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Tensions Around Role of Consultant as Container
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This paper is about tensions experienced in the consulting role, particularly when one is involved in a process of discovering the organisation by engaging with its emotions. My paper today highlights some of the difficulties inherent in the consulting role. I present a case study of my experience working as a consultant to a powerful and highly conflictual international organisation. The therapeutic world has long established that our emotional interface with an organisation is a source of data to be explored and worked with. Feelings of anxiety experienced in the consultant system can alert and inform the consultant of powerful forces operating within the client system. Through an exploration of transferential and countertransferential issues that arise between the consultant and client system, one is able is to develop hypotheses about organisational life. In order to work with the transferential issues, we need to become involved in a way that enables us to gain access to both conscious and unconscious data. We need to be open and available both intellectually and emotionally. Bion’s (1961) metaphor of the ‘container’, where the consultant system takes in the anxiety projected into it and returns it in a modified and more bearable form, is an apt way of exploring the consulting process. However, engaging with organisational emotions can expose the consultant to a precarious and tension filled arena. As a consultant to an organisation, one is potentially the recipient of organisational projections, irrespective of the nature of the consultancy, one is involved in. This is particularly so if organisational members are under stress and the organisation is experiencing pain (as is so often the case in today’s rapidly changing environment). When one is working in the domain of the irrational (as opposed to the so called tangible and rational facts and figures arena) the potential for such projections is even greater. Working with our feelings as a tool to understand the organisation can inform us about the organisation. But it can also be a potentially painful and highly anxiety provoking process. Moreover working with emotion exposes one to one’s own emotions. Dealing with organisational vulnerability predisposes one to one’s own vulnerability. The process of working through what we have introjected, making sense of the data and feeding it back in a constructive way is the task of the consultant. Working in this way is neither smooth, nor linear, nor does it follow a causal path. It involves working with ambiguity, inconsistencies and uncertainty. Events, motives and behaviours that may make sense in hindsight may feel extremely confusing at the time. The following case presents my experience in working as a consultant to an organisation. In particular it reflects the tensions and struggle I experienced trying to find and take up my role. As I was to discover my difficulties in finding role paralleled those of the organisational members. Rather than present aspects of the case to highlights the points I am making, I have chosen to present the whole case, and invite the audience to go through this journey with me.
The case: tensions around consultant as container My entry into the organisation provides some information about the way that the organisation operated and how my own capacity for seduction allowed me to collude with fantasies the organisation may have had about the role of a consultant. How did it all happen? I was approached by a ‘head hunter’, who referred me to a Company XYZ executive. The organisation had just introduced expensive technology, which was being resisted. Changes had to be made to the culture to facilitate the introduction of the technology. The organisation was seeking a consultant and I was interviewed by an XYZ executive. The interview went well and I progressed to meet other members of the Company XYZ team and the managing director. The managing director seemed anxious at our meeting. I was asking too many questions. He had no sense of what he wanted from me except to let me know the site needed ‘cleaning up’ because the workforce was problematic, and the middle managers were not on ‘our’ side (or his side) as they aligned too much with the workers. Moreover, Company XYZ had invested hundreds of millions of dollars into a new technology, which was being resisted in a number of ways. I felt threatened by the atmosphere presented to me. I did not feel ready to take up what I considered to be a difficult and somewhat nebulous task. I conveyed my anxiety to the organisation. The next day I received an enormous bouquet of flowers, with a note from the executive conveying the positive way that I had been received. This was followed by a phone call offering me more money. They were pursuing me. They wanted me. I was fantastic. I vacillated over a two week period as I played ‘cat and mouse’ with the organisation. Finally I took the risk and took the job, colluding on the one hand with their sense of my omnipotence and on the other hand, experiencing a sense of impending disaster. I had become idealised. Where do I start? How was I going to take a role, that I had not satisfactorily negotiated, except in the most nebulous of terms? How was I going to ‘clean up’ the production site’? I had to make sense of the culture. My first day at the plant was painful. I had a series of meetings with the senior management team. According to senior management, the problem lay with the middle managers, and the workers. I met the production site manager, John, referred to as the ‘toe cutter’, who held a senior position having been with the organisation for some 45 years. It was his terrain, that amongst other things, I was required to ‘clean up’. He also saw his job as ‘cleaning up’ the site. I was entering into his space. In the fifteen minutes I spent with him, he let me know, in no uncertain terms, that he was boss, and that he was not going to let a "fucking sheila" tell him what to do. He referred to my work as human resources, which he said should stay out of production. He then showed me to my office. The office was away from everyone, particularly from the group, that I was supposed to be working with. To get to my office, I had to walk through the production site. I had to wear safety boots and hearing protection if I was going to abide by the health and safety rules. There was no other way to get to the office, that he had chosen for me. I found I had no desk. Instead there stood a table with rusty nails jutting out of it. The chair had only one arm; the other was lying on the floor. There was a filing cabinet, which I subsequently discovered could not be fitted with frames. There was dust and there were dead flies on the floor. I made a comment about the despicable state of the office. "Did I want his office" was the reply. I was unwelcome. As I began to discover, John’s reign was one of terror. He was hated and feared. He was part of the institution of Company XYZ. This institution transcended organisational and national boundaries. As part of the international hierarchy John and others at the top were immune from accountability. They could do no wrong and were rewarded with expense accounts and long lunches. Imperfection lay with the lower levels, who were referred to as ‘the animals’ and the ‘viet cong’. The culture was one of enormous conflict and industrial unrest was pervasive. I reported my perceptions and concerns to the managing director on a regular basis, hoping that over time he might develop an understanding and awareness of the feeling state of his organisation and countenance the possibility of dialogue within the organisation. He did not want to know what was happening in his organisation. Instead I was verbally abused for my reports. Moreover complaining about John’s behaviour was like a red rag to bull. There were sides and I was expected to belong to the side that had employed me. My unstated role was to maintain the status quo, which was totally incongruent with my stated role, to introduce change. Change could only be introduced if a climate was created which encouraged and enabled the workforce to want to rather than have to, take up the new technology. The technology required more sophisticated work practices, introduction of computerisation and teamwork. However the structure and culture of Company XYZ were unable to provide the ‘holding environment’ (Winnicot 1951) required for this kind of ‘knowledge work’ (Krantz 1995) to be possible. Imposing new technology irrespective of its potential benefits, on an angry and infantilised workforce is likely to result in resistance. Where change is the fear inducing kind that is imposed on morally battered employees, it does not open up new opportunities, but pays for past mistakes (Hamel 1996). Of the sixteen months I was there, some thirteen months were spent in formal dispute in the courts with the workforce and the union who represented them. Strikes and picket lines were a prevalent occurrence and people were continually threatened with physical violence. Sabotage of machinery was costing the organisation large amounts of money. Demarcations of all varieties were prevalent. I constructed my task around management development, which involved assisting managers manage difference in a more constructive way. Although some understood the concept of co-operation and others even embraced it at a personal level, this company was ‘at war’, both externally in the market place and internally within the organisation. The culture of coercion that pervaded the market place transcended organisational boundaries and became the culture within. People behaved as if every day was a challenge to their survival and hence they resorted to the most basic and primitive skills in order to survive. Anger and frustration manifested in constant complaints, strikes, sabotage, and go slows, resulting in pervasive anxiety. The technology continued to be resisted. There was no capacity in the organisation to provide a holding environment. I attempted to provide a temporary holding environment, by providing a space for the managers to talk and to think aloud with me and with one another, about their roles and the difficulties they had in taking up their roles. Much of the time was spent listening to their feelings of immense impotence. They were expected to treat the workforce as the enemy. Yet unless difference was managed in a more constructive way, the status quo would continue and the technology would not be accepted. The systems, structure and culture of the organisation were incongruent with the requirements of an expensive and sophisticated new technology. I felt this deeply.
Implication for the role of consultant: an analysis Company XYZ is a powerful and political organisation. The culture is defined by an all-powerful, control oriented and punishing leadership, headed by one very powerful man. The culture is one that encourages and reinforces the ruthless and coercive behaviour that has been the recipe for its success in the market place. For example, Company XYZ was successful in decimating the union and transforming the culture of one of its major sites somewhere in the European Economic Community, by a process described as ‘a covert military style strategy’ (Stace and Dunphy 1990). By aligning coercive action with success, the Company XYZ culture has become a model for reinforcing paranoid schizoid behaviour. There is no capacity for the depressive position. The organisation does not wish to relinquish its culture, but seeks the consultant to assist in the reinforcement of the existing culture. The consultant is brought in merely to support the projective fantasies of those in power. (Management can do no wrong). The consultant is idealised and colludes with the idealisation by taking on an impossible role. At some level both the consultant and the organisation understand that this role is not possible, hence the avoidance of role negotiation. Instead both parties construct omnipotent fantasy roles. No one is omnipotent and hence the consultant can only fall from grace. The role of consultant is precarious when authority to take up task is both ambiguous and confused. To survive in such an organisation requires an acute awareness of, and collusion with, unstated organisational demands. In Company XYZ, the definition of primary task was academic. My understanding of the primary task of the organisation involved establishing communication networks. However, to a rational observer, the behaviour of the organisation would appear to be counterproductive to such a task. Taking up any role was an exercise in careful navigation, but one doomed to failure. My role was to provide the managing director with information that he wanted to hear. It was not to uncover and present organisational ills, nor to become an advocate for addressing them. In an attempt to provide a holding environment for sections of the organisation, I had taken up a role that was at odds with what the power base of the organisation required of me. What I considered to be a legitimate role was being undermined. I found myself taking on the role of the caring mother. This was not a role I consciously chose. Rather it was a role I increasingly found myself taking up. It was a role I took up as a defence against my own feelings of marginality and need to be nurtured. I created my own ‘illusory reality’ (Hirschhorn 1988) in the face of what felt like Machiavellian ruthlessness. I colluded with my own valency for taking on the role of the ‘helper’, in an oppressive situation, where scapegoats were continually sought and found and survival required collusion with the oppressor. I became enmeshed in the split. I had taken on what I perceived to be an evil power base by becoming the rescuer of the ‘oppressed victims’. I knew that aligning with the ‘oppressed’ was a recipe for disaster. I was backing the wrong side in the war. Taking on the role of the caring or ‘good mother’ in relation to an authority that constitutes ‘bad fathers’ is dangerous at all levels. Failure to collude with authority in any organisation, particularly an intensely hierarchical one, is a recipe for trouble. Not only can this behaviour enrage the authority, it can also engender feelings of rage in those you attempt to support. On one occasion, I suggested to John that a naked picture of the model Elle be taken down before a customer complains. Although others were aware of the picture and indeed had complained to me about the potential for contravening sexual harassment legislation, no one came to my support when he abused me for being what he referred to as a jealous ‘spoil sport’. Being the ‘good mother’, who is unable to make a difference to the lives of those she is attempting to support, brings up feelings of helplessness, anger and the desire to downgrade the woman as helper, as a defence associated with the total dependency one had on one’s own mother (Winnicott 1986). To be effective as a consultant one needs the capacity to contain what has been projected, and through this process to assist the organisation create its own ‘holding environment’ (Winnicot 1960). Stokes (1994) refers to the role of the consultant as providing a temporary holding environment and assisting management find its own capacity for containment by helping management both clarify the primary task and develop roles consistent with the primary task. Understanding the power of organisational defences and one’s capacity to become entangled in the dynamics of the organisation, is one step towards sorting out one’s role as consultant. Understanding one’s own particular psychopathology and valency to introject what has been projected is not only an opportunity for self understanding, but an opportunity to make sense of the environment, that one is consulting to. For what one understands within oneself can be a window to the environment to which one is consulting. I had introjected the organisation’s feelings of marginality and impotence. Being able to reflect on my own feelings of impotence and frustration helped me reflect on the organisational impotence and frustration. However, it was also important to sort out confront, and contain my own inner under dog and my own feelings of marginality and come to terms with my own internal relations to authority, in order to assist others find their potency. Cardona (1995) refers to conditions that can endanger a consultant’s sense of perspective. She refers to the dangers of divided loyalties and the potential for crossing boundaries and losing one’s capacity for objectivity. Perhaps a role of ‘good enough mother’ (Winnicot 1960), as opposed to an omnipotent mother, may have acknowledged more readily what could not be contained. By defending against the ‘Scapegoat Complex’ (Perera, 1986) and becoming a champion for others, I had colluded with the split. I increasingly began to see myself as one of the victims, hence the blur between ‘container’ and ‘contained’. However, effective consultancy is a two way process. Company XYZ was unable or unwilling to allow me to work with them in a way that I considered useful. There was no way that I could get a commitment from senior management to explore people’s desires and concerns in an open way. The others were too terrified. The organisation was not willing to use the consultant as a vehicle to facilitate engagement with its component parts. For the container to have the best chance of working at the task of containing and metabolising the anxieties projected into it, the organisation needs to be in a depressive mode (Klein 1946). There must be some capacity for the depressive position. This means an ongoing dialogue between the component parts of the psyche be it individual or organisational (Obholzer, 1988, Stokes 1994). I have spoken about the consulting role and my experience with one particular organisation. I present this case because what I present in this case exists elsewhere given an economic rationalism environment, with its attendant consequences of people struggling to deal with feelings of trepidation around an uncertain future and a sense of guilt at having survived the recent restructure or cost cuts, or both. The capacity for genuine leadership is often absent in a climate where key performance indicators are short term and bottom line and there is a constant demand to ‘pump up the urgency rate’ (Kotter 1995). Organisational heads are accorded omnipotent status, which they need to collude with to justify the salaries that are demanded and received. Consultants and academics are not immune from colluding with this ‘organisational ideal’ (Schwartz 1990), as contractual arrangements, greed, sometimes blindness and often survival can make us more susceptible to manipulation. Academics and consultants can and do split off intellectual and ethical leadership by playing on organisations’ discomfort with the reality of an intangible future, and luring organisations with their magical models that promise safety and certainty. If the consulting vision is to establish ‘good enough containers’ (Nutkevitch 1998), how do we as consultants and academics take up this challenge in an environment where creative work is often under threat? Bibliography Alderfer ,C.P. (1987). An intergroup perspective on group dynamics, in J. Lorsch edition, Handbook of Organizational Behavior, Prentice hall. Argyris, C. (1987). ‘Double - Loop Learning in Organisations’ Harvard Business Review, Sept - Oct, pp. 115 – 125. Argyris, C. and Schon, D. (1978a). Organizational Learning. Reading Mass: Addison Wesley. Argyris, C. (1980). Psychological Defences, System Intervention, and Preventative Mental Health, Chapter 2, Advances in Experiential Processes, Volume 2. Edited by C.P. 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