I had an interesting conversation the other day. I was chatting with the Chief Executive and Chairman of a large organisation – 3500 staff, £300m+ turnover, competitive environment etc They are getting to know one another – and, I think, respect one another, and are beginning to recognise that their differences are of value to their board of directors. In…
The ‘boundaryless’ organisation (Hirshhorn and Gilmore 1992) can stimulate large group phenomena such as feelings of loss of identity, a lack of coherence and connectedness[i] – yet also might provide a setting in which there can be a proliferation of connectedness through which some kind of coherence emerges. As Patricia Shaw[ii] discusses: ‘…we are not relating to one person at…
Clare Huffington, Kim James and David Armstrong in their paper, ‘What is the Emotional Cost of Distributed Leadership’[i] discuss the relationship between emotions and the distribution of leadership. They sketch out what to me appears to be a ‘system of systems’ in which context (or environment) is crucial. They propose: ‘… to accept distributed leadership involves bringing into view the…
In his ISPSO paper, in New York (1987) Harold Bridger[i] includes a diagrammatic illustration of some of the main institutional characteristics of an open system with its organisational components and interconnections. The diagrammatic model indicates that such an institution is both “purpose-orientated” and “learning and self-reviewing”. This is a pretty accurate description of what many partnerships are like and feel like…
I was at a trade show a few days ago. It was concerned with health service commissioning. There was the usual clamour of offers being made and conversations being entered into. I develop a trance-like stance, where I am open to browsing, but not sure what is going on in such settings. It reminds me of a souk without the…
Iain McGilchrist makes claims about ‘attention’ and how it ‘shapes’ reality – that it changes what kind of things comes into being for us, and in that way it changes the world – it is itself constantly involved in intimate innovation. And in relation to knowledge, perception and what we think is reality (and remember that Bion linked the experience of ‘maternal reverie’ to be…
Iain McGilchrist in his The Master and His Emissary links together neuroscience and brain functioning with the qualities of ‘attention’. I am not going to try and do justice to his arguments, here, but it seems to me clear that he is describing – from a very different point of view – aspects of what we are exploring. He describes the…
In other language from a different discipline something akin to reverie would be called compassionate non-attachment. The notion comes from the work of the early 20th century German philosopher Sigmund Friedlaender, who introduced Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Psychotherapy, to the idea that opposites define each other and that there is a resting point in the middle – the point…
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…
We commonly talk about ‘decisive’ leadership; about ‘authentic’ leadership. And use images from military command; and wild life – ‘leading the pack’ etc to describe leadership. We use the language of gender distinctions and roles, also – with some leaders being ‘silver back gorillas’; others being maternal in their pre-occupations and strength. Some are sage-like – some (even) in a zen-like…
Slingshot