I have found many conceptual models helpful guides my interventions. When I work with executives, however, I have always tried to be non-ideological. I’ve seen too often how ideology can kill creativity and I’ve learned from experience that creative work always happens at the boundary of different fields. So, when helping people change, I will do anything that works. I will apply any theoretical framework that can be helpful in the situation where I find myself.
In my approach to complexity, I have drawn on ideas from evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, neuroscience, family systems theory, cognitive psychology, motivational interviewing, paradoxical intervention, existential psychology, appreciative inquiry, and positive psychology. This has informed a psychodynamic-systemic orientation to understanding puzzling situations that I call the clinical paradigm. This particular way of looking at things has proved a highly effective change methodology.1
Taking a Clinical Perspective
So, what is the clinical paradigm all about? First, it presupposes that there is a rationale behind every human act. I argue that there is always a logical explanation why people do what they do, even if, at first glance, what they do seems highly irrational. All behavior, how strange it may seem at first, will have some kind of rationale. But because the explanation may be elusive—inextricably interwoven with our unconscious needs and desires—we have to do some detective work to tease out the clues that underly perplexing behavior.
The second premise is that a great deal of mental life—feelings, fears, and motives—lies outside our conscious awareness but still affects our conscious reality—and even our physical well-being. However, we aren’t always aware of what we are doing, much less why we are doing it. Though hidden from rational thought, the human unconscious affects (and in some cases even dictates) conscious reality. Like it or not, even the most rational among us have blind spots, and even the most honorable have a shadow side—a side that they don’t know and may not even want to know. Therefore, to maintain our psychic equilibrium, we resort to a variety of defensive mechanisms, from very primitive ones like splitting, projection or denial, to more sophisticated ones, like intellectualization.2
The third premise is that we are influenced by our basic human needs. These needs determine our character, creating the tightly interlocked triangle of our mental life, the three points being cognition, emotions, and behavior. To influence behavior, both cognition and emotions have to be taken into consideration. But emotions, in particular, determine many of our actions and emotional intelligence plays a vital role in the leadership equation. We are defined by the way we regulate and express our emotions . Emotions give our experiences positive and negative connotations, creating preference in the choices we make and the way we deal with the world. Emotions also form the basis for the internalization of mental representations of how we experience the world—and the experiences we have of others—memories that guide our relationships throughout our lives. Of course, the way we perceive, and express emotions may change as the years go by, influenced by life experiences.
The fourth premise is that human development is an inter- and intrapersonal process. We are all products of our past experiences , and those experiences, including the developmental experiences provided by our early caregivers, continue to influence us throughout life. The past is part of our present consciousness—it is the lens through which we view and experience the present. Like it or not, the past influences our present and future.
Over the years, I have discovered that using the clinical paradigm in leader development can be a highly effective way to explore the hidden rationales for emotions, thinking, and behaviour, often related to my clients’ search for meaning, belonging, competence, control, or other major existential concerns. Taking the premises of the clinical paradigm into consideration has helped me understand the out-of-awareness behavior patterns that are part and parcel of the human condition.
The-Snake-Under-the-Carpet Syndrome
I always try to make clear to my clients that unless they deal with the underlying issues of their problems, there is a high probability that those problems will re-emerge, that nothing will change, that things will go back to the way they were before. I explain this using the metaphor of the snake under the carpet. Imagine you walk into your house and there’s a bump under the carpet. You try to straighten out the carpet to get rid of the bump. And you do. But a bit later, the bump comes back, because there is a snake under the carpet. You won’t get the carpet really straightened out until you get rid of the snake. When you deal with a problem, it’s important to remember that what you see is not necessarily what you get. Submerged issues need to be dealt with before you can arrive at real solutions. Don’t try to hide from reality; don’t just straighten out the bump under the carpet. Symptom suppression is not the prescription.
The snake-under-the-carpet syndrome explains why relationships can become so miserable. It helps us understand why organizational life is often so difficult to comprehend. It explains why working relationships, in particular executive teams, are frequently so dysfunctional. Most of the answers to these conundrums lie in our human nature, our ability to trust one another just so far, and perhaps not far enough, and our inability to see past our own needs to understand that richer benefits, both psychological and material, may be easier to obtain through the collective efforts of a group rather than as individuals.
The snake-under-the-carpet syndrome also explains why many organizational activities fail to live up to their promises. Putting on my economist’s hat, the answer lies in the obstinate belief that human beings are supposedly rational entities. But we should know better. Every individual can have a different rationale. That’s why using the clinical paradigm can be so helpful. Too many traditional organizational designers fail to take into account the subtle, out-of-awareness behavior patterns that are part and parcel of the human condition. Meanwhile, the personality quirks and emotional lives of the people who work in organizations continue to divert them from their specified tasks. Many executives fail to appreciate the complexity of interpersonal relationships, teamwork, and organizational culture and that they are acting out unconscious scenarios.
Organizational leaders need to accept that many subtle psychological forces lie below the surface of human rationality and can sabotage the way they and others function. But irrational as these behavioral patterns might be, there is always a rationale to them, if we know how to disentangle the threads. Individuals run numerous real risks when working in organizations, arising from their fear, anxiety, and uncertainty about the exercise of influence and power in the workplace. If these concerns are not addressed, the anxiety generated by these risks becomes too great and cannot be contained by simple leadership actions or facilitating structures. Instead, individuals will mobilize social defenses to protect themselves.3 These defenses, expressed through rituals, processes, or basic hidden assumptions, displace, mitigate, or even neutralize emerging anxiety but also prevent real work from being done. The result is preoccupation with dysfunctional processes and inhibiting structures that reinforce vicious circles, preserving the status quo.
Whatever the situation leaders of organizations find themselves in, they need to realize, when trying to motivate their people, that there is always more going on than meets the eye. Organizations are forums in which sensitive interpersonal issues are dealt with discretely (and often indiscreetly). Thus, if people are to function non-defensively in the face of performance pressures in the workplace, they need the kinds of leadership and supporting conditions that convert the prevalent anxiety into productive work. Unfortunately, too many executives are largely unaware of concepts from psychodynamic psychology and systems theory. Instead, the rational-structural point of view usually dominates. Too many executives fail to acknowledge the unconscious dynamics that affect human behavior. Too many executives treat their organizations as rational, rule-governed systems, perpetuating the illusion of the economic man as an optimizing machine of pleasures and pains, while ignoring the multifarious peculiarities that come with being human.
We need to get used to the idea that there is no such thing as a Holy Grail of rational management. The rational-structural view of organizations has not delivered the promised goods. It has only created much economic chaos and lots of grief. Thus, organizational designers would do well to become familiar with the language of the clinical paradigm—although I accept that doing so can be uncomfortable. It can be disturbing for people from a traditional background in management or economics. But creating and maintaining an effective work environment necessitates a dedicated focus on both the structural and the human aspects of organizational life—a daunting challenge, to say the least. We have to hang on to the knowledge that most of what happens in our mind is unconscious and that communicating with that mysterious part of who we are will be a real challenge. Carl Jung put it very simply: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”