systemic way to shape the quality of interpersonal relationships through selfreflection, self-disclosure, and emotion, whilst energizing individuals to act. The outcome of this holisitic approach is that members feel a valued part of the organisation, connected internally with their own needs and externally to the needs of others. Shortcomings introduced when employees communicate to a large degree via technology, e.g. e-mail, were highlighted earlier and may need to be addressed, e.g. by actually encouraging faceto-face meetings. Note that we are not in general advocating more meetings, but rather a change in the tone. At most meetings attendees talk without ‘‘meeting’’ each other at all. Meetings are

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often held to protect people’s positions and interests, rather than to increase understanding, and the last thing they want is to ‘‘really’’ meet, become emotional, or be forced to reveal their anxieties, concerns, and lack of knowledge or understanding. Organizations do attempt to enhance interpersonal and communication skills. Unfortunately, although self-disclosure is a skill that can be learned, it appears frightening to people when presented as an end in itself, or when the risks are not addressed. These skills are also often developed via short courses with titles such as ‘‘Running effective meetings’’. Here people learn the techniques and rituals of meetings, rather than becoming more adept at understanding, or opening up to one another. Indeed, in our experience the converse is the norm. Recognising the benefits of developing good interpersonal relationships is of course welcome, but such techniques are often used to manipulate situations/others unless linked to a more holistic approach. One promising approach to enhancing the quality of the communications is to modify the words that individuals use in representing their feelings and attitudes (Kegan and Lahey, 2000). Such a change would lead to people ‘‘meeting at their boundary’’ (Nevis, 1987, p.178). When people ‘‘meet at their boundary’’ they are aware of their own needs and are willing to articulate them to others, giving freedom to their passions, hopes, desires and fears, moving away from ‘‘the fac¸ade of rationality’’, and becoming attentive to the psychic needs of others. Every individual has their own boundary; ‘‘ . . . a psychological marker that that creates a space within which people can take up their roles with some degree of certainty knowing who they are and what they are accountable for’’ (Goldstein, 1992, p. 21). In an organizational setting, individuals generally create their own boundaries based on the needs that can be met in that setting, and the relationships (s)he can develop with others around them. Clearly the organisational culture is a key influence (Schein, 1997). If the situation changes, an individual makes a choice regarding where to reset the boundaries within the new context. The absence of boundaries is counterproductive, since individuals internalize the business chaos around them, feeling they are being made responsible for activities and outcomes beyond their control, thus becoming more rigid and resistant to showing the emotions. People make real contact with one another in organizational life when they are self-aware

of their own boundaries, the limitations they set on those boundaries, and are attentive to the boundaries of others. It is the awareness and attentiveness that is the essence of good contact. A meeting with the right tone is one where people make this real contact with each other, and where individuals and groups demonstrate the following qualities that Zinker attributes to the happy couple/family (Zinker, 1998, pp. 114). . hear each other; . own their feelings and ideas; . exchange ideas so that a good fit is achieved; . ask each other questions, rather than making assumptions; . disagree and accept differences without fear; . accommodate each other; . fight for what feels ‘‘right’’ and ‘‘good’’ for each other; . start, develop, and finish a discussion or event and then let it go; . share pains, curiosities, regrets, resentments, tenderness – a variety of needs and wants; . learn to accept a ‘‘yes’’ gratefully and a ‘‘no’’ graciously without holding onto resentment; . move from one experience to another without getting stuck; . let go of wanting something that is hopelessly unavailable; . laugh at themselves; . influence each other; . support each other’s interest and projects; . show pride and compassion for each other’s accomplishments and setbacks; . respect each other’s privacy and, at the same time, intrude when another withdraws in pain; . ‘‘mind each other’s business’’ when it comes to important matters; . tolerate strange and novel ideas from each other and dream together. The fruits of such encounters, whether in group meetings or one-to-one, are clearly rich and varied. These behaviours are in marked contrast to the traditional lack of understanding and sensitivity for the reality of others’ existence prevalent in most organizations. Different ways that communications may be interrupted or blocked (Zinker, 1998, pp. 119-24) are listed below: . Desensitization – people look at each other with little concentration, scan each other’s language superficially or do not bother listening at all, avoid touching

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each other or block ‘‘full entry’’, feel bored, uninvolved. Projection – make assumptions about each other, guess what the other is feeling or thinking without asking questions to check if the assumption is right, little lively debate. Introjection – the solution is forced onto others without investment of energy in fully ‘‘chewing over’’, no investment in getting everyone on board. Retroflection – people turn inwards and do to themselves what they want and need from others, everyone feels isolated and at the same time safe in their inner struggle, no help if asked for or given. Deflection – people shift focus contact to some other topic to avoid connection, voices travel ‘‘over each’’ other, at extreme people talk all at once and no-one feels a sense of belonging or being understood. Confluence – disregards differences, jumps to conclusions or actions without really discussing fully. There is fear of letting go or losing each others support.

A critical pre-requisite to embedding such behaviours in everyday meetings is an appreciation of ‘‘awareness’’. Awareness involves more than the perception of environment, and entails being conscious of, and comprehending, the environment through the use of senses. It means that something has become figural out of the many sensations or events that go on simultaneously. The aim of awareness is to enlarge and enrich potentials in the background, so that what matters – what becomes figural – will stand out as fresh, clear and engaging (Nevis, 1987). Thus an employee demonstrating responsibility and leadership traits takes in and processes all the information related to his/her environment plus his/her relationship with it, while keeping hold of what is the key issue. Awareness in itself is not sufficient; it requires feeding back into the system the fruits of the awareness, re-engaging with the environment and others, to articulate what is thought and felt in relation to oneself and others. This act of re-engaging means that one becomes present for both oneself and others, behaving and being authentic in the moment. This precludes the game-playing prevalent in most meetings.

Action learning and self-disclosure Some of the self-disclosure skills and the ‘‘mode of being’’ required for becoming

authentic are akin to those demonstrated in action learning (Revans, 1982). Action learning is the only structured development approach carried out in an organizational setting that formally includes personal reflection. Action learning provides the safe environment or ‘‘practice field’’ for reflective learning to occur, whilst recognizing that real responsibility lies with the participants who must own the business outcomes. This is a very important concept that is considered essential to learning (Senge, 1990) and wellbeing in psychoanalytical practice. For example, Winnicott termed it a ‘‘transitional space’’ (Phillips, 1988, p. 5); a place that ‘‘both joins and separates the baby and the mother’’ (Phillips, 1988, p. 28). By promoting reflection and insightful inquiry with a small group of perceptive partners in a protected situation where solutions are not always obvious, and by leaving responsibility for implementation of the solution in the participant’s hands, action learning is particularly suited to enhancing traits of authencity. In addition, the ‘‘storytelling’’ nature of the action learning process is well suited to the analysis of organizational emotion as described by Gabriel (2000). On the face of it then, action learning should provide an excellent vehicle for individuals to practice skills of self-disclosure and to explore the use and impact of emotion in their daily work contexts. Unfortunately, action learning as it is traditionally practiced encourages the avoidance or suppression of emotional issues. Although its originator Reg Revans seems to have intended otherwise (Smith, 1998), action learning is typically utilized as an analytical problem solving process, with heavy emphasis on the cognitive dimensions, and little or no acknowledgment of the systemic emotional issues or undercurrents involved. Also helpful are simple self-assessment questionnaires, and ‘‘dialogs with one’s self’’. The shortcoming is best remedied however, as shown below, when facilitators are utilized who can enrich the action learning process by drawing on skills of disciplines such as counseling (Egan, 1986), Gestalt (Nevis, 1987), psychodynamics (Hirschhorn, 1990), and psychoanalysis (Gabriel et al., 1999). Familiarity with the principles of Eastern philosophies such as Taoism, and Hinduism will also be useful (Capra, 1976; Smith and Sharma, 2002).

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Utilizing an enriched action learning approach

References and further reading

The four questions that are central to action learning are: (1) What am I/we trying to accomplish here? (2) What helps me/us? (3) What hinders me/us? (4) What am I/are we going to do to fix the situation? These four questions, and indeed the five traditional steps of action learning (Smith, 1997) equate naturally with the three phases of Egan’s counseling model (Reddy, 1987; Summerfield and Oudtshoorn, 1995): (1) understanding; (2) challenging; and (3) resourcing. The stages of the Gestalt consulting cycle (Nevis, 1987) also map well over these other two approaches. Facilitators are commonly used by action learning groups. Employing facilitators familiar with Gestalt or counseling models vastly enriches the action learning sessions and indeed does enable emotional factors to be appropriately highlighted and addressed. When the facilitator is familiar with psychodynamic and psychoanalytic process consultation principles, the opportunity for group members to explore all aspects of emotion is even further expanded. Familiarity with Eastern-based philosophies such as Taoism and Hinduism that have endured for many hundreds of years is also useful in providing sound practical guidelines for the development of authenticity in this setting. Most importantly, meetings of almost any kind can be operated on the principles of action learning, and therefore meetings in general can indeed become ‘‘real meetings’’. Meetings then run to serve both the emotional needs of the individuals and the task/performance needs of the group. It becomes commonplace, for example, that where people would previously have taken ‘‘comfort breaks’’ when physical discomfort emerged or as a means to avoid exploration of emotional issues, they would also henceforth contract to have ‘‘health breaks’’ where they have permission to explore ‘‘how they feel about what is going on’’. We contend that by adopting this approach the quality of work and work life of the organization will be vastly enhanced over time, and the ground will be well prepared for general adoption of traits of leadership and personal responsibility at all employee levels.

Bull, A. (1996), Counselling Skills And Counselling At Work, Association For Counselling At Work, Rugby. Capra, F. (1976), The Tao Of Physics, Fontana, London. Egan, G. (1973), Face To Face, Brooks Cole Publishing, Monterey, CA. Egan, G. (1986), The Skilled Helper, Brooks Cole, Monterey, CA. Gabriel, Y. (2000), Storytelling In Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gabriel, Y., Hirschhorn, L., McCollom Hampton, M., Schwartz, H.S. and Swogger, G. Jr (1999), Organizations in Depth: The Psychoanalysis of Organizations, Sage, London. Goldstein, J. (1992), ‘‘The unconscious life of organizations: anxiety, authority, and boundaries – an interview with Larry Hirschhorn, PhD’’, Organization Development Journal, Vol. 10 No. 4. Hirschhorn, L. (1990), ‘‘Leaders and followers in a postindustrial age: a psychodynamic view’’, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 26 No. 4. Kegan, R. and Lahey, L.L. (2000), How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Lukensmeyer, C.J. and Parlett, M. (1997), ‘‘Power, change, and authenticity: a political and Gestalt perspective’’, British Gestalt Journal, Vol. 6 No. 1. Nevis, E.C. (1987), Organizational Consulting; A Gestalt Approach, Gardner Press, New York, NY. Phillips, A. (1988), Winnicott, Fontana Press, London. Putnam, L.L. and Mumby, D.K. (1993), ‘‘Organizations, emotion and the myth of rationality’’, in Fineman, S. (Ed.), Emotion in Organizations, Sage Publications, London, pp. 36-57. Reddy, M. (1987), The Manager’s Guide to Counselling at Work, Methuen, London. Revans, R.W. (1982), The Origins and Growth of Action Learning, Chartwell-Bratt, London. Schein, E.H. (1997), Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2nd ed., Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Senge, P. (1990), The Fifth Discipline, Century Business, Random Century, London. Smith, P.A.C. (1997), Performance Learning, Management Decision, Vol. 35 No. 10. Smith, P.A.C. (1998), ‘‘Action learning: praxiology of variants’’, Industrial & Commercial Training, Vol. 30 No. 7. Smith, P.A.C. and Saint-Onge, H. (1996), ‘‘The evolutionary organization: avoiding a Titanic fate’’, The Learning Organization, Vol. 3 No. 4. Smith, P.A.C. and Sharma, M. (2002), ‘‘A performancebased approach to knowledge management, part 1-3’’, Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, March, available at: www.tlainc.com/kjmpv3.htm Summerfield, J. and van Oudtshoorn, L. (1995), Counselling in the Workplace, CIPD, London. Zinker, J. (1998), In Search Of Good Form: Gestalt Therapy With Couples and Families, Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, Cleveland, OH.

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In her book Developing Gestalt Counselling Mackewn (1997) indicated the move from the original Gestalt idea of ‘‘interruptions to contact’’ as follows:

Contact styles Trevor Bentley

Perls et al. (1994) termed fixed styles of contact, such as confluence, retroflection, projection or introjection ‘‘disturbances to contact’’ at the contact boundary or ‘‘interruptions to contact’’. However Wheeler (1991) has argued that what Goodman and Perls called ‘‘interruptions to contact’’ could more aptly be dimensions or styles of contact.

In these notes I discuss six contact styles (Wheeler, 1991) that impact on how our contact and engagement with people and ideas are affected by our tendency to operate with one or more of these contact styles.

The author Trevor Bentley works with Boards of Directors as a Corporate Spellcracker. He is a Partner in The Space Between, Stroud, UK.

Introjecting

Keywords Gestalt psychology, Individual behaviour, Self-development Abstract Indicates ways in which contact styles can significantly enhance and interrupt learning. Claims there is considerable benefit to be obtained by everyone assessing their contact style tendencies and then moderating them so that they become more helpful in maintaining contact and learning. Discusses six contact styles that impact on our contact and engagement with people and ideas. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0969-6474.htm

This particular style flows from an extreme position of ‘‘swallowing whole’’ to its other extreme of ‘‘over questioning’’. At either extreme contact and learning is blocked or distorted. Swallowing whole and reiterating what has been taken in as a fixed rule or a ‘‘should’’, blocks our receptivity to new information and also prevents the assimilation of what has been swallowed, i.e. there is no or very little digestion and we suffer a form of indigestion. Over questioning also blocks contact and learning by never accepting or receiving what is being offered. When people are able to moderate their style and operate in the middle ground between these two extremes contact and learning is enhanced. This happens through a careful ‘‘chewing’’ of what comes in and a selective ‘‘spitting out’’ of what is not thought to be worth taking in.

Projecting

The Learning Organization Volume 9 . Number 5 . 2002 . pp. 202–205 # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0969-6474 DOI 10.1108/09696470210442141

Projecting as a style of contact completely blocks learning when the person concerned looks outside themselves and projects their views and feelings on others, i.e. not owning their opinions and feelings. So if they feel bad they blame someone else for ‘‘making’’ them feel bad. At the other extreme is ‘‘over owning’’ and being ‘‘over literal’’, i.e. taking responsibility for everything that happens. This has the 202

Contact styles


Trevor Bentley

effect of distorting learning, particularly being over literal and unable to connect with their imaginations. Choiceful projection, such as putting myself in the position to try to experience life as another person does, can support contact and learning.

Deflecting In this style the individual ranges from the extreme of a constantly changing frame of reference and/or the deliberate change of focus, to the other extreme of doggedly staying with the same point way beyond the point of usefulness. Again both extremes interrupt contact and learning. In the middle ground deflecting as a form of defence against others’ projections is very supportive. Here it is possible through deflecting the irrelevant to be highly focused on what is important.

Retroflecting Retroflecting is a fascinating contact style in that its extremes of ‘‘holding in’’ and being ‘‘aggressively expressive’’ are both impactful in the way that they completely break contact or disengage from learning. When we hold back or block the expression of a feeling, thought or emotion we do not lose what we have not expressed – it goes elsewhere, usually in the form of selfdenigration or self-harm. We might also retroflect by meeting our own needs when we feel that others are not meeting them; e.g. we might stroke, or hug ourselves. Being ‘‘over expressive’’ or ‘‘aggressively expressive’’ invades the others’ boundaries and leads to a defensive reaction that interrupts contact and learning. In the centre of this range is ‘‘clear expression’’ which is extremely supportive of contact and learning. It is often very difficult for people with a retroflective style to find this more balanced approach. There is a tendency for them to flip from one extreme to the other.

Confluence The confluent style has two extremes ‘‘confluent’’ and ‘‘highly differentiated’’.

Once again, at either extreme contact and learning are interrupted. This happens because at the confluent extreme we lose sight of ourselves and our needs, whereas at the highly differentiated extreme we are more interested in giving forth than we are in taking in. To be so conforming as to relinquish our own opinion and position is at one and the same time protective and diminishing. I take no risks and I lose my sense of self. To be highly differentiated I take many risks, in particular the risks of being rejected and isolated. To balance these two extremes is to find some level of conforming and some level of differentiation that allows for good contact and engagement in the particular circumstances in which I find myself.

Desensitising Closing down sensory awareness clearly has a direct impact on contact and learning. We stay protected in an impervious shell. Being over sensitive without any shell at all is a highly vulnerable place to be and inhibits my willingness to engage and to learn. In this place I constantly feel threatened and have the urge to run away and hide. The moderated position of being sensitive and aware of what is going on is extremely supportive of learning and allows us to take in without feeling fearful and threatened.

Early conditioning All these contact styles develop as we grow and develop from the very beginning of our lives. The environment into which we are born and all the contact episodes that we experience, both good and bad, condition us through our reactions and responses. Our earliest needs are to survive and to do so we have to make contact and engage with our environment and learn as fast as we can. It is this process of learning and the development of coping strategies that condition us towards a tendency of one or more contact styles. And so it is for the rest of our lives until we decide to choose to interrupt our old patterns and to do things differently.

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Choosing to do things differently

we are functioning at our best in terms of contact and learning.

The first step is to appreciate the contact styles where we have a tendency to lean into the unhelpful and interruptive extremes. I find it helpful to work with people to complete a simple polar scale showing their preferred range of operating for each contact style. In Figure 1 each contact style is displayed with its polar extremes and the central position described. The operating range is then shown by the thick line between the polar extremes. The example given in Figure 1 is a recent assessment I did of my own contact style preferences. These have changed significantly over the last ten or so years from being over questioning, projecting, deflecting, aggressively expressive, highly differentiated and desensitised. The aim of my therapy and other personal work has been to moderate my contact style towards a more central position whilst also being able to explore and experiment with operating at the extremes. This shift of style has to involve making a choice. That is each of us has to choose what seems to work for us and to recognise when

Coaching for growth I believe that it is perfectly possible and quite reasonable for individuals and teams to learn how to moderate their contact styles to increase contact and learning and as a consequence to increase their performance. This process starts by a discussion of contact styles and then a personal subjective assessment of where people currently operate on the range and the extent to which this is supportive or not. In a team situation this is done individually and then shared with the team. In this way it becomes possible for people to see and gain some appreciation of what may be blocking contact and learning in the team. From this point individuals are invited to experiment with operating differently and to seeking support from their colleagues as they do so. The coaching focuses on the impact of contact styles on the work situation and avoids exploring deeper personal issues that might arise as people experiment. When it is

Figure 1 Contact styles

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clear that individuals might benefit from further and deeper personal work my suggestion is to recommend separate counselling and therapy should they wish to continue their journey at a deeper level.

Contact and learning The link between contact and learning is to me a very clear one. In any learning situation whether it is deliberate or accidental learners are in contact with the environment in some way that enhances their experience. This experience may in some way change or add to their current store of learning by affecting their, attitudes, skills and knowledge, and in due course their behaviour. If learners are not in contact or contact is blocked no learning takes place. The possible learning experience becomes interrupted as described above and the learners cease to benefit from the experience. In one recent example a participant on a workshop complained that he was learning nothing from his experience. When invited to look at how he was blocking his learning by examining his contact style he quickly recognised his tendency to over question. When he moved to a position of spending some time chewing on what he was experiencing and only spitting out that part which clearly did not fit for him he started to

learn. He was significantly impacted by this experience. At another level we have all experienced those potential learning opportunities when we have ceased to engage with the learning process and when we have deflected our attention to something more engaging. At such moments our learning ceases, at least it moves from the intended learning to something else that does engage us. So the moment of contact and engagement is vital for learning to take place and anything which blocks contact and engagement interrupts learning.

Conclusion In this article I have indicated ways in which contact styles can significantly enhance and interrupt learning. There is considerable benefit to be obtained by everyone assessing their contact style tendencies and then moderating them so that they become more helpful in maintaining contact and learning.

References Mackewn, J. (1997), Developing Gestalt Counselling, Sage Publishing, London. Wheeler, G. (1991), Gestalt Reconsidered: A New Approach to Contact and Resistance, Gardener Press, New York, NY.

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Leading with the Tao: the energizing power of respect Diane E. Dreher

The author Diane E. Dreher is Professor and former Chair of the English department at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, USA. Keywords Organizational learning, Leadership, Information, Groups, Development Abstract Written over 25 centuries ago in ancient China, the Tao Te Ching offers ideational principles and practical guidelines for today’s learning organizations. By portraying the energy patterns that recur throughout creation, the Tao provides new insights for planning and problem solving. By focusing on process, the Tao reveals the vital connection between personal growth and growth in organizations. Unlike mechanistic management that treats people like replaceable parts, leading with the Tao respects people and process, leveraging positive personal and organizational change to produce greater energy, innovation, and productivity. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0969-6474.htm


In a period of challenge and change, an innovative book on leadership appeared that emphasized dynamic growth and continuous learning. The author was not Senge, Argyris, or Fritz but the legendary Chinese sage, Tzu. Written over 25 centuries ago, his handbook for leaders, the Tao Te Ching[1], is a collection of 81 lyric poems translated more than any book in the world but the Bible. The Tao has endured because its lessons are as real today as they were during the warring states period in ancient China. Based on Lao Tzu’s close observations of nature, the Tao reveals the wisdom of living systems: the power of water, gentle and nurturing, that can cut through solid rock, and the strength of bamboo that bends with the wind and does not break. The Tao describes the patterns of Qi (pronounced ‘‘chi’’), the vital energy that informs all creation and the basis for traditional Chinese medicine, meditation, and martial arts. The ebb and flow of the tides, the phases of the moon, and the changing seasons are all variations on the energy cycles that occur in nature and in individuals, families, organizations, and nations. As psychologist Lynch has explained, ‘‘The Tao means how’’ – how nature works, revealing the vital patterns of energy within and around us (Lynch, 2001). Following the Tao means recognizing these patterns and blending with them to create greater harmony in our lives and work. Anticipating modern physics, the Tao affirms that we are part of a living system: that nothing in the universe stands still (Capra, 1975). Within this context, leadership is a creative process, a journey of discovery from what is to what may be (Fritz, 1999). The heart of the journey is our own personal development, which intimately influences everything around us. Effective leaders operate on two levels simultaneously. In the language of Tao, they combine yin and yang; inner directed, yet aware of externals, they balance the Socratic wisdom of knowing themselves with a keen awareness of the energies around them (Quinn, 2000). We live in a culture of extreme outer-directedness. By cultivating the inner life, the Tao, like other spiritual traditions, helps us acquire balance. Being inner-directed makes us more aware of our values and the energies within and around us. Outer-directed people get too caught up in these energies to do anything but react, while inner-directed people have the

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strength of bamboo. Open at the center, they are flexible, adapting to the winds of change without compromising themselves. Empowered by a sense of purpose, they are like water. Embodying the fluid power of perseverance, they do not perseverate but find their way around or through apparent obstacles. Anyone who has seen the Grand Canyon in the American Southwest or watched the ocean waves wash relentlessly to shore knows these powers of flexibility and perseverance. Unlike the old mechanistic model of organizations in which leaders give orders and treat people like replaceable parts, leading with the Tao means focusing on underlying processes, realizing, as Seattlebased creativity consultant Elkins explains, that ‘‘The things you can’t count are the things that really count’’ (personal communication, December 31, 1997). Much of this involves our attitudes, the subtle energies we communicate in personal interactions (Wheatley, 1992). In a recent article, Goleman et al. (2001, p. 44) articulate what many of us have long recognized: that a ‘‘leader’s mood and behaviors drive the moods and behaviors of everyone else. A cranky and ruthless boss creates a toxic organization filled with negative underachievers who ignore opportunities’’, while inspirational leaders empower their organizations. Research in neuroscience has revealed that interpersonal interactions are emotional energy transactions, producing measurable changes in brain chemistry, blood pressure, hormone levels, cardiovascular function, and immune systems (Goleman et al., 2001). A leader’s moods can affect – or infect – an entire organization, influencing productivity, profit, and overall corporate health. This is why the Tao Te Ching and Renaissance classics like Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince and Shakespeare’s Histories have emphasized the essential inner work of personal leadership. Because they so powerfully influence the energies around them, leaders are profoundly responsible for balancing the energies within them. Today, more than ever, a commitment to ongoing personal growth is a vital leadership task (Goleman et al., 2001; Dreher, 1996; Quinn, 2000).

The power of respect The Tao Te Ching says: ‘‘Those who would lead wisely must first respect life’’ (Dreher, 1996, p. 63; Tao: ch. 75). A major principle of Tao is respect: for ourselves, one another, and the life process. Moreover, since the Tao Te Ching affirms a philosophy of oneness, self and other are intimately connected. Respect transforms reality, turning fragmented interactions into living relationships, conflicts into creative communication, and lifeless, mechanical systems into learning organizations. As philosopher Buber realized, all of life is relationship. We can relate respectfully, ‘‘I – Thou’’; or disrespectfully, treating another as an object, ‘‘I – It’’ (Buber, 1970, p. 53). Through our actions and attitudes we develop what psychologists call ‘‘cognitive maps’’ that define how we perceive our world (O’Keefe and Nadel, 1978). In one familiar cognitive map, the mechanistic Theory X model of organizations, leaders perceive their people as objects, replaceable parts (McGregor, 1960). Their ‘‘I – It’’ disrespect is evident in the ease with which they consider downsizing or outsourcing, in their failure to share information, to listen and learn, to see the people around them not as parts but partners in a dynamic process. Since our cognitive maps include ourselves, disrespectful leaders diminish everyone, including themselves. As Buber has pointed out, when a leader: . . . views the beings around him as so many machines capable of different achievements that have to be calculated and used for the cause . . . that is also how he views himself. . . He treats himself, too, as an It (Buber, 1970, p. 118).

Self-respect In Taoist terms, any organization is an organism: since everything is connected, a change in one part inevitably affects the rest. A change in our attitude can begin a new cycle of respect, transforming the energies within and around us. Self-respect builds integrity, uniting our thoughts and feelings, words and actions, into a new cycle of personal empowerment. In their Warriors of the Heart workshops, Canadian leadership consultants Brown and Hatala build on the power of respect to ‘‘provide an opportunity for genuine, meaningful transformation and

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growth to occur from the inside-out’’ (personal communication, May 20, 2002). Initially, self-respect transforms the world within us: keeping us centered, preventing us from compromising our values, treating ourselves as ‘‘less than’’, or enslaving ourselves to external demands. Transforming the world around us, respect helps us make wiser decisions, communicating a new cycle of respect for others. With the power of respect, anyone can become a change agent (Quinn, 2000). We can initiate a new cycle of positive growth by respecting ourselves as living systems: renewing our connection with nature, beginning a regular contemplative practice, honoring our own energies, and being honest with ourselves and others.

Personal cultivation The Tao says: Tao leaders live close to nature. Their actions flow from the heart. In words they are true; In decisions, just; In business, effective; In action, aware of the timing (Dreher, 1996, p. 45; Tao, ch. 8).

Lao Tzu discovered the wisdom of Tao by wandering in the woods, observing the water, the wind, and the changing seasons. We can experience nature by walking in a nearby park or find solace in our gardens as many leaders have done, including Thomas Jefferson and Winston Churchill (Dreher, 2001). Although spending time in nature seems far removed from the life of organizations, it provides us with greater insight into the cycles of energy within and around us. Recent psychological studies have also revealed nature’s profound effect on our physical and emotional wellbeing. Relieving stress, dispelling depression, and aiding recovery from physical illness, nature can strengthen and heal us on many levels (Barrett, 1992; Cooper and Barnes, 1999; Kaplan and Kaplan, 1990). In the midst of hectic corporate demands, it takes discipline to set aside time to spend in nature and courage to acknowledge our own needs. But successful leaders respect their own personal resources; they are wise stewards of their energies. Brown and Hatala teach meditation, reflection, and visualization as an essential part of leadership development

(personal communication, May 20, 2002). Research on successful CEOs in California’s Silicon Valley has demonstrated the powerful effects of regular contemplative practice. Whether this means beginning the day with a few moments of quiet meditation, keeping a journal, or taking solitary walks in nature, all the CEOs in the study had such a practice. When pressing deadlines stretched their schedules with long hours of work, they regained their balance by looking to the larger cycles. At the end of a stressful project, these savvy CEOs took time off to recharge, resting and regaining their equilbrium with what Delbecq and Friedlander have called ‘‘horizontal balance’’ (Delbecq and Friedlander, 1995, p. 267). Aware of their own energy cycles, mindful leaders set a standard of balance for their organizations, working not harder, but smarter. When psychologist Millis was a usability engineer in a Silicon Valley Internet company, she observed that the most productive manager left early on many Fridays for personal renewal, beginning the next week with a new burst of creative energy. He also encouraged his people to monitor their energies, taking time off when necessary to avoid burning out (personal communication, May 3, 2002). Being true to our own needs and values means being honest with ourselves and others, ‘‘honest’’, the Tao says, ‘‘as an uncarved block of wood’’ (Dreher, 1996, p. 173; Tao, ch. 15). Honesty builds an atmosphere of openness and trust, what Hendricks and Ludeman (1996, pp. 29-30) have called ‘‘a force field of aliveness, energy, and creativity’’, while dishonesty drains energy from ourselves, other people and the organization. The layers of worry, inner conflict, excuses, and cover-ups divide us from ourselves and one another, while honesty promotes greater health on all levels. As Hendricks and Ludeman (1996, p. 137) admonish: ‘‘One of the main messages of life is: Don’t lie to yourself. Lying to others will get you in trouble, but lying to yourself will make you sick’’.

Respect for others The Tao says that ‘‘respect increases respect, creating essential harmony" (Dreher, 1996, p. 66; Tao ch. 49) From self-respect flows respect for others, a principle of harmony in

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many traditions from the Tao to the Golden Rule to the compassion of Buddhism and the African spirit of ubuntu, the essential interconnectedness of all humanity (ununtu ngamuntu ababantu: ‘‘I am only human because of other humans’’) and the foundation for the transformational Truth and Reconciliation Commision that broke the cycles of violence to forge a new South Africa (personal communication, Ketan Lakhani, May 2, 2002; see also Senge et al., 1994). If the power of respect can transform nations, it holds great promise for organizations. Yet as O’Brien, former president of Hanover Insurance has observed: Our traditional hierarchical organizations are not designed to provide for people’s higher order needs, self-respect and self-actualization. The ferment in management will continue until organizations begin to address these needs for all employees (as cited in Senge, 1990, p. 140).

Affirming the power of respect, South African leadership consultant Lakhani asks himself: Does what I am doing enhance people’s understanding of this interconnectedness or does it lead to alienation?

Living with respect helps him become a creative change agent. He says: It gives me the courage to be bold and honest: it allows me to ‘‘push’’ people to the edges of their comfort zone. It allows me to sit with the pain or discomfort I might cause because I know the pain to be mine as well. It allows me to truly help people confront their delusions: I am less afraid of tears and hurt – mine or that of others. And I am more willing to be compassionate (personal communication, May 2, 2002).

We transmit respect (or disrespect) by the way we communicate. As Wheatley (1992, p. 101) points out, a common complaint in many organizations is ‘‘poor communication’’. Many leaders respond by holding more meetings or sending more e-mails, but the problem may lie in the way they define ‘‘communication’’ (Wheatley, 1992). According to contemporary rhetorical theory, information is not some static ‘‘object’’ (I – It) to be transported from management to employees, but a dynamic process in which listening and speaking, gesture and style, text and context combine to create meaning (Ede, 2001; Wheatley, 1992). Information is a living system, a Taoist blend of converging insights and energies. We communicate as much through our actions and attitudes as through our words. As Elkins explains:

Building a creative culture isn’t as simple as saying, ‘‘Let’s be more creative,’’ or of putting a ‘‘suggestion’’ or ‘‘idea’’ box out . . . It starts with leadership respecting the employees, telling them that not only do they want ideas but also identifying key focus statements they want ideas on, handling the ideas with the appropriate respect, rewarding – in a visible way – the effort and the success. Building a creative culture creates energy and energy creates more creativity; they feed on each other. At its core, I believe it reverts back to being valued. When employees feel truly valued, their passion and energy rise (personal communication, May 5, 2002).

Authentic respect empowers people; dishonest imitations do not. Psychological research reveals that we know whether a smile or gesture is authentic or not. Centuries of evolution have enabled us to detect the ‘‘cheaters’’ in our midst (Ekman and Friesen, 1974; Ekman et al., 1988). Tuning in to subtle cues, most people can tell the difference between real respect and corporate con games. Respectful communication requires thoughtful listening. When Robert Eckert became the new CEO of Mattel, he began eating lunch in the employee cafeteria, using this casual, unstructured time to meet his new employees, build trust, try out new ideas, and get important feedback. The Tao says, ‘‘Those who admit that they don’t know/ become wise’’ (Dreher, 1996, p. 164; Tao, ch. 71). Eckert (2001, p. 54) admits that ‘‘recognizing my own lack of knowledge about the company’s people and culture – in effect, allowing employees to be the ‘boss’ in certain situations – actually helped me lead’’). Listening to their advice not only resulted in wiser decisions; it began a new cycle of morale and commitment that led to greater productivity and profit. Respecting people means valuing their essential nature. Unlike machines, which can do the same repetitive task over and over, human beings cannot. We get bored, make mistakes, get repetitive stress injuries. But unlike machines, what we can do is learn, grow, and self-actualize. This is our essential nature. However, to become most fully ourselves, we must be valued. Eckert discovered for himself the energizing power of active listening advocated by psychologist Rogers (1951). Rogers used such listening as the key to personal empowerment in his clinical practice and international peace work. In his final years he carried in his wallet this

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quote about leadership and empowerment from the Tao Te Ching: With the best of leaders, When the work is done, The project completed, The people all say ‘‘We did it ourselves’’ (Dreher, 1996, p. 122; Tao, ch 17).

Essential to ongoing growth and empowerment, open communication is the life blood of learning organizations, a dynamic process, circulating through the system, picking up new insights and energies with every interaction so that people ‘‘work smarter’’ and the organization continues to thrive (Senge et al., 1994). As Argyris (1994, p. 77) has noted: Twenty-first century corporations will find it hard to survive, let alone flourish, unless they get better work from their employees. This does not necessarily mean harder work or more work. What it does necessarily mean is employees who’ve learned to take active responsibility for their own behavior, develop and share first-rate information about their jobs, and make good use of genuine empowerment to shape lasting solutions to fundamental problems.

Respect fosters this kind of communication, requiring leaders to make systemic changes in their cognitive maps: to trust the process, to tell the truth, sometimes the unpleasant truth and, as Argyris has pointed out, to stop patronizing their employees in the parental guise of protecting them (Argyris, 1994). Open communication can be unsettling. It unearths conflicts, difficulties, divergent points of view. How often are we threatened by opposition, recoiling in aversion from someone who disagrees with us? Yet, in Taoist terms, conflict is part of the landscape of life, the two polarities of yin and yang, which originally meant only the shady and sunny sides of the same mountain. While our Western cognitive maps polarize opposition as either/or: right or wrong, all or nothing, win or lose, the Tao upholds a vision of the larger whole, affirming ‘‘When the parts are separated, there can be no harmony’’ (Dreher, 1996, p. 186; Tao, ch. 39). In the holistic world of Tao, mountain and valley, day and night, your ideas and mine are part of the larger harmony. One man who lives this harmony is international conflict resolution facilitator, Dudley Weeks, who asks opponents to become partners, listening and focusing on

their own and each other’s needs. On the solid foundation of mutual respect and ‘‘shared needs’’, they build bridges of new possibilities (Weeks, 1992, p. 143). Effectively resolving conflict interpersonally and internationally, Weeks’s process works because it shifts our attention. Otherwise we can become so fixated on problems we fail to find solutions. Hating, fearing, blaming, worrying about consequences, we remain stuck in dysfunction. But facing conflict as a natural process, an opportunity to learn and grow, moves us forward. Shifting our focus from the problem to what we need moves us from ‘‘what is’’ to ‘‘what may be’’. Our attention is a powerful lazer of focused energy, an effective tool for not only conflict resolution but long-range planning. Instead of just lurching along from one problem to another, we can use the power of focused attention to uncover new possibilities. One way is to pay greater attention to what works, to times we felt most fully alive, most deeply ourselves. Psychologist Maslow (1993, pp. 168-72) called these times ‘‘peak experiences’’, milestones on the road to self-actualization. Cooperrider uses stories of personal empowerment in his process of appreciation inquiry, harnessing positive energy to transform organizations. Elkins uses the power of storytelling in his Gatehouse: Spirit in the Workplace seminars, helping people find greater meaning and passion in their lives and work. In my classes and Tao Leadership workshops, I ask people to visualize, then write about their ‘‘defining moments’’, times when they felt most fully themselves. By focusing on these stories, people discover their own talents and passions, learning to cultivate them more mindfully (Cooperrider and Whitney, 1999; Elkins, personal communication, May 5, 2002; Dreher, 1998, p. 180).

Respect for the process The Tao says, ‘‘Be present, observe the process. Stay centered and prevail’’ (Dreher, 1996, p. 28; Tao, ch. 33). Sometimes, the fast pace of contemporary life can undermine even the best intentions. Years ago, two psychologists held an experiment at Princeton Theological Seminary, asking ministerial students to prepare a short talk on a religious subject, then walk across campus to present

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it. Some of these students were told to hurry because they were running late. On the way, the students ran into a man slumped over in an alley, coughing, groaning, in apparent distress. Of the ‘‘late’’ students 90 per cent rushed by the man without stopping to help. Ironically, many of them went on to give a talk about the Good Samaritan (Darley and Batson, 1973; Gladwell, 2000). What does this mean? Under stress – and rushing is a form of stress – we narrow our focus into ‘‘fight or flight’’, numbing ourselves to the complexities of the world around us (Selye, 1976; LeDoux, 1996). Stressed-out people are subject to insensitivity and poor judgment because they are not fully ‘‘present’’ to themselves and one another. Communicating with respect means being better stewards of our time: setting boundaries, delegating when possible, and eliminating nonessentials in order to be more fully present to ourselves and our world. As the Princeton experiment demonstrates, communication involves both text and context. Paradoxically, advances in communication technology have increased miscommunication, alienation, and anxiety. While useful and efficient, electronic communication deprives us of the familiar human contacts that once defined community at work. Busy professionals often spend two to three hours a day answering their e-mail, drastically reducing time for personal interaction. Psychiatrist Hallowell (1999, p. 58) emphasizes the importance of ‘‘the human moment: an authentic psychological encounter that can happen only when two people share the same physical space’’. Personal interactions reduce stress: lowering ‘‘blood levels of the stress hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol’’ (Hallowell, 1999, p. 63), while electronic communication can actually increase it. Deprived of gesture, expression, and tone, an e-mail can often be taken wrongly, creating misunderstanding and serious emotional damage. We can all probably recall having someone misread one of our e-mails. Impersonal text, devoid of human warmth, can seem stark and demanding, causing unintentional ‘‘I – It’’ interactions. Realizing the importance of the ‘‘human moment’’, resourceful leaders come up with strategies to keep people connected. When Numan chaired the Psychology Department at Santa Clara University, he would make

regular ‘‘rounds’’ first thing in the morning and again at the end of the day, stopping by his colleagues’ offices to see how they were doing and find out if they needed anything (personal communication, February 14, 1994). When Elkins was Director of Quality for Computer Services at Boeing, he organized what he called a ‘‘WOBBLE’’ (Weekly Organizational Brown Bag Lunch Encounter). People gathered voluntarily for brown bag lunches, watching videos on consciousness and creativity, discussing and relating them to their work (personal communication, December 31, 1997). In both cases, morale and creativity thrived on the power of personal connections. Personal connections have measurable value, according to research on transactive memory. Psychologists have found that our memory systems are expanded through relationships. Couples, families, and working groups ‘‘share’’ a network of information in a manner similar to that of linked computers (Wegner et al., 1991; Gladwell, 2000). In a group with strong relationships, a person knows who to go to to get needed information. Gladwell praises Gore Associates for its exemplary ability to innovate and quickly respond to changing market demands. Because divisions within the company are kept intentionally small, people can draw upon a dynamic network of shared memory. The results – one of the USA’s best-run companies with over 35 years of profit and growth, and a high rate of employee retention (Gladwell, 2000) – demonstrate the tangible value of a network of personal connections. Interpersonal communication cultivates an atmosphere of trust, in which people not only share information, but work together to promote a higher level of effectiveness. Transcending ego and defensiveness, they can dare to disagree for the good of the whole. This dynamic exchange of ideas is essential to learning and the pursuit of any science. As psychologist Seligman (1998, p. 42) has explained, ‘‘Criticism to scientists is just another means of finding out whether they’re wrong, like running another experiment to see if it confirms or refutes a theory . . . it is one of the best ways human beings have evolved to get closer to the truth’’. Recognizing that our greatest natural resources are the hearts and minds of the people around us, the source of organizational

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growth and discovery, mindful leaders recognize that it is not only inhumane but counterproductive to treat people like replaceable parts. As Saldich, president and CEO of Raychem has said, ‘‘Companies must shift from using and then harvesting employees to constantly renewing employees’’ (cited in Waterman et al., 1994, p. 88). Two years ago, when leaders at Marriott realized their culture of sacrifice and long, grueling hours was making it harder to recruit and retain people, they began a new campaign of employee renewal. During a six month pilot project in three Northeastern hotels, they reduced hours by eliminating unnecessary meetings and procedures, increased efficiency by adding Internet access, and actively worked to change the culture. Emphasizing work/life balance, they encouraged employees to take comp time during slow periods. At the end of the pilot project, excessive hours were reduced and an employee survey revealed a significant decrease in burnout and exhaustion – all this with no drop in quality and an actual increase in productivity (Munck, 2000). Valuing their people brought greater value to the organization.

In their recent book, Hope’s Edge, Lappe´ and Lappe´ (2002) write of ordinary people whose small choices have produced extraordinary change. One of my favorite stories is that of Wangari Maathai, a woman in Kenya who witnessed the devastating cycle of drought, soil depletion, and poverty brought about by deforestation. By the late 1970s Kenya’s forests had been reduced by 95 per cent. When the government failed to respond, Maathai started a tree nursery in her home, organizing a group of women to plant and care for the tiny seedlings. The movement spread, empowering tens of thousands of women. By 2001, the Green Belt Movement had planted 20 million trees, significantly improving the life, landscape, and economy in Kenya. Results like these are possible because we are part of a living system, because nothing in the universe stands still, and because at any time, by becoming more aware of the energies within and around us, we can begin a new cycle of creative change. Because everything is connected, small steps can lead to great results. This lesson echoes through the centuries in my favorite quote from the Tao Te Ching: A tree that reaches past your embrace Grows from one small seed. A structure over nine stories high Begins with a handful of earth. A journey of a thousand miles Begins with a single step (Dreher, 2000, p. 3; Tao, ch. 64).

A vision of hope The Tao tells us: Be aware of small things And develop great wisdom (Dreher, 1996, p. 137; Tao, ch. 52).

With its fluid vision of reality, the Tao reminds us of the power of small choices in leveraging large-scale organizational change (Senge, 1990). Gladwell describes how in the last decade felonies in New York City dropped by half and murders by two-thirds. Applying the ‘‘broken windows’’ theory that crime grows in response to neglect and disorder, in the early 1990s the New York subway began cleaning graffiti from the trains and arresting people who failed to pay fares. Crime fell dramatically. In 1994, the head of the Transit Police, William Bratton, became New York Police Chief, extending this campaign to the city at large: arresting people for vandalism and public drunkenness. As Gladwell (2000, p. 167) explains, ‘‘context matters’’. Relatively small changes in the environment radically reversed the cycle of crime in the city.

By taking that step, we can all become creative change agents, cultivating the energies within and around us to make a positive difference in our world.

Note 1 One excellent translation of the entire Tao Te Ching is: Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching (1972 edition), translated by Gia-Fun Feng and Jane English, published by Random House, New York, NY.

References Argyris, C. (1994), ‘‘Good communication that blocks learning’’, Harvard Business Review, July-August, pp. 77-85. Barrett, M. (1992), Creating Eden, Harper, San Francisco, CA.

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Emotion, learning and organizing Yiannis Gabriel and Dorothy S. Griffiths

The authors Yiannis Gabriel is Professor of Organizational Theory and Dorothy S. Griffiths is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Studies, both at the Imperial College, London, UK. Keywords Personnel psychology, Organizational behaviour, Anxiety, Motivation Abstract Far from being emotional deserts, organizations are full of emotion and passion. Increasingly, management has sought to harness emotion to increase work motivation, enhance customer service and work performance and the ‘‘emotional intelligence’’ advocates have sought to develop a toolkit for the smarter deployment of emotions in organizations. Using social constructionist and psychoanalytic ideas, the author argues that the management of emotions is problematic and precarious. Some emotions may be contained or re-directed, but many arise from deeper unconscious sources and are impervious to learning. Two specific emotions, anxiety and love, are discussed. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0969-6474.htm


Intellect and emotion have long stood at opposite ends of philosophical conceptions of human beings. The period of history frequently described as modernity, which reached its apogee in the twentieth century, has long been seen as one that marked the ascendancy of rational, calculating, intellectual human at the expense of passionate, emotional, impulsive one. Following the great German sociologist Max Weber, organizations, as chief institutions of modernity, were seen as essentially rational instruments for the achievement of administrative, business and technical ends. Calculation, knowledge, careful planning were meant to drive personal feeling, impulsive action and traditional ways of doing things increasingly out. It is not that organizations were meant to be emotion-free zones, but rather they were meant to be zones in which business was conducted according to rational plans and calculations. How curious then it is to reflect that the twentieth century was characterized by some of the most extraordinary and costly experiments in human irrationality. Equally, how curious it is to discover that as the century drew to its close, there was hardly an area of organizational life which was not being re-thought as being saturated with emotion, passion and fantasy. Leadership, for example, was now seen increasingly as acting on people’s emotions and passions through visions and missions; innovation was seen as depending crucially on a passionate thirst for the new and disenchantment with the old; customer service was seen as relying on emotional rapport and friendly smiles as much as on professional competence and expertise. Increasing amounts of work that all of us do in and out of organizations involve the reading of other people’s emotions and the display and expression of suitable emotions by ourselves. Emotional intelligence and emotional labour are terms which have rapidly become common-place in management-speak, and for very good reasons. Far from being emotional deserts, organizations are rapidly being reconfigured as arenas for the deployment, management and resourcing of human emotion. One aspect of organizational life that is being reconfigured as a consequence is learning, at individual, group and organizational levels. It is now rapidly

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Emotion, learning and organizing


Yiannis Gabriel and Dorothy S. Griffiths

recognized that learning is not a pure cognitive process, a process involving solely the brain. It is also an emotional process – learning under the guidance of a loved teacher or a respected manager is different from learning in the presence of a hated teacher or a cynical supervisor. Learning as part of an exciting group is different from learning in a group riven with rivalries and acrimony. Learning in an organization which allows experimentation, innovation and failure is different from learning in an organization that values tradition, obedience and avoidance of failure at all costs. It is not the case that cynical managers, acrimonious groups and defensive organizations discourage learning. Far from it. What they do is to encourage a kind of learning that promotes defensive attitudes, conservatism and destruction of all new ideas as potentially threatening and subversive. Emotions then are now being recognized as an inevitable feature of organizational life. But what are the main theoretical tools for understanding emotions, making sense of them and, maybe, guiding them, taming them and civilizing them? In this article we shall briefly introduce two approaches, the emotional intelligence approach and the social constructionist approach, before introducing in greater detail some of the strengths of a psychoanalytic approach to the study of organizational emotion. Undoubtedly the most popular current approach among managers, consultants and practitioners centers on the idea of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995, 1998, 2001; Salovey and Mayer, 1990). This has emerged as the latest managerial fad, spawning a veritable cottage industry of gurus, publications, gizmos and buzz-words – even a superficial search on the Internet reveals armies of consultants offering to increase the emotional intelligence of the businessperson and his or her staff. Behind the hype, the emotional intelligence enthusiasts have proposed a number of ideas on emotions drawing from brain, behavioural and psychoanalytic research and framed them in the language of management learning and customer care. Notable among them, are the following: . Many types of work in today’s organizations depend crucially on emotional skills, such as empathy, sensitivity to the feelings of others, anger

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and emotion management, self-awareness and so forth. These skills are part of an entity which can be seen as emotional literacy or emotional intelligence, which individuals acquire to different extents in early life and develop subsequently. Emotional intelligence can be quantified and individuals with higher emotional intelligence are better able to lead others, strike deals, handle relationships or sell products, through intelligent deployment of their own emotions and the management and exploitation of the emotions of others. Unlike intellectual intelligence which is immune to improvement, emotional intelligence is uniquely suited to being developed and enhanced through sensitivity packages, role play and other types of training. If emotional intelligence can be learned, learning itself is conditioned by emotional intelligence, for instance, in the ability to sustain motivation, to control disappointment, to tame anxiety, and to form emotional relations with people capable of teaching.

These ideas have undoubtedly gained much currency in the last five years, not least because they meet most practitioners’ impulsive attraction towards anything that can be readily applied. And there can be little doubt that they have found numerous applications that have proven effective. However, the effectiveness of management ideas is not always proof of their soundness and rigour – they can equally be the result of chance, circumstance or the emotional needs of those adopting them. Among academics, the concept of emotional intelligence has come under serious critical scrutiny. Thus Fineman (2000a,b), in a trenchant critique of this approach, argues that emotional intelligence represents an attempt to quantify and tame emotion, making it the servant of the organization’s bottom line. As if not content to control individuals’ movements, behaviour and appearance, organizations seek to control the ways they feel and the ways they express their feelings. Some feelings are appropriated and developed, in as much as they help the organization – empathy, hope, excitement, pride and so forth. Others, like greed, envy, anger and disgust, are controlled

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and repressed. In all these ways, emotional intelligence enthusiasts, while claiming to liberate emotion, seek to subordinate it to reason and in particular the instrumental reason of business and organizations. Maybe the popularization of emotional intelligence gives us cause to celebrate – it brings emotion out of the organizational closet. But it also captures and simplifies emotion. In particular: it determines a moral order of emotions where ‘‘highly’’ emotionally intelligent individuals are judged as more organizationally worthy than those of ‘‘low’’ emotional intelligence (echoing debates on the tyranny of IQ); it creates a dependence on the emotion consultant and his/her values, questionnaires and training courses; and it misleadingly assumes that we can readily identify, sift and select ‘‘appropriate’’ emotions (Fineman, 2000b, p. 17).

Can emotions then become such loyal and dependable organizational servants as the emotional intelligence advocates would have us believe? Social construction theorists have, for the past 20 years or so, argued that emotions are learned not in accordance with managerial dictates, but as a way of making sense of social situations and functioning effectively in them. Seen from the social constructionist perspective (Kemper, 1978; Averill, 1980; Harre´, 1986; Fineman, 1993, 1997; Mangham, 1998), emotion guides the individual in appraising social situations and responding to them. This places emotion firmly in a social context and emphasizes emotional display as part of an inter-personal, meaning-creating process. Emotions can be pleasant and exciting (positive) or unpleasant and disturbing (negative) depending on interpretations given by individuals and tested through their relations with others. In this way, they function to preserve what a person values in different circumstances, while at the same time signalling the need for change (Lazarus, 1991). Of paramount importance in constructionist approaches to emotion are the following ideas: . Emotions are social phenomena; in contrast to feelings which are personal responses to social interactions, emotions are culturally shaped – thus, people learn to experience grief at funerals and excitement in theme park rides. . Emotions are constituted in the act of description through language and enacted in the presence of audiences. Audience is

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paramount. Social and cultural contexts provide the rules, scripts and vocabularies of emotional display for different audiences: self, loved one, boss, subordinate etc. Emotions are learned aspects of behaviour and are situation-specific; they are instrumental in defining relations of deference, position, status and authority; Emotions are generally not irrational but quite practical; in many instances, they represent conscious judgements aimed at bringing about specific outcomes. Emotion labour represents the psychological work expended in reconciling personal feelings with socially sanctioned displays of emotion (adapted from Fineman and Gabriel, 2000).

According to social constructionist approaches, individuals may adopt certain emotional responses (smiling, nodding, expressing interest or concern) in work situations, but these responses are far from simple expressions of emotional intelligence. They simply represent a form of compliance to management dictates, which often turn into cynicism or snarling when their superiors are not looking (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999; Sturdy, 1998). Nor are these emotional responses without a cost; they take a toll on the employee who may experience feelings of alienation and inauthenticity occasionally leading to breakdown or burn-out. It is here that psychoanalytic approaches to emotion can make a very valuable contribution. Psychoanalysis approaches emotion, like social constructionist approaches, as a fundamental motivational principle in human affairs. Like social constructionist approaches, psychoanalysis dismisses the view that emotion can be quantified within a unified category such as emotional intelligence or that it can be deployed unproblematically in the interest of organizations. However, the two approaches diverge in a number of important respects. Psychoanalytic approaches: . Regard emotion and rationality as motivational principles in conflict, at least some of the time. Thus, rationalization is a key defensive mechanism whereby rational explanations obfuscate troublesome emotional motives. . Emphasize the mobility and plasticity of emotions, not in response to external factors, but as a consequence of

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psychological work. Thus envy can easily be transformed to anger, which in turn may give way to guilt, which may manifest itself in attempts to console and repair. From a psychoanalytic perspective, emotions are not just ‘‘movers’’ (from emovere) but also in motion; it is rare to capture an emotion in a steady state (as when we talk of ‘‘consuming emotions’’); frequently, the act of capturing the emotion instantly leads to its transformation. Stress the quality of ambivalence in most important emotions; thus hate is rarely encountered unadulterated by love, envy by fascination, anger by guilt and fear by attraction. Stress that emotion work is not merely external (i.e. reconciling feelings to the requirements of social situations) but also internal, that is in coping with conflicts, contradictions and ambivalences and keeping some sense of order in potentially chaotic emotional states. Persist against much opposition that there is a quantitative aspect to emotion; some emotions, such as mild envy or disappointment, may be held at bay by countervailing stronger emotions, though unopposed powerful emotions almost invariably lead either to discharge (through verbal or physical actions which have counter-productive or damaging consequences) or to defensive operations which lead to their neutralization or repression, (adapted from Fineman and Gabriel, 2000; Antonacopoulou and Gabriel, 2001).

Above all, however, psychoanalytic approaches insist that there is a primitive, prelinguistic, pre-cognitive and pre-social level of emotions, an inner world of passion, ambivalence and contradiction which may be experienced or repressed, expressed or controlled, diffused or diluted, but never actually obliterated. As Craib (1998, p. 110) has argued: If we think of emotions as having a life of their own, which might be in contradiction to, or expressed fully or partially through our cognition to different degrees in different times, we can think through all sorts of situations with which most people must be familiar: experiencing feelings we cannot express to our satisfaction; having feelings that we can express but that others find difficult to understand; and most important perhaps, the regular experience of

contradictions between our thoughts and our feelings.

In this sense, they maintain the core feature of the ancient Greek word for emotion, pathos, an experience which is not willed, controlled or judged, but rather suffered, coped with and submitted to. Thus, at the cost of some simplification, while social constructionists view emotion as derivative of social scripts, signs and scenarios in which we become linguistically enmeshed, psychoanalytic approaches view emotions as generating scripts, signs and scenarios. Where, for instance, the former will identify anger as consequent of a situation read as insult, the latter will view the experience of being insulted as derivative of a deeper anger and resentment (Gabriel, 1998). The distinguishing feature of psychoanalysis is the assumption of an unconscious dimension to social and individual life, one in which both ideas and emotions may operate (Freud, 1986). The unconscious is not merely part of a psychic reality which happens to be concealed from consciousness, but functions both as a mental territory in which dangerous and painful ideas are consigned through repression and other defensive mechanisms, and also as a source of resistances to specific ideas and emotions which present threats to mental functioning (Freud, 1988). Unconscious ideas, desires and emotions will often reach consciousness in highly distorted, camouflaged or abstruse ways, requiring interpretation (Freud, 1984). Nor is the unconscious a marginal or pathological terrain into which we occasionally venture. Psychoanalysis views a substantial part of human motivation and action as unconsciously driven. Even where plausible conscious reasons and explanations are given for an action, a desire or a thought, psychoanalysis will examine the possibility that unconscious factors are at play. It would then be fair to say that if emotional intelligence theorists view organizations as machines for the control and deployment of emotions and social constructionists view them as emotional arenas where emotions are performed in front of audiences, psychoanalytic authors view organizations as emotional cauldrons where fantasies, desires and passions lead a precarious co-existence with plans, calculations and the application of scientific thinking. What are the implications of such an approach? In the first place, we are

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made to suspect the operation of unconscious motives when things go right, but even more when things go wrong. When communication breaks down, when mistakes are repeated, when warnings go unheeded, when patently disastrous decisions are unanimously endorsed, when interpersonal rivalries threaten to derail organizational functioning, when pride turns into blind adulation of the organization and feelings of invulnerability – in these situations, we suspect that powerful unconscious forces are at work. To argue that people should learn from such mistakes and misfortunes is to ignore those unconscious forces which blind us to the mistakes and misfortunes in the first place. Thus, a significant departure of psychoanalysis from other approaches concerns the relative imperviousness of certain emotions to learning. This is especially pronounced and damaging in serious cases of neurosis, where for instance suspicion, hate, love and fear aimed at particular individuals or aroused by particular situations refuse to be altered or tempered, irrespective of the pain which they cause or the strength of the evidence against their justification. Yet, a fundamental principle of psychoanalysis is that there is no hard and fast line between normality and neurosis, since all normal individuals display certain processes and characteristics which are virtually indistinguishable from those of neurotics. The neurotic may be more incapacitated by his/her predicament, may be more severely afflicted by anxiety or may display more irrational symptoms, yet the underlying psychological processes of defenses and resistances are indistinguishable from those of ‘‘normal’’ individuals (Gabriel, 1999). It is normal then that some of the emotions of all of us are and remain impervious to attempts to temper them, modify them, civilize them, in short, to manage them. This is especially so with emotions which left a deep mark in our early lives, becoming parts of our character structure. Different psychological characters feature certain consistent repertoires of emotional responses, notable in periods of uncertainty and trauma, which are difficult to modify through subsequent learning. Thus, an obsessive character’s anxiety when confronted with disorder will be as resistant to modification by learning as a narcissistic character’s craving for approval and admiration, or a heroic character’s guilt when

facing failure (Gabriel and Schwartz, 1999). This shows some of the limits in developing or modifying emotions through learning.

What can psychoanalysis offer the manager and the leader of organizations? The first thing then that psychoanalysis can teach leaders and managers is that they too (along with their subordinates, customers and others) are emotional beings, using unconscious defences to fend off unpleasant desires and feelings. Two particular sets of symptoms must be noted, narcissism and authoritarianism, both of which easily afflict people in positions of power and respect. Narcissism is a normal and desirable condition which ensures that at least some of each individual’s emotional energy is lavished on the ego and supports the individual’s healthy self-esteem and pride. Leaders inevitably have a strong narcissism, relishing the attention and respect of others and seeking distinction and achievement. All too easily, however, narcissism becomes derailed – leaders wish to be admired simply for who they are and for the power they hold rather than for the results they are delivering. This is especially so in organizations pre-occupied with image, symbolism and public relations, where spin and the management of appearances all too easily replace real work, innovation and entrepreneurship. It is then that narcissism can become quite destructive in organizations – leaders and followers end up as mutual admiration societies, keeping each other happy, but losing sight of threats and opportunities facing their organization, competitors outperforming it and customers abandoning it. Like spoilt children, such organizations center around the delusion of self-importance and invulnerability to cruel and adverse reality (Maccoby, 2000; Schwartz, 1990). Authoritarianism is often seen as an affliction standing at the opposite end of narcissism. Where narcissists are often the products of very indulgent parents who lavish much love and attention on their children, authoritarians tend to be individuals who were starved of love in childhood and have an exaggerated respect for power, rules and order. As leaders, they expect unquestioned obedience, they tend to stereotype negatively

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all opponents and to denigrate anything that is associated with the feminine, the artistic and the sensitive. Under the pretense of extreme rationality, they allow a free reign to emotions of fear, disgust and disdain which are manifested in a cynical attitude to humanity (Adorno et al., 1950). An ultramasculine macho quality characterizes such leaders, who will never acknowledge a mistake or the need for a u-turn. They are thus particularly prone to entrapment in situations where good money and resources are thrown after bad. Dixon (1976) has found that authoritarian leaders account for some of the worst military disasters and, undoubtedly, they also account for numerous political and business disasters too. Psychoanalysis can temper leaders’ narcissistic and authoritarian tendencies, alerting them to some of the early signs and potential adversities. It is not uncommon these days for senior executives to employ coaches, analysts or counsellors to precisely this end. A different contribution that psychoanalysis can offer leaders and managers is to sensitize them to the emotional needs of their followers, needs that can easily and unknowingly be frustrated, leaving followers with feelings of betrayal and disappointment. Few leaders are aware of the extraordinary position that they occupy in the emotional and fantasy life of many of their followers – research by one of the authors in five different organizations suggested that many subordinates are obsessed with their leaders, observing them closely, assessing them continuously and projecting powerful fantasies onto them. Leaders can then be experienced as powerful messiahs or vile impostors, scheming Machiavellians or kindly mother figures, axe-wielding butchers or cunning fixers (Gabriel, 1997). Almost invariably such fantasies (which are expressed in stories, gossip, jokes and so forth) bear little relation with the leaders’ real actions, though they reflect closely the emotional needs of followers, such as the need for protection, the need for individual attention, the need for legitimate scapegoats and so forth. Above all, such fantasies express some of the followers’ deepest anxieties, and it is here that psychoanalysis can make a significant contribution to the leaders’ emotional effects on organizations. Anxiety is an inevitable part of life in today’s organizations. Its sources are diverse

and powerful. ‘‘Will I have a job next month?’’, ‘‘Will I be able to use the new technology?’’, ‘‘Can I stay with my friends or will my department be restructured?’’, ‘‘Can the organization survive?’’, ‘‘Will my feelings overcome me?’’; these are some of the very realistic anxieties that people bring to their workplaces. In addition, they may bring specific anxieties – the nurse may ask ‘‘Will I be able to stand the sight of the suffering patient?’’ The teacher may ask ‘‘Will I be able to stay in control of my class?’’ The manager ask ‘‘Will I be able to meet the monthly quota for the current period?’’ and so forth. Beyond these, we all carry with us deeper irrational anxieties, relating to aging and dying, losing our intellectual or sexual prowess, being victim of violence, failing and letting others down and so forth. How are such anxieties managed? Organizations deploy a variety of defences against anxiety, i.e. means aimed at ‘‘containing’’ anxiety and stopping it from having incapacitating effects. Some defences consist of placing barriers and boundaries which protect individuals and groups. Others involve rules and regulations aimed at limiting the arbitrariness with which people are treated. Organizations depersonalize relations and create an illusion, if not a reality, of routine and predictability. But the curious consequence of these defensive measures is that they indirectly fuel anxiety. If you are in a city with massive fortifications, these may allay fears of immediate invasion, but they also create a sense of constant exposure and threat and a need for vigilance and wariness. In a similar way, people in organizations, notably in times of change and crisis, experience massive amounts of anxiety, irrespective of defences aimed at containing it. Leaders can have a considerable effect in the management and containment of anxiety – not by offering false promises and reassurances, but by mobilizing positive emotions of hope, courage, self-reliance and dedication and so forth. Following the work of the psychoanalyst Winnicot (1962, 1964), leaders must act as ‘‘good enough mothers’’ in their organizations, creating a ‘‘holding environment’’ in which people can work without false safety nets but also without total exposure to every adversity. Anxiety may then be kept within a manageable level – not too high to incapacitate individuals, not too low

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to lead to complacency. The same management of anxiety is a vital factor in the learning process. Extreme anxiety and learning is disabled; absence of anxiety and learning is uncalled for. Winnicott argued that this holding environment is the environment in which children learn, an environment allowing enough space for experimentation and play, which is safe enough without being stifling or overbearing. The holding environment recreates the experience of the mother’s embrace, an embrace which allows the child to realize that he/she has an independent existence in the world, without however exposing her/him directly to the threats engendered by this world. The management of anxiety then becomes seminal in all learning situations, since too much or too little anxiety inhibit learning. While anxiety is an emotion which can play a determining role in organizations, it should not be privileged above other emotions. In concluding this article, we would like to draw attention to another vital and often unacknowledged emotion in organizations, love. The psychoanalytic conception of love is truly protean, stretching from passionate infatuation with an object to narcissistic selflove, from sensuous to spiritual, from contemplative to driving and from creative to destructive. Within a clinical relationship, love for the analyst can galvanize a patient’s resolve to recover. Love for one’s teacher, one’s hero or oneself is, likewise, a major stimulant for an individual’s learning process. In organizations, love for one’s fellow group members, for one’s leader, for one’s job and for the organization can be of great significance. Although we are often oblivious to such feelings or fail to acknowledge them, they can make a great difference in terms of organizational success. As Sims (2001, p. 11) argued in a recent paper, love in organizations can take many forms: . .

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Love is being willing to be drained. Love is never wanting to miss out on the beloved’s stories. Love does not work in very small doses. Love is not keeping a safe distance between your own story and the beloved’s story. Love is wanting to write yourself into the beloved’s story. Love is telling a story which brings your organization to life for everyone else too. Love is loving the whole, not the part. Love is treating your organization with more respect than you treat yourself.

Of course, just as negative emotions, like anxiety, can have positive effects (e.g. prompting innovation, change and learning), positive emotions, like love, can have negative effects – for example, when they blind us to the organization’s evident deficiencies, when they make others take advantage of our love, or when we become accessories to immoral, anti-social or even criminal acts as a result of our feelings for the organization. Identifying, analysing and, from time to time, managing such organizational emotions takes more than mere emotional intelligence – it requires a deeper understanding of the unconscious dimensions of organizations and that cauldron of passion that keeps them simmering.

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Author and title index to volume 9, 2002


Author and title index Volume 9, 2002

learning organisation in the 1990s Boyle, E. D 4, p. 159

Dick, B. Postgraduate programs using action research

5, p. 206

Dreher, D.E. Leading with the Tao: the energizing power of respect

2, p. 65

Dynamic learning capability and actionable knowledge creation: clinical R&D in a pharmaceutical company Ingelga˚rd, A., Roth, J., Shani, A.B. (Rami) and Styhre, A.

Issue & page A 3, p. 102

Action learning, action research and process management (ALARPM): a personal history Zuber-Skerritt, O. and Farquhar, M.

4, p. 171

Action research within organisations and university thesis writing Zuber-Skerritt, O. and Perry, C.

3, p. 125

Altrichter, H., Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R. and Zuber-Skerritt, O. The concept of action research

E 4, p. 180

Edwards, S.L. and Bruce, C. Reflective Internet searching: an action research model

5, p. 214

Emotion, learning and organizing Gabriel, Y. and Griffiths, D.S.

1, p. 39

Englehardt, C.S. and Simmons, P.R. Creating an organizational space for learning

4, p. 189

Epilogue Zuber-Skerritt, O.

B 3, p. 132

Bawden, R. and Zuber-Skerritt, O. The concept of process management

5, p. 202

Bentley, T. Contact styles

1, p. 6

Boyle, E. A critical appraisal of the performance of Royal Dutch Shell as a learning organisation in the 1990s

F Farquhar, M. see Zuber-Skerritt, O.

Bruce, C. see Edwards, S.L. 1, p. 19 C 3, p. 114

(The) concept of action learning Zuber-Skerritt, O.

3, p. 125

(The) concept of action research Altrichter, H., Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R. and Zuber-Skerritt, O.

3, p. 132

The concept of process management Bawden, R. and Zuber-Skerritt, O.

5, p. 202

Contact styles Bentley, T.

1, p. 39

4, p. 150

1, p. 6

(A) firm’s assets as a foundation for strategy. Learning and the grounds to success Nieto, M. and Pe´rez, W. G

5, p. 214

Gabriel, Y. and Griffiths, D.S. Emotion, learning and organizing Griffiths, D.S. see Gabriel, Y. H

Creating an organizational space for learning Englehardt, C.S. and Simmons, P.R. Creating innovation and synergy through a parallel action learning structure Passfield, R.

2, p. 78

Harris, L. The learning organisation – myth or reality? Examples from the UK retail banking industry

2, p. 89

Hodgkinson, M. A shared strategic vision: dream or reality? I

2, p. 65

(A) critical appraisal of the performance of Royal Dutch Shell as a

223

Ingelga˚rd, A., Roth, J., Shani, A.B. (Rami) and Styhre, A. Dynamic learning capability and

Author and title index to volume 9, 2002


actionable knowledge creation: clinical R&D in a pharmaceutical company 2, p. 54

1, p. 29

(The) role of climate and socialization in developing interfunctional

Inquiring into organizational ‘‘energy’’: a consultancy example Tosey, P. and Llewellyn, C.

coordination

K

Roth, J. see Ingelga˚rd, A.

Kemmis, S. see Altrichter, H.

S

Wooldridge, B.R. and Minsky, B.D.

Shani, A.B. (Rami) see Ingelga˚rd, A. L 5, p. 206

2, p. 78

2, p. 89

(A) shared strategic vision: dream or

Leading with the Tao: the energizing power of respect Dreher, D.E.

reality?

(The) learning organisation – myth or reality? Examples from the UK retail banking industry Harris, L.

Simmons, P.R. see Englehardt, C.S.

Hodgkinson, M. Sharma, M. see Smith, P.A.C.

5, p. 197

Smith, P.A.C. and Sharma, M. Rationalizing the promotion of non-rational behaviors in

Llewellyn, C. see Tosey, P.

organizations Styhre, A. see Ingelga˚rd, A. M T

McTaggart, R. see Altrichter, H. 2, p. 54

Minsky, B.D see Wooldridge, B.R. 4, p. 143

Inquiring into organizational

(A) model for designing action learning and action research programs Zuber-Skerritt, O.

‘‘energy’’: a consultancy example

W

N 1, p. 19

Nieto, M. and Pe´rez, W. A firm’s assets as a foundation for strategy. Learning and the grounds to success

1, p. 29

Passfield, R. Creating innovation and synergy through a parallel action learning structure

(The) role of climate and socialization in developing interfunctional coordination Z 4, p. 189

Zuber-Skerritt, O. see Altrichter, H. Zuber-Skerritt, O. see Bawden, R.

Perry, C. see Zuber-Skerritt, O. Postgraduate programs using action research Dick, B.

Zuber-Skerritt, O. Epilogue

Pe´rez, W. see Nieto, M.

4, p. 159

Wooldridge, B.R. and Minsky, B.D.

P 4, p. 150

Tosey, P. and Llewellyn, C.

3, p. 102

Zuber-Skerritt, O. and Farquhar, M. Action learning, action research and process management (ALARPM): a personal history

4, p. 171 R 5, p. 197

4, p. 180

Rationalizing the promotion of non-rational behaviors in organizations Smith, P.A.C. and Sharma, M. Reflective Internet searching: an action research model Edwards, S.L. and Bruce, C.

Zuber-Skerritt, O. and Perry, C. Action research within organisations and university thesis writing

3, p. 114

Zuber-Skerritt, O. The concept of action learning

4, p. 143

Zuber-Skerritt, O. A model for designing action learning and action research programs

224

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