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Abstract As we head towards the millennium the complexity of tasks facing managers continues to intensify. The associated risks and authority issues in managerial work become more prominent, along with the potential for anxiety and dysfunctional process. The prime task of contemporary management development is to address such complexity and provide managers with opportunities to develop more effective working patterns. Action learning is a well established technique in Britain which seeks to provide managers with such a learning opportunity. Rooted in the humanistic counselling tradition, Action Learning is an apparently simple technique where a small group of managers meet regularly to engage in facilitated group counselling around individuals' work concerns. The central premise is that a questioning insight is the crucial meta-skill for managers. This paper seeks to explore the Action Learning process from a psychoanalytic perspective. We argue that the learning process is typically anxiety laden and that failure to acknowledge and work with such anxiety leads to defensive behaviour and an impaired learning process. Through a case study we consider the process of projection, transference and splitting which take place and how an understanding of these enables participants to learn to work with and through the 'workplace within'. This illuminates how participants are then able to manage themselves in the face of the task anxiety and risk they experience in carrying out their role. Introduction The increasing pressures placed upon modern managers are well documented. As organisations become more complex, volatile markets, intense competition and the pace of technological change place new demands on the role of managers. Such factors are typically coupled with down-sizing and de-layering; managers are expected to respond to new demands with fewer workplace colleagues for advice and support. These changes in the managerial role require many managers to undertake new and unfamiliar tasks on a regular basis. Following Hirschhorn's model of psychodynamic consulting (1995), risk and associated anxiety become part of managers' routine adaptation to new tasks. The traditional (and rational) response of management development to risk and anxiety in the managerial task is to provide development in substantive areas of expertise seen to be indicative of efficient and effective management. Thus management developers provide programmes in areas such as time management, decision making, team building, strategic development, visioning and leadership skills. Managers who can understand such concepts and apply them to their own work contexts have a ready supply of 'answers' to any new tasks that their changing roles may necessitate. Faced with ever increasing complexity of managerial task, the response of rational management development has been to develop ever more complex and sophisticated models and concepts through which mangers can make sense of their organisations. The continuing popularity of MBAs in many organisations is an obvious example of such an approach to management development. Though the concepts applied and the skills learned through traditional development are undoubtedly of value, a psychoanalytic perspective suggests that the wholesale adoption of such development activity is problematic. Of particular concern is the extent to which management development provides a form of social defence against the anxiety generated by the managerial task, following the sequence illustrated in figure 1, below.
Thus a manager faced with task anxiety looks for sanctuary in a substantive area of expertise which can be acquired through a developmental process. Such a process provides ontological security for the manager in the form of a set of 'answers' to the task problem. The prime concern is the reduction of anxiety through management development as a social defence, rather than the provision of lasting solutions to the primary management task. Typical dysfunctional processes may include rigid adherence to fixed models of organisation behaviour despite contrary evidence. The role of effective management development goes beyond providing programmed responses to new organisation problems. The crucial skill for managers appears to be the capacity for thoughtfulness in the condition of not knowing. Development should not provide just answers, but the ability to work effectively when definitive answers are not known. Thus the meta-skill for managers is a questioning insight, complemented by a tolerance of ambiguity. Effective development acts as a facilitating structure in allowing work towards task completion, as illustrated in figure 2.
Management development that provides opportunities for this model of management learning, what may be termed 'learning how to learn' is not new. The work of writers such as Chris Argyris (1982, 1991), Kolb (1984), and Schon (see 1983 for example) has provided both extensive theory and examples of its practical application. These models all employ the idea of the 'learning cycle' - a concept which owes much to hermeneutic philosophy (see Gadamer, 1975). Action learning is a management development model derived from the humanistic tradition and which has many similarities with the work of Argyris, Kolb and Schon. Developed in Britain, it appears to have has rather greater influence in the Europe than in the USA, perhaps reflecting a stronger tradition of the action research model of organisation consulting in the former.
Action learning is an approach to experiential management development formulated by Reg Revans (see Revans 1971, 1983, 1988). The basic model rests on the following premise. Traditional learning relies on providing knowledge to answer questions, the solutions to which are already known in advance by others, notably teachers. Revans termed this the imparting of programmed knowledge, where information and 'answers' are set out in advance in a programme of study. In contrast, action learning does not rely solely on predetermined knowledge, but rests on having 'questioning insights.' Action learning involves working out on the basis of experience solutions to problems which have no known answer. Revans expressed learning as;
The defining feature of Revan's approach to management
development is that the learning process takes place within a formal
group setting, with a consultant present. An action learning group is
an ongoing forum of managers that meets to discuss managerial issues.
The precise form of such groups varies, but typically may have six to
eight managers from different functional backgrounds but of roughly
equal status. Meetings are on a regular basis, perhaps a half day once
every three or four weeks. A 'live' practical situation such as a management
project is presented by one of the group members, the problem holder.
The role of the other group members is to help the problem holder review
the situation / problem / opportunity in such a way that new approaches
and solutions begin to emerge. Thus the action learning model of development
works on the principle that the best people to develop working solutions
to management problems are the managers themselves - they are those
with the requisite 'local knowledge'. Participants benefit from the
heterogeneity of the group, which acts as an antidote to the isolation
typically felt by managers in highly specialised and differentiated
roles. In addition to the practical help offered, each group member
benefits from the group in developing skills of diagnosis, listening
and counselling. Thus the group develops a model for management which
can be applied in their organisational roles more generally where appropriate. An Analytic Perspective Action learning has been used in numerous organisational settings over the last two decades with varied results. When the model works well, surprise is often expressed by participants that an apparently simple process can produce such results - the process works, it appears, as if by magic! In contrast, some action learning groups are less successful, characterised by lack of attention to task, little or no learning, and associated anger and frustration on the part of group members. Faced with this dual phenomena, we analyse the working of action learning groups from a psychoanalytic perspective in order to uncover some of the processes of projection and transference which may lie behind the success or failure of groups. We argue that employing an analytic perspective when working with learning groups improves the likelihood of successful outcomes. The failure of learning groups to provide effective development is most often due to lack of attention to task. Some 'classic' task avoidance patterns we have observed are as follows: Treating the group as a therapy group - exploring personal issues at the expense of the identification and resolution of work problems. Acting as an advice giving session, where little attempt is made to listen actively to the problem holder in the diagnosis of the problem. Treating the group as a 'Tea Party' - nothing more than a pleasant (and expensive) social gathering or a break from the rigours of 'real' managerial life. Self idealising or self deprecating behaviour. Such avoidance behaviour may be seen as a defensive routine in the face of the task anxiety inherent within the learning group, as suggested by Vince & Martin (1993) and illustrated in Fig. 4 below.
There are clearly many sources of anxiety for the group participant, for example: the anxiety inherent within a challenging and changing managerial role in the..wider organisation, the anxiety of the particular project that they bring to the forum, ambiguity over the purpose of the learning group, and the problem of finding a suitable role within the learning group. We argue that rather than attempting to minimise anxiety or 'sweep it under the carpet', success within the action learning model depends on recognising and working with the anxiety present within the group. Anxiety can be used as a positive force to encourage development and change within managers. This is not an entirely new idea. The use of 'live' projects with the attendant high level of task anxiety is characteristic of several contemporary approaches to management development. For example, Noel and Charan (1988) detail GE's use of training involving consultancy to real time projects to provide development for senior management. In these projects managers typically experience increased levels of anxiety as they face the unknown dimensions of the new situation. The distinction between such an approach and the action learning model is in the management of that anxiety. In accounts of contemporary U.S. development it appears that something approaching the 'Wild West' model is employed - managers face the challenge of the new project alone and are left to 'sink or swim'. Whilst some managers relish the challenge and thrive, others are inevitably less able to cope, and may sink into defensive routine. In the action learning model, however, the group is of critical importance in providing a transitional space, offering containment and holding for anxiety in the face of the managerial task. The group is a holding environment that provides spatial and temporal distance from the managers' immediate contexts of interaction. The role of the consultant is critical, both in holding anxiety and assessing the point at which any group member drifts away from the task into a defensive routine. The authority of the consultant to advance relevant interpretations and hypotheses is central to their role. When the importance of working with anxiety is recognised by the consultant within an action learning group, the defensive cycle of Fig. 4 can be replaced by the 'work' cycle illustrated in Fig. 5
CASE STUDY: William as senior architect In this section we provide an insight into the action learning process through an account of the first three meetings in the life of a new group. Key events in the life of each meeting are described, followed by reflections and analysis from the consultant who was present. We have been particularly concerned to present the defensive routines which were played out, along with the role of the consultant in interpreting these routines and moving the group members forward. Names and some details have been changed. William is a senior architect within a large Design company, 'Multibuild', itself part of a large established parent organisation, 'DFS Holdings'. Within Multibuild there have traditionally been two architects practices, each specialising to a certain extent and liaising as necessary with other planning and regulatory functions within the company. For three years William has been senior architect for one of the practices, (practice A), managing a team of architects, related professionals and administrative staff. Jim fulfills a similar function in practice B. They both report directly to Carol, the Managing Director of Multibuild. In the face of growing competition, DFS Holdings have put pressure on Multibuild to rationalise their structure. As a result, practices A and B are to be merged. William has been given the task of project planning the merger of the two practices over a period of three months. Once the merger is complete, William will be the senior architect for the new integrated practice. At the start of the project William joined an action learning group made up of eight middle and senior managers from other divisions of the parent company. Though this was a new group, learning groups were already an established part of management development within Multibuild. The group met for three hours every fortnight - we chronicle the first three meetings.
The first part of this meeting is taken up with introductions and a brief discussion as to the purpose of the group, led by the group consultant. Rules and boundaries are set out. At this point authority lies clearly with the consultant, although William appears keen to question some of the rules and boundaries and is overtly challenging of the consultant. Once this stage is completed the 'task' proper of the group begins, with the consultant inviting managerial problems and projects on which the group can focus. With no hesitation William puts his project forward. He describes with great pride how he has been chosen to project manage the merging of the two practices and to be senior architect on completion. He appears to relish the challenge, is clearly excited by the prospect, and expects support and congratulation from the group members. The group do not give him the support that he is looking for. Rather than providing praise and encouragement, they warn him of the potential problems ahead. Rose, an operational manager in DFS is challenging of William. She is particularly concerned about the future of Jim, (Senior Architect practice B), and the potential for job losses amongst other staff. Paul, an accountant for DFS spends the entire meeting in silence, refusing to give any opinion or comment on either the process of the group or the case presented by William. The meeting is brought to an end at its allotted time of three hours, with a commitment to reconvene in two weeks time. The group ends with some un-ease. Reflection/Interpretation. As consultant to this group I was surprised how quickly they felt able to challenge my authority. I found William's challenge of me, a woman, interesting - William was going to be senior architect, how would he manage his role appropriately? I suggested to the group that there may be times when events and situations in their wider context would be reflected or enacted within the group (projection). This was clearly a new idea for them and was greeted with varying degrees of scepticism. I reflected on and examined my counter transference throughout the group. Anxiety, feeling redundant, would the group feel that I had anything to offer, some irritation with Wlliam - I pondered on Paul's silence. How would he be able to find a voice in the group? I also wondered whether Paul was giving us the experience of some of the characters in William's external environment. I decided that apart from creating the appropriate structure and boundaries around role and time I would let the group "sit" with some of the uncomfortable feelings. One of the skills of the psychodynamically oriented consultant is knowing when to leave alone and not rushing in to rescue or challenge. Meeting two. All members from the initial meeting are present. William appears a very different figure in the second meeting. He recounts to the group the difficulties he has experienced over ~e last two weeks. Jim is withholding information that William requires to progress with the merger. William is also receiving mixed messages from his manager Carol. She does not appear to be giving William the unconditional support he feels he needs and deserves - he is feeling let down by Carol. William displays an air of depression. Paul remains largely silent despite encouragement from the consultant. Rose again appears confrontational - she feels vindicated in her initial prognosis of William's situation, and challenges the group's willingness to discuss his project at the expense of any other. Much general discussion within the group is about the difficulty of working within a cost cutting regime - there is significant anger and resentment directed towards the Chief Executive of DFS, seen as the prime force behind the current changes.
As consultant my main intervention here was to try and focus the group on to what it felt like to be "here" "now" - what does it feel like to be in this situation. How does it feel to be with these people talking about these difficult feelings. It seemed hard to get the group to focus on what was going on in the room, there appeared to be much projective activity directed at external authority figures, the Chief Executive in particular. I tried to get them to focus on what was going on in group in terms of anger - there seemed to be much anger around but this was hard to 'own' within the group setting. Gently I encouraged them, to say how they experienced me as an authority figure 'Oh, we like you', 'you understand', 'you are caring' were typical responses. William was finding it hard to face up to the authority and difficulty in his new role. If felt uneasy about what was happening between William and Rose. Maybe Rose picked up some ambivalence from William about women in authority. Apart from his one early challenge William has been sweetness and light to me, deferential but also almost ignoring. I point this out to William and wonder whether he finds it difficult to be clear with Carol his own manager. He says he does feel angry with her but cannot express it. The group at this point seems to be going according to plan - they are beginning to make links with the wider context - some very obvious projective process. I am concerned about Paul - he appears to be excluding himself from the event - I wonder how this feels and what this tells about the rest of the organisation. Meeting three. Three weeks further on and William is receiving rather more co-operation from Carol and Jim. William appears considerably more at ease with his task. Rose appears less challenging of William and the group generally than in the previous two encounters. Midway through the session the group is thrown into turmoil by Paul, who announces that he is leaving the group. He displays considerable anger and complains bitterly that he has learnt nothing and that the group is a waste of his time. Reflection/Interpretation. I waited to see what they would do - there was an uncomfortable silence. Eventually, after about a minute, William breaks the silence and asks Paul why he wishes to leave. The silence has been full of anxiety. I try to link this to the wider context of redundancies, mergers, lack of value. How has Paul felt - the in and the out group - linking this to the feelings in the two practices, William's practice as the 'in' practice with practice B as the 'out' - the splitting that's been going on. For William this acts as some kind of metaphor to help him understand his organisational life - how can people find a voice?, how can you be heard ? How does that feel in the practices - has William really consulted enough with his colleagues? Paul expresses some anger with me as group consultant for not understanding how he has been feeling. He has been sitting with this anger - he obviously needs to make the link with his own authority issues at work. I ask him how it feels to talk to me like this - he says that it feels better. After expressing himself he decides that there is some value in this and decides to stay. Postscript. This was a powerful if difficult moment in the groups life. I ask group members to express how they feel, here and now. Paul says he feels he has finally been heard, he took a risk, he feels isolated and marginalised at work - needs to be more assertive and ask for what he wants. Rose expresses some ambivalence towards me. She says that she realises that her feelings & anger about William are indicative of her life with male managers at work, and expresses some solidarity with Paul over being able to express this. William is somewhat shaken. He says he realises he hasn't taken the feelings of others into account, and has been dedicated to doing things " his way-. Ne realises that he needs to consult and work with Jim, and that he requires help from the group in doing so. The group ends with a far more cohesive feel to it and with a sense of learning and change. At this point the group is more able to get down to the 'work' - taking appropriate authority to undertake task risk. In the earlier sessions the group has been engaging in much defensive activity, reflecting anxiety about the development of the group, their role in the group, and their wider role at work. As consultant I look forward to my own supervision, I feel that my analytic understanding has helped me to move this group on. I have worked with and used the projections and used my own counter-transference. I have not used this language with the group. The following three groups are useful and William moves to a positive completion of the merger. Analysis Perhaps the most useful idea for action learning groups to grapple with is how the projections from the outside world find themselves played out within the group. Psychoanalytic thinking helps consultants to stick with what is happening 'here and now' and see everything as a useful piece of "diagnosis" - for individuals, groups and organisations. Thus, in the case study, Paul's silence supplies useful material not only to look at how he might be thinking and how he might change - i.e. be more challenging and take his own authority - but in addition it provides a useful insight into the wider system. The danger for the action learning consultant operating without a psychodynamic perspective is to unwittingly enter into and become part of the collective defence against anxiety. The role of the psychodynamic group leader - to sit with and understand challenge and trying to link it through the counter-transference gives powerful insight into how individuals manage their authority issues at work. Helping managers to understand and develop appropriate authority relationships is the key to moving from defensive routine into effective task activity. Importantly the use of this model provides the consultant with a framework for understanding what is going on without having to "baffle" group members with any of the language. Conclusion Action learning, particularly when used within an analytic framework, is a powerful tool in enabling managers to recognise and deal with ambiguity and anxiety, and develop effective strategies for individual and group learning. As such it has significant value in working with organisations undergoing large scale change. Organisation change inevitably places individuals in a situation of 'not knowing', where known solutions to familiar problems no longer exist. Development and learning on the part of individuals is a prerequisite for effective and lasting organisation change. The rational response typified by MBA programmes has obvious limitations in such times of ambiguity and anxiety. Of particular importance is the way in which action learning groups enable participants to diagnose and re-diagnose the organisational world they inhabit. As illustrated through the case study, the defences acted out within the group setting often provide valuable clues to what is happening for the managers within the wider organisation. The learning group is in many ways a microcosm of the organisation. Conversely, the science of chaos and complexity (see Stacey, 1993) reveals that systemic change in the larger organisation may be brought about by individual and inter-group changes, such as those occurring within the action learning forum. The action learning model is an example of a powerful organisation intervention that can be used to great effect within a psychoanalytic framework. By allowing managers to focus on their own projects and discuss problems in their own terminology, action learning is an accessible approach that appeals to many managers who may be unwilling to engage in more traditional and overly psychoanalytic interventions. Academic excellence and purity in psychoanalytic research is a major concern for ISPSO, and rightly so. However, if psychoanalysis is to engage meaningfully with the rapidly changing organisations that it studies, research excellence is not enough. As a discipline psychoanalysis will be required increasingly to demonstrate its practical relevance to the organisations it studies. Analysts and organisation consultants operating within an analytic perspective require more effective means to put research into practice, and to provide valuable help for those managers who inhabit the organisations we study and consult to. Action learning is an approach that has much to offer, both to managers in organisations, and to the field of psychoanalysis. REFERENCES Argyris, C. 1982 "How Learning and Reasoning Processes Affect Organizational Change N in Goodman, P.S. et al 1982 Change in Organizations, Jossey Bass. Argyris, C. 1991 "Teaching Smart People How to Learn" Harvard Business Review Vol 69 No. 3 pp. 99-109. Casey, D. 1987 "The shell of your understanding" Journal of Management Development Vol 6 No. 2 pp. 30-37. Gadamer, H. 1975 Truth and Method Sheed and Ward, London. Hirschhorn, L. & Barnett, C.K. (eds) 1993 The Psychodynamics of Organizations Temple University Press Philadelphia. Hirschhorn, L. 1995 'Psychodynamic Consulting' Center for Applied Research, Philadelphia. Kolb, D. 1984 Experiential Learning Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. Noel, J.L. & Charan, R. 1988 "Leadership Development at GE's Crotonville" Human Resource Management Vol 27 No. 4 pp. 433~47. Revans, R. 1971 Developing Effective Managers Longman London. Revans, R. 1983 The ABC of Action Learning Chartwell-Bratt Bromley, Kent UK. Revans, R. 1988 The Golden Jubilee of Action Learning
MBS Publications University of Manchester UK. Stacey, R. 1993 Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics Pitman. Vince, R. & Martin, L. 1993 "Inside action learning: an exploration of the psychology and politics of the action learning model~ Management Education And Development Vol 24 pp. 205-215. |
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