Alumni Recharge!

Rationale

“We need to understand that the psyche is structured both by the desire

to be special to the parents and part of the sibling group.”   

Prophecy Coles, The Importance of Sibling Relations in Psychoanalysis.

“When trust is extended, it breeds responsibility in return.  Emulation

and peer pressure regulates the system better than hierarchy ever could.”  

Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organisations

The traditional view of authority is that it operates from the top, emanating from the ‘one who is supposed to know’, and so is inevitably hierarchical. Accountability should always be up the line. This assumption permeates both Freudian psychoanalysis, in which transference is assumed to derive from earlier experiences of parental authority, and the Tavistock Group Relations tradition of learning for leadership.

In more recent times, feminist critiques of psychoanalysis, expanding theories of object relations, increasing female participation in paid work, higher education levels, digital technology and the demands of complex operating environments (to name a few trends) are calling into question conventional assumptions about organising, leading and accountability.

Clients, customers and employees who share networked access to knowledge, innovations, ‘best practice’ and political pressure points, both locally and globally, increasingly demand timely responsiveness to particular needs in particular ways. One size does not fit all. Such responsiveness requires less hierarchy, more distributed forms of leadership, greater trust in delegated decision making, and more peer to peer accountability. This makes lateral relationships at work just as crucial as vertical relationships. Hence from a psychoanalytic perspective we need to bring into view the challenges of lateral (sibling/peer) relations.

In other words, we need to remember fundamental aspects of group experience that have tended to be displaced, discluded, overshadowed or repressed from mainstream theories of management and organisation behaviour.

For instance, the early Tavistock researchers (Trist and Bamforth, 1951) discovered that the coalminers they observed underground decided together, peer to peer, fundamental aspects of their work practice which were crucial to their safety and efficiency. Trist gave the name ‘semi-autonomous work groups’ to what the coalminers had invented. They were semi-autonomous because the lateral authority taken by the miners accepted and complemented the vertical authority of the mine owners and directors. The vertical and the lateral had to find the right balance, across time and in the face of changing technologies and social conditions. This was called the socio-technical approach. Mostly forgotten now. Not the term, but the fact that the coalminers themselves invented the best and safest way to do their work.

So, what have you forgotten, or only vaguely remember, from your studies of systems psychodynamics?

And what have you forgotten of your personal experience of sibling dynamics that might be of use now in understanding the challenge of flatter structures?

This Re-charge event aims to help you to get back in touch with reserves of experience that you have built up over time; your unthought known.

Design

Each session will involve a reading for discussion, guided small group exploration of self-disclosed experiences of parental/sibling, vertical/lateral dynamics, and application of emerging ideas to each participant’s work role.

The event will be experiential insofaras participants will be invited to discuss their own experience and attention may be drawn to data about the vertical/lateral dynamics within the event but no interpretation of personal material will be undertaken.

Participants are encouraged to keep a reflective diary for their own rumination during and after the event.

Any queries about the event can be forwarded to john.newton@nioda.org.au