THE SHADOW IN ORGANISATION
A REVIEW OF THE WORK IN 2002
Introduction
After a posting to the New Intermediaries email group at the beginning of the year I organised a lunchtime meeting on 25th February where 12 people attended. Out of this a request for an experiential workshop emerged which took place on 25th April, which was organised and facilitated by Caroline Flexman, John Wilkes and myself. As a result of this a half-day completion event took place on the morning of 4th December. Caroline Flexman then gave a half-day workshop in the afternoon on the personal shadow working with the hero and anti-hero.
This has been an uneasy journey, which delivered huge rewards from deepening my personal awareness of how the shadow in organisation manifests. Below is an outline of the report on each event and the completion process.
1. Shadow lunch meeting – 25th
February
Review the Shadow at work from Connie Zweig’s Romancing the Shadow
We started with initial introductions about why each one of us had come and what the shadow meant to us individually. This was followed by an hour's brainstorming session
How does this relate to organisations? We had many personal contributions of individual experiences within organisation, which was opened out to the political and global perspective. It became clear that in our own experiences the shadow had explicit presence in organisations and this knowledge opened up the possibility of new ways of working.
The final half hour considered
what we had learned and where we could go with this topic. The conclusion was
that the group wanted to create a workshop to experience the Shadow in
Organisation. The meeting ended at
2. Shadow in organisation one
day workshop– 25th April
This was created as a result of the lunch, in February.
The day was set up using the Tavistock model of working with the Shadow in Organisation. I was the director, and Caroline Flexman and John Wilkes were consultants and there were eight participants. The Primary Task of the day “To explore the shadow within the temporary organisation of a Shadow Day workshop.”
For the first hour the director introduced the structure and the primary task. There were then two sessions either side of lunch of one hour and a quarter where the brief for the consultants was to reflect and paraphrase back to the group as it happened as the group explored the primary task of the day in the context of the inter-personal relationships between members of the group.
The final plenary was for reflection on the learning form the day and what participants will take away. The role of the consultants was to draw together their own experience of the day with the comments of the participants and suggest common themes that are emerging.
At the end of the day it was made clear that it was for each participant to take away their own experience and that there would not be a summing up
The outline was deceptively simple. What occurred on the day and followed thereafter were shocking. Surprising, confusing as well as many other things but one thing that could be clearly identified was that wherever this had come form it was the manifestation of the Shadow.
3. Completion morning 4th
December
We started the morning with an open discussion, as peers, looking at observations, reflections and learning from the April experiential event. This was followed by an exercise collating personal learning of each member of the group. Following the meeting Ian reviewed the content of the output and helpfully provided the following summary of the themes:
GROUP DESCRIPTION
1 Silencing
2 Blame
3 Experiencing fully
4 Smooth or expose conflict
5 Persona ‘s need for structure/holding
6 Projections
7 Responsibility
8 Awareness of own process
9 Fear
Having reflected on these descriptions Ian suggests that we each go through these phases and feelings during the emergence of shadow and the issues it stirs up in us. We interpret and deal with the consequent anxiety by either using primitive defences, silencing, blame, fear or the cognitive processes of experiencing fully (acceptance), desire for structure, smooth or expose conflict, projections and taking responsibility for ones own process.
At the meeting the group identified from the output four distinct points of learning:
1. what do we do with confusion/anxiety
2. paranoia/blame/projections versus taking responsibility
3. lack of clarity and structure lead to confusion
4. impact of hierarchies and losing creativity
The final session of the morning was a discussion of the significance for working in organisations and as part of the wrap up Ian offered an outline of the Gestalt model of the shadow in organisation. Generally we seemed struck by the powerful influence the shadow exerts in organisational life. We did note that its influence can be beneficial as well as destructive and perhaps there is a need to learn how to harness the gold in the shadow.
On a personal level, Ian, having reflected on the series of three events, says that he has discovered that the Shadow, like Pandora’s Box, must be treated with respect and care.
Having completed the cycle of exploration I am left with an extract from the explanatory NI posting that resulted from the February lunch:
“One important factor for me was the contribution that Shadow creates safety and is a collective collusion against anxiety and that to work with this topic it is necessary to create safety. One of the reasons for looking at the shadow was to discover the positive intention that the shadow defence represents.”
APPENDIX 1
TRANSCRIBED TEXTS FROM POST IT NOTES OF LEARNING FROM THE SHADOW WORKSHOP
Inhibitions
I feel I am not able to express myself. Shut up
Outrage at behaviour that does not conform to individual’s expectations
Anxiety leads me to blame others
Questioning my own honesty
Scapegoating
Feeling manipulated by the structure
Them and Us
Humour & sex are great releases
Conscious that I am enjoying this work
The depth of feelings encountered
Approval, Needy desire to make everything nice and avoid difficulties
Its difficult/impossible to categorise the Shadow
Wanting to expose paradox
Anxiety when there was conflict
The variety of experiences from the same places
Hierarchy, roles & titles help to create formality & expectations & can stifle creativity
Groups create their own unspoken rules quickly
Forces that demand conformity
Conforming to expected behaviour norms
People feel that they have to conform to perceived behaviours
How uncomfortable it is to be in an organisation
Formality in the groups/gossip in the breaks
Paranoid about intent of managers
Leaders who do not participate in group create tensions
Paranoid when directors do not take part in coffee breaks and meals
How positions of perceived power attract blame
Wondering about taking responsibility
Pay attention to the feelings in my body to guide me what to do next
Good intention requires ownership
Curious about apparent “withdrawal”
Amazing how much projection happens when a person is silent
People project their stuff onto others when things are unclear
What’s coming next?
Hungry for clarification and acceptance of no clarity?
Anxiety/Shadow emerges when goals are unclear
Fear its lack of structure