ADM 612 - Leadership

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ADM 612 - Leadership

• Lecture 12 Psychodynamic Approach

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Introduction

• Features bits and pieces drawn from several
  scholars and practitioners.
• Several fundamental propositions.
• Leaders are more effective when they understand
  their own psychological makeup.
• Leaders are more effective when they understand
  the psychological makeup of their supporters.

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Introduction

• To summarize, the psychodynamic approach places
  emphasis on leaders obtaining insight into their
  personality characteristics and understanding the
  responses of subordinates, based on their
  personalities.
• Secondarily, leaders should encourage group
  members to gain insight into their personalities
  so that they can understand their reactions to
  the leader and to each other.

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Background

• Insight begins with an examination of the roots
  of the individual in the family.
• Parents become our leaders for a few years. They
  create deep-seated feelings about leadership.
• Paternalistic.
• Maternalistic.
• Familial.

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Background

• Some people respond to authority figures, some
  rebel.
• Key to effective leadership is understanding
  ones own personality and the personalities of
  followers.

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Background

• Psychodynamic approach draws on Sigmund Freud and
  Karl Jung.

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Concepts of Psychodynamic Approach

• Family of origin.
• Role of parent to socialize child into society.
• Child begins life as very self-centered. Parent
  must meet needs of child
• Complete mutual interdependence.
• Leadership paternalistic or maternalistic
  management complete interdependence.

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Concepts of Psychodynamic Approach

• Maturation or individuation.
• As time goes on, child becomes more independent
  of parent.
• However, properly socialized child carries
  parent within conscience.
• Two key issues
• Responses to authoritarian leaders dependent on
  authoritarian or laissez-faire parents.
  Reactions not rational.
• Intimacy and openness from kindness to distance
  based on parental upbringing. All adults tend to
  one or the other.
• As leaders and followers, people range from
  authoritarian to permissive and from nurturing to
  critical and everything in between.

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Concepts of Psychodynamic Approach

• Dependence and Independence.
• Leaders style reflects parental upbringing. May
  adopt style of parent (authoritarian or
  permissive) or adopt the opposite.
• Follower may react to a leader dependently,
  counterdependently, or independently.

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Concepts of Psychodynamic Approach

• Repression and the shadow self.
• Deep psychology. Children schooled not to lash
  out in anger. Socialization produces repression.
  Repression causes anger to come out in other
  forms in leadership situations.
• Jung concept of the shadow. Shadow self that
  engages in behavior that she has been trained is
  unacceptable. Leads to denial and an incomplete
  understanding of her personality.

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Concepts of Psychodynamic Approach

• Archetypes.
• A strong pattern in the human psyche that
  persists over time. A template of human behavior
  and belief.
• Six archetypes.
• Innocent exists before journey.
• Orphan moves out of comfort zone.
• Martyr devotes time and energy to the welfare
  of others.
• Wanderer independent or counterdependent.
• Warrior goes out into battle.
• Magician adaptability.

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Concepts of Psychodynamic Approach

• Two archetypes relevant to leadership warrior
  and magician

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Concepts of the Psychodynamic Approach

• Relational Analysis.
• Three ego states parent, adult, child. All
  adults have all three. Some are more dominant
  than others.
• Parent ego state critical (judgmental,
  fault-finding, strict) versus nurturing (kind,
  gentle, loving).
• Child ego state playful (dependent) versus
  rebellious (counterdependent).
• Adult ego state ability to do reality testing,
  trial and error. Integrates parent and child
  egos. Uses those most appropriate to the
  situation.

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Concepts of the Psychodynamic Approach

• Relational analysis.
• Transactional analysis behavior of the leader or
  subordinate will draw out (cathect) a countering
  response (dependent or counterdependent) from the
  other side.
• A good leader attempts to bring out adult ego
  states in subordinates.

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Concepts of the Psychodynamic Approach
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How Does the Psychodynamic Approach Work?

• Psychodynamic theory designed to produce change
  in the client.
• All psychodynamic trainers assume that insight
  into the psychological past of the individual
  will bring about changes in feelings, attitudes,
  and behaviors.

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Strengths

• Analysis of relationship between leader and
  follower.
• Universality of the approach.
• Emphasizes insight on the part of the leader.
• Discourages manipulative techniques of leadership.

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Criticisms

• Much of the early research based on clinical
  examination of limited populations.
• Subjective nature of findings.
• Based on case study reports for individual
  practitioners.

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Criticisms

• Cultural biases of practitioners.
• Ignores organizational factors.
• Does not lend itself to training.

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Application

• Focuses on relationship of leader to subordinate.
  General context of human relationships.
• Clinical background personal growth of leaders.

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Application

• Build awareness of patterns of emotional
  response.
• Experiential training sessions.
• Use testing of dimensions of personality to
  uncover unconscious interactions.