Psychodynamically informed leadership is critical in Covid-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacts on many levels: political, economic, societal and organisational. It has turned the world upside down. Global and local leadership decisions to “flatten the curve” and defeat the ‘invisible enemy” generated mixed reactions. The new COVID-19 reality has disrupted organisational life. As a result many organisations are facing the complexity of the impacts of COVID-19 across the business value chain. People are pre-occupied with free floating anxieties manifesting in survival and fear of the future. Organisational leaders are experiencing the anxiety as a result of the business impact of COVID-19. The reflective question is: How can we understand the new reality of COVID-19 as a phenomenon which is not isolated, and as a consequence of its relationships to other phenomena such as politics, health, economy, social, leadership, diversity, inequality, unemployment, personal agency?

Leadership becomes more important than ever before as a key enabler to drive change: innovation; improving performance; attracting, developing and retaining diverse talent; strategy execution; improving both employee and customer experiences; and diversity-inclusion. In crises, these transitions are overwhelming, disorientating and anxiety provoking and present opportunities for real change. These transitions heighten anxieties around uncertainties filled with fear and terror of the future. COVID-19 is experienced as an existential threat, which fundamentally alters a leader’s worldview and responses to the impact of the crisis. Leadership development needs to focus on both above and below the organisational unconscious surface. Psychodynamic informed leadership therefore becomes even more important now and beyond COVID-19.

At this stage of the lock down and opening of many organisations, people enter organisations with ambivalent feelings: on one hand heightened fear and fatigue, whilst on the other hand preoccupied with the fear of contagion. This is exacerbated by preoccupations of efficiencies, communication, performance and productivity issues, streamlining processes and cost cutting measures whilst confronted with the anxieties of building productive and effective teams. People, who survived retrenchment, may be filled with survivor guilt and the victims of retrenchments may experience a threat to their identity, reduced self confidence/ efficacy and breakdown of relationships. Just as COVID-19 is experienced as an existential threat to humanity - leaders cope differently, within different organisational contexts.

Psychodynamic informed leadership allows leaders to enhance systems and systemic thinking. Leaders need to work with the whole of a system and not just isolated above the surface organisational challenges: strategy execution within a shrinking economic situation; developing new business /operating models, re-designing structures, process, systems, technology; and working with increasing employee and customer experiences. From a systems perspective, the organisation is a complex network of interdependent relationships both inside and outside the organisation. By implication, leaders and employee’s anxieties, uncertainties, fears, feelings of being overwhelmed will permeate into organisational life. This disequilibrium caused by COVID-19 presents an opportunity for organisations and leaders to re-evaluate and re-think their leadership practices in leadership development– this allow leaders to reflect on experiences to enable learning and growth.

Psychodynamically informed leadership?

The importance of psychodynamically informed leadership becomes even more important to help leaders process these leadership and team dynamics during and beyond COVID-19. Given the impact of COVID-19, leaders-managers were hesitant or resistant to flexible work arrangement practices, and were forced to change their mental models and ways of working. Some of these anxieties around uncertainties and fears are projected onto leaders by employees as they return to work. Leaders as human beings, experience anxieties and fears of business survival, efficiencies, optimising process, systems and technology, and are pre-occupied with building collaborative and productive teams. Remote work is now the “new normal”. Often these unconscious leadership dynamics are difficult to process, and leaders cope by employing defenses: either splitting off these fears or projecting these back onto and into their teams (Kets de Vries, 1991). Team dynamics can manifest as denial, avoidance, blame shifting, scape-goating and competition for limited resources, which may become pervasive as organisations and teams struggle with issues of survival, authority, shifting boundaries, role(s), and task.

Team members are filled with pre-occupations and worry about their family well-being and fear of the future – possible retrenchments and workplace safety. This exacerbates the anxieties, uncertainties and fears. Leaders and team members’ re-entry into the team and organisations are filled with such fears and anxieties; and may face a “punctuated equilibrium” - a re-evaluation of their own purpose and meaning, roles and ways of working. Leaders and teams are confronted with possible changing team structures, roles, and developing new norms and ways of working. If these dynamics are not responded to, employee and customer experiences will be negatively impacted. Such impacts can lead to withdrawal, dis-engagement and increased levels of dissatisfaction. The organisational and team leader therefore needs to increase their leadership effectiveness by providing containment for these manifesting anxieties around uncertainties and fear of the unknown future.

Systems Psychodynamic Perspective

Systems psychodynamic consultancy and leadership development have been developed as a result of the Group Relations Training research and experiential learning events conducted at the Tavistock Institute in London and AK Rice Institute spanning over many decades (Brunner, Nutkevitch & Sher, 2006; Miller, 1993). The systems psychodynamics as a consulting and coaching perspective is based on psychoanalysis (Freud, 1921), object relations (Klein, 1988), social systems (Menzies, 1993) and systems and group relations theory (Bion, 1961). It is defined as the study of both conscious and unconscious patterns and their influence on leadership, authority, role formation, conflict, identity and boundaries. These then influence relationships and relatedness in the organisational leadership system (Cytrynbaum & Noumair, 2004).

This mini article is informed by: 

1. My previous consulting and executive group coaching experiences; 
2. My ongoing external lecturer experiences at the Stellenbosch University, Business School; 
3. Recent experiences in a Listening Post (LP) based on the Organisation for the Psychoanalytic Understanding of Society (OPUS), a first virtual LP in Africa – with the primary task to explore the impact of COVID-19. This unique methodology allows participants to share pre-occupations, discover emergent themes and working hypotheses which are based on systems psychodynamics; and 
4. Webinar experiences with fellow members of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Understanding of Organisations (ISPO) with a theme on psychodynamic informed leadership during COVID-19.

Emergent leadership themes, lessons AND working hypothesis

There are no easy leadership answers (Heifetz, 1994). Given this context, emerging organisational leadership themes and lessons from the past and present crisis could be relevant for different organisational contexts:

• Leadership reflections on and upon their experiences on the conscious and unconscious dynamic levels can contribute to higher levels of leadership effectiveness.
• Leadership development helps leaders to explore and discover new purpose and meaning.
• Employee requires leaders to show care, compassion and vulnerability during a crisis.
• When leaders show vulnerability by reflecting on their own unconscious anxieties, uncertainties and fears and share these, can contribute to the psychological safety in their teams by: 1) becoming more mindful on how these unconscious dynamics get denied, split off and projected on to others in the organisation, in teams & around the boardroom table; and 2) becoming more aware of team member and other stakeholders projections, transference, counter-transference and how these may affect their own leadership conscious and unconscious dynamic responses during a crisis.
• Leaders need to understand that people enter the workplace as “whole selves”, and are required to be more humane.
• Leaders need to build both psychological safety and psychological empowerment (key ingredients for high performing teams). Leaders need to increase employee’s belief to positively affect their environment, their capability, their meaningfulness of their jobs and their perceived autonomy in their work – especially during the current COVID-19 crisis.
• Manfred Kets De Vries in a recent mini article in Harvard Business Review, shares a student experience “One of my former students, the CEO of a large, diversified industrial company recently sent me an email to say that he believed “the pandemic was the moment to show the people in the company that management really cared.” (HBR, May, 2020 https://hbr.org/2020/05/how-to-find-and-practice-courage).

Working hypothesis

COVID-19 triggers organisational leadership anxieties and uncertainties with associated feelings of being overwhelmed, frustrated, uncertain, and fearful of the future which further heightens organisational and employee uncertainty of boundary, role, authority and task that is defended against by providing courage, containment, psychological safety, care and compassion.

Final reflections

Psychodynamically informed leadership conversations need to form part of an integrated leadership development & coaching psychology journey which can impact positively on leadership organisational learning. Leaders can enhance systems and systemic thinking about conscious and unconscious leadership dynamics now and beyond COVID-19. This can contribute to psychological safety and empowerment and lead to increased employee and customer experiences.

Call to Action

You are invited to enrol for the Integrated Leadership Development Coaching Journey (ILDCJ) that is virtually delivered and supported by Work.life Digital technology and ODCOACH to enrich the learning experience, create a powerful reflective space and guide towards actionable learning & insights.

Contact us:

Email: journeys@worklife.digital

Cell/WhatsApp: Adrian Parsadh: +27 83 996 9805
Cell/WhatsApp: Anna-Rosa le Roux +27 82 874 5794

About the Author:

Adrian Parsadh is a registered Industrial/Organisational Psychologist (HPCSA). After distinguished service in the SA Navy, he founded ODCOACH during the transition to the corporate world. As a consulting psychologist, his specialist focus is in organisational consultancy and integrated leadership development; executive group coaching and building high performance teams. He is a part time faculty member at Stellenbosch University, Business School. Adrian teaches on the MBA modules in organisational development and leadership. He is a member of the Interest Groups in Coaching & Consulting (IGCCP) AND Systems Psychodynamics of the Society of Industrial Organisational Psychologists of South Africa (SIOPSA, IGSPO). He attended the AK Rice Institute, GRC 2019, Chicago, IL and has been part of many consulting and coaching psychology projects. He is also a member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations (ISPSO). He has formally submitted his PhD in Consulting Psychology in November 2019.

References

Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in groups. New York: Basic Books.

Brunner, L.D., Nutkevitch, A., & Sher, M. (2006). Group relations conferences. Reviewing and exploring theory, design, role-taking and application. London: Karnac.

Cytrynbaum, S. & Noumair, D. (Eds.). (2004). Group Dynamics, organizational irrationality, and social complexity: Group relations reader 3. Washington, DC: A. K. Rice Institute.

Diamond, M.A., & Allcorn, S. (2009). Private selves in public organizations. The psychodynamics of organisational diagnosis and change. New York: Palgrave.

Freud, F. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. Complete works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth.

Heifetz, R. (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Kahn, W.A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33(4), 692-724.

Kets De Vries, M (2020). How to find and practice courage. Harvard Business Review, May, 2020. Retrieved https://hbr.org/2020/05/how-to-find-and-practice-courage).

Kets De Vries, M.F.R. (1991). Organisations on the coach. Clinical perspectives on organisational behaviour and change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Menzies, I.E.P. (1993). The functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety. London: Tavistock Institute.