First Know Yourself, Then Your Team
Understanding
how an organisation works is not enough. To be truly effective, a leader must
understand the unconscious motivations of people around them.
Tim
had always been on the fast-track. An Ivy League graduate, he joined one of the
premier consulting firms as an associate, went on to take an MBA at INSEAD,
graduated top of his class and was recruited by a pharmaceutical firm where he
rose quickly through the ranks, joining the executive team in record time.
Just
eight years after joining the company he was appointed CEO. That was when
things started to fall apart. Colleagues soon noticed that Tim seemed oddly
reluctant to make important decisions. He put off big projects and spent an
inordinate amount of time on minor problems. In the meantime, his behaviour
became increasingly worrisome. Although the board cut Tim some slack his
shortcomings became too obvious to ignore and after turning up to important
meetings visibly drunk he was dismissed.
What
went wrong?
Tim
functioned well as long as he wasn’t in the number-one position. The moment he
was placed in the spotlight, he became highly vulnerable and his effectiveness
diminished as he succumbed to self-destructive behaviours. He became a master in
‘snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory’, shooting himself repeatedly in
the foot. One of the reasons for behaving in such a manner seemed to be that he
had unconscious feelings of guilt about his success and the ‘irrational’ idea
that his being too successful would raise the envy of his father who had
repeatedly failed at business.
This
fear of success is a fairly common condition and one that can be overcome if
appropriate coaching is provided before and during the initial tenure.
Understanding why Tim acted as he did could have given the board greater
insight into how to deal with the situation.
The
Psychodynamic approach
Tim
may be an extreme example, but we are all complex, unique and often paradoxical
beings. Our everyday lives – including our business life - consist of webs of
constantly shifting and irrational forces that underlie ‘rational’ behaviour
and choices. It’s only through recognising this that we can begin to understand
and address not just our own responses to different situations but the
reactions of people around us.
Most
definitions of leadership methodologies address observable conscious and
rational phenomena. Historically, researchers in this area avoid entering the
emotional, psychological realm thus many organisational phenomena remain
unresolved. But by taking a psychodynamic approach to leadership style and
development, executives can focus on the dynamics of human behaviour which are
most difficult to understand.
Effective
leaders are those who meet the needs of their followers; pay careful attention
to group processes; are able to calm anxieties and arouse hopes and know how to
liberate and inspire people to positive action. To create or manage an
effective organisation we need to understand the complexity of why leaders and
followers act the way they do and accept that people are not one dimensional
entities but intricate beings with rich and myriad motivational drivers and
decision-making patterns.
The
‘inner theatre’
As
noted in in my working paper Psychodynamic
Approach, (based on observational
studies of real leaders, mostly at the strategic apex of their organisations) I
have observed that individuals’ attitudes and interactions with others are the
result of a complex confluence of their ‘inner theatre’, influenced by memories
of their relationships with authority figures early in life, significant life
experiences, examples set by other executives, and formal leadership training.
As
these influences play out over time, one typically sees a number of recurring
patterns of behaviour that influence their effectiveness within an
organisation. In the case of Tim, he had been affected by his father constantly
telling him that he didn’t have what it took to be successful. As the years
went by, Tim had internalised these criticisms, and the debasing sense of self
remained dormant until he finally became CEO. He wasn’t aware of the power of
these unconscious forces. To be effective, leaders need to pay attention to
these unconscious dynamics that can have a serious effect how they will
function in their organisations. This example demonstrates how these
psychodynamic forces can play havoc in the life of executives.
Depending
on their developmental experiences (taking another example illustrating the
power of psychodynamic forces), leaders make conscious but also unconscious
choices about the roles they can play most effectively in an organisational
setting. They internalise specific archetypical configurations which reflect
this. The lack of fit between a leader’s archetypical role and the context in
which he or she operates is a major cause of team and organisational
dysfunctionality and executive failure. The eight archetypes I have found to be
most prominent are:
§
The strategist: leadership as
a game of chess. These people are good at dealing with
developments in the organisation’s environment. They provide vision, strategic
direction and outside-the-box thinking to create new organisational forms and
generate future growth.
§
The change-catalyst:
leadership as a turnaround activity. These
executives love messy situations. They are masters at re-engineering and
creating new organisational ‘‘blueprints’’.
§
The transactor: leadership as
deal making. These executives are great dealmakers. Skilled
at identifying and tackling new opportunities, they thrive on negotiations.
§
The builder: leadership as an
entrepreneurial activity. These executives dream
of creating something and have the talent and determination to make their dream
come true.
§
The innovator: leadership as
creative idea generation. These people are focused
on the new. They possess a great capacity to solve extremely difficult
problems.
§
The processor: leadership as
an exercise in efficiency. These executives
like organisations to be smoothly running, well-oiled machines. They are very
effective at setting up the structures and systems needed to support an
organisation’s objectives.
§
The coach: leadership as a
form of people development. These executives know
how to get the best out of people, thus creating high performance cultures.
§
The communicator: leadership
as stage management. These executives are great influencers, and have
a considerable impact on their surroundings.
Working
out the type of leader you are and what kind of people you have on your team
can work wonders for a team’s effectiveness. It helps in recognising how you and
your colleagues can each make their best contributions. Designing an effective
executive role constellation will in turn create a culture of mutual support
and trust, reduce team stress and conflict, and make for more creative problem
solving. Thus by using the psychodynamic approach, paying attention to the
underlying drivers of interpersonal, group, and organisational cultural
dynamics, individuals, teams, and organisations will benefit greatly.
Manfred Kets
De Vries is the
Distinguished Professor of Leadership Development & Organisational Change
at INSEAD and the Programme Director of The Challenge
of Leadership,
one of INSEAD’s Top Executive Development Programmes.
Read more at http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/first-know-yourself-then-your-team-3510?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=2289debc0a-14_Aug_mailer8_14_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e079141ebb-2289debc0a-249840429&nopaging=1#Rpgkk3tvzIXdidWi.99
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