"They can't work together"; "There's a lot of dysfunctions in this team". "We have a tense climate at the moment, but we don't understand why". Requests for intervention easily focus on individual approaches, which can have a limited effect over time. It's not uncommon, for example, for a company to split up or relocate one of the protagonists, or for a new manager to be appointed, but for the same relational issues to recur again and again, with identical scenarios. We could take the analogy of an Organizational Ghost, returning to indicate yet unsatisfied systemic needs.
Working solely at the level of the individual doesn't help, as these situations are merely symptoms of an unbalanced system. There's nothing to stop us working at the individual level, but only if the intervention also considers the collective level. It's necessary to understand the hidden forces governing these symptoms, to have a global vision. Any relationship is healthy if it respects three fundamentals: time, place, and justice. These principles are universal and serve as pillars for the integrity of a relational system.
When these fundamentals are not respected, conflict can arise, forcing the protagonists of the relationship to rebalance these principles. This conflict is the source of psychological debt.
A psychological debt is a psycho-affective marker of a breach of one of the 3 systemic fundamentals of the relationship: time, place, justice. This debt tends to increase as long as it is not recognized and worked on, leading to emotional wounds, violence and resentment.
Intervention must facilitate this return to normalcy, by ensuring that these psychological debts are acknowledged, recognized, and worked on. It's essential to be able to tell things as they are, without judgment or biased orientation. This work of opening consciousness enables us to move on to the stage of repairing this debt and rebalancing the system.
Time:
The relationship is subject to a principle of temporality, implying that it is necessary to respect the past. As a result, many conflicts have their origins in the neglect of this chain of time in the relationship. For example, during a conflict on a board of directors, the resistance shown by certain members to the new CEO was due to a lack of recognition of seniority on the board. Similarly, in a conflict between 2 project managers. The main issue was the lack of respect for age and seniority in the job. When it comes to mergers and acquisitions, conflicts are frequently based on a failure to recognize the history of the absorbed company, but also on the order in which the 2 companies were created. The result is a kind of collective emotional ghost.
Organizational Ghost: when the past cannot be celebrated and the grief expressed, the negative emotional charge continues to be there, unconsciously structuring the present dynamics of the group (focus on the past and on liquidating the debt), which cannot project itself into the future with a positive, solution-oriented approach.
Conflict or unhappiness can also arise when part of the story cannot be told, for example in the context of a secret. An example of this is the person who suffers because she knows about the extramarital relationship the CEO had with a development manager 10 years ago, which influenced the structuring of the work organization.
When a relationship is healthy, history is respected and recognized, whether it's good or bad.
So, in a system, a person who has just arrived, especially in a position of authority, must respect this past, especially the people who preceded him/her, and their contributions. The present and the future are built on the past. Many leaders fail to respect this principle. There are founding myths in every organization, and it's important to be aware of them.
Founding myth: a belief system structuring the identity of a collective, to which all new members must adhere (or pretend to adhere) to avoid exclusion. The "good old days" founding myth is the most common. It's based on the historical roots of the work collective in the "pioneers" who "engendered" the organization and are the guarantors of the collective's values in an egalitarian, undifferentiated system. Myth is a discourse acting on the collective's imaginary.
No founding myth can be completely suppressed in an organization unless the collective imaginary is in trouble. The function of an organizational myth is to structure the meaning of action and the social organization of the system. When a new leader wants to "shake up" the organization, he or she must also consider this possible limit to change, or be aware that by going beyond it, he or she is aiming for the "symbolic" destruction of the organization.
Place:
In a system, everyone has a defined place, and this is what enables us to know whether we are useful (recognition of our contribution) and socially desirable (social status). These 2 pieces of information are very important for people, as they enable them to situate themselves socially and give meaning to their existence. For a system to work, everyone must be able to find their place in a differentiated way that respects their contributions.
In some systems, it can be really difficult to find one's place, and this is due to a concern for organizational individuation.
Individuation: collective functioning allowing differentiation of its members or, on the contrary, the obligation to conform. An extreme on this continuum will lead to major difficulties for well-being and the collective:
| Efficiency | Well-being |
Exaggerated differentiation | No synergy of efforts and structural problems of work coordination | Feeling of not belonging to a group but to an aggregate of people who may be in rivalry. Difficulty defining an identity through the collective. |
Rigid conformity | Work routines refusing to adapt to changes in the environment or to integrate external novelties | The tension of not being able to express the different facets of one's personality and of not being able to evolve according to one's own experience. Regular fear of being excluded by the group. |
Particularly in the case of organizational dysfunction, there can be role creep, leading to invisible work and psychological debts of hidden merit.
Hidden Role : when a person starts doing what someone else should be doing, forcing the latter to find other roles to exist. Unclear job descriptions can facilitate this process, leading to an ever-widening gap between what is prescribed and what is actually done. This can lead to invisible accountability on the part of certain players, increasing the problems of overload that become toxic through the debt of recognition. This situation can also lead to a feeling of disqualification (he's doing it for me because I don't know how) for some, which also encourages a debt of recognition.
There is also an imperative for a person to accept his or her place. A leader who does not accept his or her place as a leader may pose a problem for the group. This can be the case when the role of leader seems to impose more than desired, particularly in the form of Persona.
The Persona refers to the mask worn in ancient times when performing in the theatre, to give the appearance of the character but also to amplify the actor's voice. For Jung, the Persona is a predefined character that enables the individual to adapt to social roles. Over-identification with this social mask can lead to the construction of a false-self personality (Winnicott) that wants to please the needs of others but prevents one from knowing and expressing who one really is.
Pierre is an executive in a large group. He comes from a family of engineers from top-ranking schools, who often have a "boss" career path. After a difficult period for his body (cancer), Pierre is also beginning to feel that his heart isn't in it anymore, not in the content of his work, but in his position as leader. This persona has long been imposed on him by others (his family, the company), whereas he would like to be and live the relationship differently...but in what place, how? One morning, he couldn't get out of bed, his vital energy completely blocked. During group coaching, we discover that in fact he no longer wishes to be in a leadership position. We debrief individually and begin face-to-face work.
Justice:
Each of us is particularly sensitive to the signals of recognition we receive and interpret in our 2 most important systems, the family and at work. The main function of recognition is to reduce ontological insecurity, i.e. to feel that we are useful and desirable, and therefore that our existence has meaning. Our existence depends on the quality of our integration into our various relational systems. To answer the question "Why do I live?", we mainly ask ourselves "Who do I live for?
In a general context where the great systems of meaning have disappeared, notably with the weakening of faith in God and the fatherland ("land of the fathers" in Latin), the family and above all the company become places of "fulfilment", the pillars of our ontological security.
In the workplace, we are sensitive to 3 signals of recognition:
- Symbolic: publicly communicating efforts and results (merits)
- Career: obtaining a desired promotion as a reward for merit at work. Progress in skills
- Financial: obtaining fair remuneration for equal work and results (social comparison).
When these recognition signals are not satisfied, the person will generate psychological debts, known as recognition debts. These debts may be all the greater if they refer to psychological debts experienced in the past or present family system.
Professional recognition debt: The individual expects others (a person, a group, an entity) to recognize, through the 3 dimensions of recognition, the effort, suffering, and merit required to get the job done. The more a person feels a lack of recognition, the greater the feeling of debt. The impossibility of expressing this will lead to psychological effects (acute stress followed by anxiety attacks, burnout, depression, etc.) or physical effects (eating disorders, stomach problems, weakening of the body in the face of cancer, back problems, etc.). The manager, in his or her role as representative of the organization, is expected to be aware of this debt, and to take steps to repay it, or at least allow it to be expressed.
A leader's legitimacy depends largely on his knowledge and recognition of these different debts. He or she must be familiar with this great book of justice (Boszormenyi-Nagy), which is often implicit but active.
Leadership:
A leader who wants to gain legitimacy in a workgroup must respect the 3 principles of time, place, and justice. This contextual leadership style is opposed to a "heroic" style, which assumes that one person or a small group of people are powerful enough to change a system, even if this means disregarding its coherence. Change only comes about if it is truly necessary for a system's survival. Integrative contextual coaching aims to help leaders understand and integrate the organizational system they are to serve into their own personal system. So, there's a difference between coaching based on "what should be in theory", and coaching based on "what is necessary", i.e. based on the truth and authenticity of the here and now. Contextual intervention aims to raise leaders' awareness of the collective and individual conditions that run through them and affect the organization.
The paradox of a leader, particularly in a situation of transformation, is that he or she must both amplify the necessary changes and acknowledge the past and do so within a strong framework of social justice. A true leader does not dominate but serves a collective. When he fails to guarantee a healthy system, he may be placed in the position of scapegoat, going from "saviours" to "executioner".
Mr Frank is Managing Director of Touvabien, a company specializing in the manufacture of spare parts for the aviation industry. When he was appointed in 2007, the company was doing well, and the main problem was overwork. Unfortunately, the 2008 crisis has weakened the company's market, and Mr. Frank must take drastic measures to prevent the company from going under: cutting general expenses, reducing temporary staff, freezing hiring, and halting investment. The social climate deteriorated and a strike broke out. It's true that Mr. Frank is all alone in his executive committee to manage the situation, and that middle management is often not up to the task. In a period of heavy workloads, the recruitment of managers was not always rigorous, and, above all, no one managed the situation of employees with performance problems. Social peace was bought.
In this context, Mr. Frank crystallizes all discontent. He finds himself alone on the front line, and the other managers, while seemingly supportive on the surface, intend to take advantage of the situation to protect themselves. Local managers are positioning themselves more and more as mere collaborators, with no incentive to follow company directives. This leads to a sharp loss of internal efficiency and marginalizes well-meaning staff. To prevent the crisis from continuing, the company's main shareholder decides to let Mr Frank go.
What are the consequences?
When these debts cannot be recognized, they are expressed at an individual level in the form of psychosomatic, behavioural, or psychological symptoms. They gradually become embedded in the body and psyche as emotional wounds. The most talked-about today is burnout, which we can define as an emotional investment maintained for too long at a very high level in a "toxic" context that offers no recognition. This context leads to psychological debts, inducing intense mental ruminations that generate continuous negative emotions. The result is a saturation of the limbic emotional system, which can lead to a loss of physical energy, interest in work and empathy.
They can also be expressed collectively through paranoid group dynamics, the tendency of a collective to look for a scapegoat to regulate the psychological debts of its members and thus ensure group cohesion through the illusion of equality. This dynamic can be manipulated by an "implicit leader" seeking to use it to be perceived as a saviour and thus legitimize himself as the group's leader when he is unable to have Power.
“Implicit" leadership: a person who does not officially have power (e.g. managerial status), but who can obtain it through influence and/or by setting up an implicit system of appropriation-distribution of resources (power), often by using the technique of perversion (getting the other person to do something unethical which then obliges him or her to keep it secret) and/or by appropriating responsibility for the ledger of justice. The influence of "implicit" leadership comes from the fact that it defines itself as a "saviour" (dramatic triangle) against official power, which would seek to "harm" the work collective (paranoid group dynamics) by not recognizing psychological debts.
What type of intervention?
The 5 basic principles are as follows:
1. The quality of an individual's relationships with those around him is the main factor determining his health and success.
2. Respect, justice, gives, and cooperation are the four pillars of an effective collective, promoting the optimal functioning of individuals and organizations.
3. The dynamics of an individual's relationships with those around him or her depend on each person's perceptions of psychological debt and self-sacrifice.
4. Intervention based on an integrative contextual approach aims to improve the system to increase the sense of justice and regulate psychological debts.
5. To achieve this, the intervener must maintain, as far as possible, an equidistant position with all stakeholders.
The first level of intervention is to serve the truth about the current context of the system. Saying, understanding, and living what is in the here and now. This work must enable us to recognize the psychological debts and suffering felt and circulating in the system.
It is sometimes necessary at this stage to work on reconciliation and forgiveness. This work is carried out through 2 levels of analysis:
- diachronic (history of a system): understanding the history, including debts and loyalties, secrets, founding myths and repeated crises, that have led to the current system.
- synchronic (the state of a system at a given moment): understanding how the system works today: what elements, in what interactions, for what effects, what recurring loops maintain the system? what changes are necessary or emerging?
Depending on the situation, the facilitator can work with different techniques:
- recognizing legitimate debts and providing sufficient symbolic and/or material reparation
- helping to identify and regulate the organizational issues that may be at the root of these psychological debts, as well as the loyalties preventing the system from evolving
- take care of people in distress
- support managers to help them better understand the system and legitimize themselves
- help players to regulate paranoid group dynamics and manage implicit leaders with destructive legitimacy.
Once this work has been carried out, the second level of intervention is to enable the group to work towards solutions for the future, based on a mode of operation acceptable to everyone.
Matthieu Poirot, Social Psychologist and Phd in Management, is founder and director of Midori Consulting, a recognized agency specializing in the sustainable performance of leaders and organizations.
In recent years, Midori Consulting's clients have included Orange, Michelin, Parfums Christian Dior, Neopost, CEA, Netflix, Nokia, Thales, OneNation, INRS, Groupe Les Echos, Boehringer Ingelheim, Ogilvy, Constellium, Mondelez, Conseil Général d'Ille-et-Vilaine, Handicap International and Fondation CEP. Matthieu Poirot is the author or co-author of over 100 articles and several books. He also teaches at numerous universities and business schools.
matthieu.poirot@midori-consulting.com
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