|
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Tasks of Formal Leadership Development
James M. Hunt, DBA, LICSW Mailing address: |
|||
Formal leadership educational experiences are widely available, for individuals of all ages, in much of the world. In the United States, for instance, leadership education takes place for middle school students, for executives and for most everyone in between. Formal leadership development programs (termed LD henceforth) are offered by all manner of educational institutions and consulting firms. The growth of such efforts has taken place in spite of the nearly universal agreement on the importance of direct experience for leadership development (Lombardo, 1988). Indeed, evaluative research tends to show that well designed formal leadership training tends to result in the development of some sustained changes in behavior and/or attitudes relevant to the leadership role (Bass, 1990). Most leadership scholars, however, would likely argue that the effective assumption of a leadership role requires more than accruing a variety of influence and visioning skills. (Like most authors, I distinguish here between managing or dealing with the complexity of an existing state, and leadership that promotes change from one state to the next. (Kotter, 1990). "Managing, directing, realizing one's visions, creating systems and leading human beings in pursuit of a goal: all of these activities require that a leader have a certain feeling of potency," Lapierre, 1989, p. 178). Lapierre describes this sense of potency as the state that makes the leader capable of actions having a relatively far-reaching impact on people and things. Such a description of the requirements of leadership could lend even more credence to the notion that classroom education is likely to play a minimal role, at best, in the development of leaders. However, I have been struck by the fact that for many participants, their feelings about taking on a leadership, and their sense of personal potency in relation to the leadership role, are in fact impacted by the educational process. Participants' reports before, during and after a formal LD experience confirm that many find that they unexpectedly experience a change in the way they feel about themselves as individuals, and as leaders. Various program components seem to be related to this transition: experiential activities, 360 degree feedback, conceptual frameworks, and case discussions all seem to offer some participants, to varying degrees, the opportunity for change, though the link between particular program components, and the potential for significant change, is at best unclear The change process that can take place for some participants in formal LD education experiences has not been sufficiently addressed by management and organizational behavior researchers and perhaps most importantly, has not be explored by psychodynamic researchers, who may, in fact have the most to add to the discussion. I say this because the change process I have in mind directly relates to the sense of self of the participant, as much or more than to his or her cognitive changes that can accompany skill building (though the two may be related). Indeed, the trainer or professor is often able to actually observe something taking place in the classroom that goes well beyond the identification with a cognitive framework. This phenomenon is rarely touched upon in program brochures and course descriptions, and frequently runs counter to the expectations of program participants. The purpose of this paper is to provoke the beginnings of a discussion of the psychoanalytic tasks and processes that may be at work in formal leadership education. It should not be considered the last word on the subject, but rather one of the first. Leadership education is a complex project and is accompanied by a variety of motives on the part of those who participate in such programs as well as those who provide them. I will proceed by first exploring a psychodynamically informed systems view of the tasks of leadership education, as this perspective suggests a way to position the study of the phenomena to follow. I will then discuss the expectations and beliefs of program participants in relation to program tasks by focusing on two commonly observed 'classes' of fantasies: and the fast track participant and the remedial participant. Two case studies, one representing each class, will also be presented to illustrate apparently successful personal outcomes for program participants in relation to the development of a greater sense of potency. Finally, I will discuss the impact of formal LD education from the perspective of the developmental tasks required for effectively assuming a leadership role. It is the over arching hypothesis of this work that such a developmental framework can greatly inform our ability to help LD participants though it does demand that we learn a great deal more about the link between program components, faculty and the specific needs of individuals who participate in LD program.
Formal LD Programs The purposes of formal LD educational programs are usually described as those of promoting leadership skill and attitudinal development while ensuring that organizations have a sufficient supply of leadership talent to help them grow and remain competitive. Formal leadership programs typically provide one or more of the following avenues for participant learning: the presentation of conceptual models of leadership, intensive feedback including the use of 360 degree assessment processes aimed at building insight regarding strengths and weaknesses as a leader in relation to a particular conceptual model, and experiential strategies that aim to promote personal development through having participants experience various interpersonal situations that will challenge them to utilize novel behavioral and cognitive responses. (See Conger, 1992 for an in-depth description of the various types of programs and the variety of learning's that are hypothesized to result. See McCauley, Moxley & Van Velsor, 1998, for a non-psychoanalytically oriented review of theory and practice in leadership development programs.) Stimulation and data for this exploration have been taken from my own experience as a faculty member in MBA leadership courses and in open-enrollment leadership courses at the School of Executive Education at Babson College. The MBA course utilizes a conceptual model (Kouzes and Posner, 1995), 360 degree feedback, and field based learning activities in a semester long course with 36 hours of in-class instruction time. Participants in the MBA program are typically middle level managers with some supervisory experience. Some are entrepreneurs. The School of Executive Education open-enrollment program provides a conceptual framework (Bradford and Cohen, 1998), 360 degree feedback, an intensive experiential experience and intensive peer to peer coaching, in a five day program. Participants in the School of Executive Education Program are generally Director and Vice-President level executives. In both instances, participants come largely from the for-profit sector, including representatives of high technology, financial services, retail services, and biotechnology.
The Tasks of Leadership Development Programs Observers, participants and faculty of LD programs often are struck by the wide variety of reasons for participants' involvement. This variety of purposes tracks with the likely range of tasks served by leadership development activities more generally. Lawrence has described the primary tasks of management development programs as including (1985): The ''normative' primary task reflects the stated goals of organizations that support and offer LD programs. In the case of leadership development programs, the normative task is the development of a supply of leaders as necessary for the long-term success of the organization. In open enrollment and MBA LD programs, the normative primary task is typically thought of as that of promoting the effectiveness of program graduates as part of fulfilling the mission of the school or consulting agency. An 'existential' primary task refers to the activities that people believe they are actually carrying out. Lawrence describes two existential tasks for leadership or management development programs. First, LD programs train future leaders in the skills necessary for effective organizational leadership. Second, formal leadership development programs represent an important aid in an organization's efforts to establish a rationale for leadership selection. The process of leadership selection when aided by widely available training can be seen as fairly rooted in the prevailing ideology of the meritocracy. Participants in open-enrollment LD programs (and their organizational sponsors in the case of executive education programs) are likely to also view skill building as the primary existential task. Review of applications to both MBA and executive level open enrollment LD programs reveals that the pursuit of specific skills (such as how to delegate or how to develop a vision statement) is likely to be the main conscious goal of program participants. 'Phenomenal' primary tasks must be inferred from behavior. Phenomenal tasks are those that participants are engaged in and of which they may not be consciously aware. These phenomenal tasks include a whole host of individual-organizational interactions that may be quite specific to the individual engaged in a LD program. Individuals may be sent to a LD program by their organization as a gift, as punishment, as a payback, or as a coronation, for example. Individuals may seek participation in formal LD programs to prove themselves, to make up for past mistakes, to please their own manager, because they think it makes them look good in the eyes of the corporation or because they have magical beliefs about the leader's omnipotence and hope to gain some of that through participation (see Harry Levinson's quote at the start of this paper). It is at the level of the primary phenomenal task that the most important aspects of leadership education may in fact take place. The level of 'depth' and intensity of feedback may be provocative. Some may experience frustration and anxiety when confronting the need to really change behavior. Perhaps most importantly, participants may experience a variety of fantasies and feelings when considering the notion that leadership actually means playing a role in driving important changes in an organization. Much to their surprise, on a conscious level at least, leadership calls upon them to tolerate pain, act with courage, and direct others in efforts to effect far reaching change or solve difficult problems. Rather quickly, they are confronted with the fact that leadership education is likely to challenge them on a personal level that they had not anticipated. I would stress that participants' surprise at the scope of leadership education is likely to represent only one perspective. Experience suggests that on another conscious or preconscious level, participants are quite aware of the deeply personal nature of leadership education but must defensively avoid the anxiety associated with that awareness. I am suggesting the hypothesis that this anxiety and the fantasies associated with it are linked in many instances to both the organizational and personal circumstances that lead people to participate in formal LD development programs, and with the tasks inherent to the project of leadership development itself. The management of this anxiety, and the fate of the fantasies associated with it, is likely to determine the course of development for each participant in a formal LD educational experience. I hope to illustrate this hypothesis through discussing two such fantasy/person/context constellations below.
Examples of the Fantasies Associated with Participation in formal Leadership Development Programs Leadership program practitioners typically note at least two common motivational patterns (there are more) that promote LD program participation. These are the fast track participant, and the remedial participant. I will describe each of these here. The fast track participant has been tapped by his or her organization for future leadership positions. She is likely to be sent to a formal LD program because she is viewed as having a high degree of potential, particularly in her ability to generate 'bottom line' results (important to the real work of the organization). She may already have extensive supervisory experience and managerial responsibility. However, in spite of being a 'shining star', fascinated by the topic of leadership and a fast friend of the program's leaders, she may not experience significant personal change or insight. In part, her problem is an artifact of program design (and the fact that she is probably pretty effective in comparison with many of her peers in the program!). She gets good reviews from her peers, bosses and direct reports who complete her 360-degree assessment survey before she attends the program. She does very well in experiential exercises and wins the praise of fellow program participants. She fine-tunes her unit's vision statement but doesn't really question the values and purpose of her unit. Yet, she leaves the experience with a sense of emptiness and does not remain in contact with program faculty or fellow participants in spite of their imploring her to 'stay in touch.' A psychoanalytic perspective adds to our view of the tasks facing such individuals and the difficulties inherent in the efforts of program faculty to be helpful. Tartakoff (1966) has described the problems faced by gifted individuals in psychoanalytic treatment, particularly training analyses. These individuals are likely to have a narcissistic investment in most any undertaking related to personal achievement. Those with a high level of social skills, however, won't necessarily show behaviors consistent with a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, and indeed, Tartakoff argues that they are not. Rather, their abilities, coupled with an action orientation, allow them to work out their conflicts, successfully in many cases, in the world, rather than internally through the development of a greater ability to self observe, and a greater tolerance for internal conflict. Both of these abilities are the targets of developmental effort in most formal LD programs. The fast track participant, however, may deal with the anxiety associated with the need to maintain her narcissistic equilibrium through successfully avoiding taking risks with regard to her style. One recent participant compared her struggle to that of a chess master. The chess master, if he or she isn't careful, can develop a signature pattern associated with her success. There is a great deal of anxiety associated with taking risks associated with changing such a successful pattern, yet of the master doesn't, he becomes vulnerable to attack. The fast track LD program participant is likely to find that the phenomenal task of achieving overwhelms the task of learning. The remediation participant, on the other hand, is also sent by his or her organization because he is viewed as being a high potential candidate. However, while achieving results, he has alienated others, failed to develop a team, and failed to develop leadership in his organization while behaving in a very authoritarian fashion. Unfortunately, the remediation participant may have been initially promoted on the basis of his ability to gain results regardless of the human costs, early in his managerial career. When approaching the director or vice-president level, however, the ability to lead and influence others may become very important. The participant who formally had seen himself as quite successful in the eyes of his superiors now find that he is the subject of severe and career threatening sanction. The commitment required of being a leader in or of an organization, requires that the individual sacrifice some of his own narcissistic needs while taking on the organization, itself, as one's ego ideal (Freud, 1955). The fate of one's positive self regard is therefore is tied up, at least in part, with his ability to live up to the demands of that ego ideal, as represented through organizational values and other, usually more senior, organizational leaders. Failures in leadership behavior may lead to a sense of shame and personal defectiveness with regard to a perceived lacking of valued skills or other attributes. Shame also relates to the very real sense of having disappointed other organizational participants through failing to provide for them what they want. This sense of shame may then frequently accompany remedial program participation. Schwartz (1993) has referred to the power of this set of dynamic forces as organizational totalitarianism: "the organization, as defined by its leadership's understanding of their own actions, is proclaimed to be the organization ideal; and the organization's power is used to impose this as the ego ideal for the organization's participants." An individual participating in a LD program under the weight of such pressure is likely to be tremendously ambivalent, and vulnerable to a sense of shame in response to feedback from others. The difficulties therapists face in forming a working alliance with individuals essentially coerced into therapy is well known, and it is hypothesized that such 'resistance' can be easily replicated in LD programs as well. The phenomenal tasks of the individual in this instance can be even more complicated to understand. Competitive fantasies, fantasies rooted in revenge, and fantasies rooted in proving to the world that he is not defective, are just a few examples of the kind of fantasies likely to emerge under such circumstances. Understandably, a very high level of defensiveness is likely to emerge in the service of maintaining the participant's psychic equilibrium. What can be difficult for both participant and educator is the development of an understanding of what the participant really needs. Should he be focusing on learning leadership skills, trying to heal from the sense of shame that blocks his access to his prior sense of potency, or should he be considering other career opportunities? Fantasies related to the phenomenal tasks overwhelm the normative one of 'salvaging' the remedial participant, and the existential task of helping the participant gain skills from program participation. The behavior displayed in the educational setting may include quiet withdrawal, the ignoring of 360 feedback results, avoidance of opportunities to reflect on experience with others, and ultimately dis-satisfaction with the program itself. Fortunately, such outcomes are not universal as the following, disguised, case vignettes illustrate. CP had been a successful manager in a biotechnology firm for a number of years when she transferred to a start-up venture, worked for a new VP and developed a new team. Unfortunately, she quickly felt that several senior managers associated with the program were not being fully honest with her. She questioned several aspects of the venture, whereupon she became subject to rather intense criticism of all aspects of her work, but most particularly her leadership style. She had never before tasted significant failure, and felt a deep sense of shame about the recent events in her career. She attended the open enrollment program at the urging of her human resources manager, in an effort to develop some of the skills she felt that she was lacking. She was in need of remediation by the definition of her organization, a definition that she accepted leading to powerful feelings of impotence. After a discussion of organizational vision and the need for leaders to consider their level of commitment to any vision, she asked to speak to one of the faculty of the program. In tears, she told the story of her current career situation. She related that she was intensely unhappy with the criticism she had received, and was also a bit mystified by it. Indeed, her 360-degree assessment results suggested that, in fact, her direct reports saw her as quite effective in certain aspects of leadership. Feedback from peers from her former roles confirmed this. The case discussion on vision and commitment made her realize that she could not commit herself to an organization in which she could not place her trust. Over the course of the week, she began to consider alternative career paths. She also began to more actively and robust participate in the program, take chances in the experiential activities, and reported at week's end that she had learned quite a bit about herself. At follow-up, she was working for another division of her company, and leading a major change process with some sense of confidence. KL participated in an MBA leadership course in large measure because he saw himself headed for important future leadership roles, and wanted to be ready. Feedback from his previous employer suggested that he could resume his upward climb immediately after graduation. They were paying for his last year in the program. Unfortunately, he reported to the instructor that he was getting little out of the course at the mid-term, because, although the material was useful, he couldn't see how it applied to him. A major term project is required of class participants, and KL proposed a very challenging and risky venture, involving an interview with a major world leader to whom he felt he could gain access. Working with his project team, he designed an elaborate plan for contacting and interviewing the leader. At the last minute, the plan suddenly, abjectly and publicly failed. There was no interview with a world leader, and there was no term project. KL reported that it was not until the plan failed in such a humiliating fashion, and he and his team had to deal with the failure and its very real consequences, that the course began to make sense to him. As the course closed, he reported a much greater sense of self-confidence and in a follow up meeting with the professor, revealed for the first time just how afraid he had been of failure. Having achieved and survived a public failing, he felt refreshed and much more empathic with those who could not so easily deliver on promises of results.
The Development of a Sense of Potency Lapierre (1987) has described the attitudinal and behavioral correlates of a sense of potency as involving a concept of leadership that includes ambition, a huge capacity for work, a belief in one's own competency in the area of activity, and a feeling of confidence in oneself and in others that makes teamwork possible. His research revealed, at the same time, that effective leaders were also quite aware of their own vulnerability, and ability to tolerate that vulnerability. Hirschhorn has proposed that the ability to tolerate vulnerability has become even more important in the modern era, as leaders are no longer free to dictate, and bureaucratic structures no longer make relationships between leaders and followers impersonal (1997). Effective assumption of leadership roles requires of leaders that they accept their lack of omnipotence, and occasional feelings of impotence, without being overwhelmed by the anxiety associated with such openness. Succumbing to a defensive stance in the face of anxiety can frequently disrupt the very relationships on which the modern leader must depend. Psychoanalytically informed leadership scholars frequently describe the path to the development of such anxiety tolerance using the work of Melanie Klein (Lapierre, 1987, Lawrence, 1998, Krantz, 1998). Since this work is widely known, I will not review it in detail here. In summary, Klein's theoretical framework suggests that healthy early childhood development moves the individual from the paranoid/schizoid position in which images of good and bad are split apart in order to manage anxiety, to the depressive position in which the individual is forced to tolerate the ambivalent integration good and bad images of self and object. In doing so, the individual, within a supportive environment, comes to accept, with a degree of mourning, the inevitability of failure, shame and loss, without seeing it as a catastrophic threat to his or her psychic existence. Lapierre (1989) among other psychoanalytically informed organizational scholars has typically noted the important role that early childhood development, and those individuals in the child's immediate environment, play in the subsequent effectiveness of leaders. The debate, such as it is, has typically taken place between those who believe that childhood experiences and constitution in large measure determine the ultimate ability of an individual to lead, or whether later adult experiences can also facilitate this process. Mirroring this debate is that over whether such fantasies of omnipotence and the splitting associated with the paranoid/schizoid position are predominantly an outcome of early childhood experience or whether they are also related to social context. In no way can a formal LD educational program be expected to undo the damage associated with an early childhood failure to develop in a healthy fashion. However, the results of apparently successful leadership education efforts, when taken on a case by case basis, seem to track movement from a position of defensive omnipotence or impotence that inhibits personal development to a greater tolerance for anxiety, failure, shame, and loss. This movement draws on formal aspects of the program, but also draws significantly on the fantasies and context that the individual brings to the experience, as well as the possibilities that the individual will have for examining and reworking some of those fantasies as the program progresses.
Implications for Leadership Development Programs There will likely forever be a debate regarding the degree to which any educational intervention can influence the development of leadership potential. This debate of course mirrors the 'nature/nurture' controversy which has been played out in parallel in the psychoanalytically informed organizational literature for some time (Zaleznik, 1991). One limitation of this line of inquiry is our inability to know whether or not what appear to be positive psychodynamic shifts in the sense of potency described in the two case vignettes represent the kinds of fundamental shifts that one would hope to see in a psychoanalytically informed therapy, or whether they were merely ''transference cures' fostered by immediate relational influences in the educational setting. Follow-up data suggests, however, that at least in some cases, the educational experience has had an impact on the sense of potency of program participants. If one can accept that this can be the case, then the next question that emerges from the case vignettes is whether such helpful outcomes were serendipitous or could be fostered in a planned fashion. Several elements of program design are worth considering in this regard. In most instances in which participants experience meaningful change, circumstances in the program have allowed them to safely raise their concerns with faculty members and/or other participants. These concerns can be both very personal, as with the first vignette, or reflect an implicit criticism of the program itself, as in the second. In both instances, non-judgmental responses were essential in supporting these individuals in the further exploration of their concern. This requires much of the faculty participating in such programs, particularly as they have their own reputations at stake when they are evaluated at the end of the day by program participants. Faculty and participants alike must work to contain the anxiety (French, 1997) associated with confront personal fantasies and fears, if participants are to be allowed to explore, mourn and/or heal their sense of self in relation to those fantasies. Participants have to have the psychosocial space in which to surface and address their fantasies, if they are to be addressed. In psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the relationship between therapist and client serves as a container for the anxiety associated with problematic fantasies and impulses. The financial demands on teaching institutions can mitigate against the forming of sufficiently supportive relationships between participant and instructor. The necessarily short-term time frame of many leadership programs confounds this difficulty. This theoretical frame of reference already argues for a greater emphasis on understanding the individual dynamics of program participants. Many, if not most, LD programs tend to rely on group processes for program management and instruction. The individual psychodynamic issues raised in this discussion suggests the importance of other models for LD programs, particularly those which emphasize coaching and other individual level interventions as a follow-up to formal LD programs (Conger, 1992). Finally, further research is also strongly indicated. It should be possible to explore the connection between individual participant fantasies, organizational contexts, expectations of the program, interventions and outcomes. Such an effort should help to improve the efficacy of leadership education in a number of ways. First, such insight should help individuals and organizations determine with a greater degree of reliability who should participate, if at all, in what kind of leadership development program. A great deal of time and money is allocated to leadership training by both individuals and organizations. It is critical that this money be allocated appropriately. Second, more appropriate expectations could be set for participants, their organizations and program faculty. While the experience of failure is often an opportunity for learning, and indeed, some failure is beneficial, all parties to the leadership education endeavor can use guidance as to what should be taking place (the existential task) during leadership education, so as to better understand and better manage the inevitable phenomenal tasks that will accompany the effort.
References Bass, B., 1990. Bass and Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership, New York: Free Press. Bradford, D., & Cohen, A., 1998. Power Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership. New York: Wiley. Conger, J., 1992. Learning to Lead: The Art of Transforming Managers into Leaders. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. French, R., 1997. "The Teacher as Container of Anxiety: Psychoanalysis and the Role of the Teacher," Journal of Management Education, 21, 4, November, pp.483-495. Freud, S., 1955. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 18. London: Hogarth Press. Hirschhorn, L, 1997. Reworking Authority, Leading and Following in the Post-Modern Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kotter, J., 1990. "What Leaders Really Do," Harvard Business Review, May/June, pp.103-111. Kouzes, J., & Posner, B., 1995. The Leadership Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Krantz, J., "Anxiety and the New Order," in (ed. by Klein, E., Gabelnick, F., & Herr, P.) Psychodynamics of Leadership: Madison, CT: Psychosocial Press, pp.77-108. Lapierre, L., 1989. "Mourning, Potency and Power in Management," Human Resource Management, Summer, 28, 2, pp. 177-189. Lawrence, W.G., 1985. "Management Development......Some Ideals, Images and Realities." In, Group Relations Reader 2, ed. by Coleman, A.D., & Geller, M.G., Washington, DC: AK Rice Institute, pp.231-240. Lawrence, W.G., 1998. "Unconscious Social Pressure on Leaders," in (ed. by Klein, E., Gabelnick, F., & Herr, P.) Psychodynamics of Leadership: Madison, CT: Psychosocial Press, pp. 53-76. Levinson, H., 1981. Executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lombardo, M., 1988. "How Successful Executives Develop: The Challenges of Leadership, Other People, Hard Times, and the Classroom," in (ed. by London, M. & More, E.) Career Growth and Human Resource Strategies. Quorum: New York: pp.257-270. McCauley, C., Moxley, R., & Van Velsor, E. (Editors), 1998, The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Schwartz, H., 1993. "On the Psychodynamics of Organizational Totalitarianism," in The Psychodynamics of Organizations, ed. by Hirschhorn, L, & Barnett, C. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. pp.237-250. Tartakoff, H.H., 1966. "The Normal Personality in Our Culture and the Nobel Prize Complex," Psychoanalysis: A General Psychology, New York: International Universities Press, ed. by Lowenstein, pp.222-252. Zaleznik, A., 1991. "Leading and Managing: Understanding the Difference", in (ed. by Kets de Vries, M. et al), Organizations on the Couch. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 97-119. |
|||
 |
|||