A lot gets thought and said about the capacity of leaders to ‘get-the-context’, as a form of interpretation of reality. This is one of the ‘essentialist’ qualities of a leader and leadership system that we discussed in relation to ‘pleasure’ earlier on. But organisations in crisis, that are stuck, that are not fulfilling their purpose are – in some respects – in wrong relation to their context. Adam Phillips in his Winnicott, refers to context and deprivation, speaking of events without context – they had ‘merely happened’ – in terms of
- childhood deprivation,
- the absence of roots that could (otherwise) provide continuity, and
- blanking out in experience that results from this – connecting to the unconscious as the ‘place where deprivations’ are kept
Phillips writes: ‘after ‘recovery’ from x+y+z deprivations a baby has to start again permanently deprived of the root which could provide continuity with the personal beginning.’ There are parallels to this process in organisations – our case material has suggested this – and perhaps this points to a role of leaders and of leadership in contextualising experience, so that things do not ‘merely happen’, with the associated risks of accumulated deprivation that would follow. Perhaps the organisations (and the followers that make them up) that experience such neglectful events without context ‘blank out their experiences’, operate in some way disassociated from their self. A leader with some capacity for reverie could counter this tendency.
Slingshot