RESEARCH
Gabriella Braun is director of Working Well, a specialist consultancy developing leaders, teams and organisations. It applies thinking from psychoanalysis and systems theory, alongside a practical focus on business needs to support the people side of organisations.
Using psychoanalysis and systems theory in leadership
Human nature plays such a big part in how organisations are led – the constructive side works for the good, but the destructive side can be so counter-productive
By Gabriella Braun
The challenges that are facing further education and training make leadership extraordinarily difficult.
Research by my consultancy company, Working Well, carried out for the Further Education Trust for Leadership( FETL), confirmed that in this sector, as I believe in others, existing leadership models are inadequate. They omit systemic understanding and take a superficial view of human nature. Leaders frequently miss, or misunderstand, the multi-layered and often unconscious factors at play in organisations.
We know from psychoanalysis that we all have a constructive side that drives us healthily forward in life, and an opposing anti-life, destructive drive, which pulls us down.
The largely unconscious struggle between these two drives emerges in numerous organisational situations: major decisions about mergers, for instance, and daily events such as whether we help a colleague, ignore their difficulties or insidiously use them for our own ends.
The threat to the survival of organisations in the sector can unconsciously tip us to our anti-life side: we give up, make bad decisions and set up failure. So it’ s imperative for leaders at every level to consciously keep the constructive life drive in the ascendancy and fight the pull to destructiveness.
Love and hate Love is at the heart of the drive for life and our constructive side. We do not usually associate it with leadership, yet the qualities of healthy love – appreciation, gratitude, compassion and passion – are also qualities of good leadership.
Just as importantly, love for the work, the organisation, the welfare of staff and students, is the most powerful weapon we have against our destructiveness. Love commits teachers to helping their students achieve their potential. It translates into high morale, a lively, humane culture and organisations that can healthily adapt to the future. Hate, the partner of love, resides in our destructive part. Leaders need to be vigilant about how love and hate support or hinder the constructive drive for life and about the effects of love and hate on thinking, behaviour and decisions.
Identity The sector has been weakened and diminished by its perceived historical identity – partly unconscious – as second class: the poor, deprived relation in the wider education system. Organisations cannot thrive with the burden of that identity. Nor can they imagine an alternative, inspired future. Leaders need to challenge the identities of their teams and organisations and how these influence organisational culture and performance.
They need to build a healthier, realistic identity so that the organisation’ s primary task is fit for purpose and its route forward built on strength, not failure.
Being assertive We think of aggression as bad, and it can indeed be devastating. It’ s part of our destructiveness. But aggression also supports life. What we call‘ assertiveness’ is actually aggression used positively. Deployed in this way, aggression is part of our constructive side. We can neither live nor lead without aggression. What matters is how we use it.
Used constructively, aggression helps leaders manage performance. Used destructively, it can fuel bullying and pit people against each other. Leaders need to be aware of their own aggression and how it gets mobilised in their teams and organisation.
Attachment Attachment theory tells us about the importance of having a‘ secure
REFERENCES
• This article is based on a project commissioned by the Further Education Trust for Leadership( FETL) and carried out by Gabriella and Working Well. The project called How can psychoanalysis and systems theory contribute to the leadership of thinking in the Further Education and Skills sector? resulted in nine think pieces on leadership in FE. These papers can be accessed via the FETL website at goo. gl / NWYhpi
Find out more about Working Well at goo. gl / oczwNo
20 ISSUE 28 • SUMMER 2017 INTUITION