Psychoanalytic Concepts In Organizational Consultancy

In organizations certain psychoanalytic concepts are applied to improve the overall work performance of the workers, work environment, communication and safety aspects. Moreover, psychologist use various principles and techniques with the objective to figure out the working conditions of the business premises in order to solve their existing issues. There are certain psychoanalytic concepts which psychologist uses such as confrontation which focuses on encouraging the employees to attend the experiences which they have been avoiding for long, Defence mechanism which emphasizes on reducing the negative feelings among the workers, Psychodynamic theory which focuses on the treatment of making them active and face the routine challenges, Splitting is a condition which shows the failure in the thought process of an individual due to the contrast of both positive and negative qualities, Projection which refers to placing of own negative emotions onto others, Counter transference which means psychoanalyst attitudes and emotions towards workforce, Denial is the situation in which individual refuse to accept certain pieces of realities just to avoid feelings of discomfort, Dream is the state of imaginations of certain events during the sleepy hours. These are some of psychotherapies which are required to maintain positivity at the workplace and comfort people with their existing thoughts. Moreover, psychoanalysis helps people change their unconscious state into consciousness (Armstrong, 2018). Emotional and psychological distress happens due to conflicts between conscious and unconscious mind. Most of the people uses defence mechanism to protect themselves. These modern approaches of psychology emphasize a non-judgemental and empathetic approach. As they help to find out the reasons of avoiding certain feelings, emotions and situations which helps both psychoanalyst and individual understand the reason behind avoiding anything. Moreover, these therapies would help to understand the present psychological challenges and live peacefully in present. Along with this, it helps to explore the relations with others and allows individual to come up with their fears, fantasies, dreams and desires openly (Armstrong, 2010)

In organizations, managers have too consistently look for how they are behaving and how well they are motivating people to behave in a certain way. Organization in mind is what individual perceives of activities, relations and connections on the basis of their own experiences. It gives rise to emotions, attitudes, values inside an individual either positively or negatively. This forms the inner physic which later influence interactions with the outer world. Moreover, humans are emotional creatures, there are certain ways through which one can manage their emotions well. Emotional outburst can be due to work load at the workplace or due to personal life. This occurs in the form of frustration, anger, unhappiness due to the challenging times (Cooperrider, Whitney and Stavros, 2008)

• Deep breathing and relaxation techniques: This will help to resolve the issues of frustration, anxiety, anger and other negative emotions. This is practiced by taking 10 deep breathe until one calm down. For this, one can also take a walk to cool down by adding the flavour of smoothing music.
• Clarification: It is good to clarify the reason before reacting onto anything, it could be a simple misunderstanding or miscommunication with others (Cummings and Worley, 2014).

• Recognize: There is no need to get panic when something happens. For this, taking a deep breath would help. It is important to figure out the root cause behind that emotion and there should not be any judgement about the feeling.
• Understand: This aspect focuses on finding out the reason of why?  Finding out the reason behind anything would help to manage emotions well. It is important to recognize what worked out well and what did not work out.
• Manage: last step is to manage the emotions (Roberts, 2019).

Tavistock model: It is the model introduced by Wilfred Bion in 1954 that emphasizes on the group as whole dynamics with any individual member. This approach helps to address current issues in present moment. In organizations there are conflicts between departments and staff, between organization and outside world, politicians and policy makers and others. These psychodynamic models are used for understanding the impact of changes on organization and individuals. It focuses towards the goals of the organization, detailed plan to implement those changes, adequate number of resources required, effective leadership and good communication skills to implement these changes. Besides this, there needs to have plan for future unforeseen situations. Changes impact positively or negatively to the organizations (Dawson-Shepherd, Kellner and Neumann, 2013). When changes are positive it improves the productivity and efficiency of the organization. It helps in achieving the goals of the organization and improve the morale of the workers. Whereas, when these changes are negative, it leads to stress, anxiety and resistance. This would lead to decrease in efficiency and productivity which hampers the growth of the organization negatively.  In some of the cases, this increases the turnover of the personnel and causes instability in the organization. Changes creates anxiety or stress among the individuals which leads to anger or frustration because it forces people to adopt new way of doing things. One of the best steps in managing change is by implementing leadership structure. Moreover, it is important that organization utilize its resources effectively to facilitate changes in the organization.

This theory focuses on professional experts to look upon holistically the client conditions and environmental factors to get a better understanding of why they face certain challenges or hardships. Although, it is quite of a dauting task to understand the individual behaviour because it is related to various factors. Here, system psychology examines human behaviour and experiences within these complex systems. This enables them to look at bigger picture of how these systems affect each other. Organization depends on their internal or external environment for obtaining the resources such as customers who purchases the products and services, vendors who supply them the required resources, employees who provides labour and management, shareholders invest funds in the organization and government frame the rules and regulation to run these organizations. Therefore, system theory helps to understand how these smaller systems affect the larger aspect of the organization structure (Hinshelwood and Skogstad, 2002)

It focuses on protecting the society from crimes through organized and coherent approach by state and civil society. These are non-violent actions for defence against invasion and other threats. Moreover, without getting a clear picture of the business, consultants focus on the behaviour or any event which is responsible for the issue, instead of the systems and structure which actually created the problem. So, it is important to identify the real causes of the problems to rectify the issues by getting a clear picture of the challenges. Besides this, it is important to understand systems and structure of the organization before leading the workforce. It helps the leader to understand the overall structure and dynamics of the organization. It also helps to frame the plans and policies of the business premises. Another important ingredient for the success of the organization is communication among the various departments. This helps in getting a clear understanding of what to communicate and with whom. Therefore, system and social defence theory would help to accomplish the goals of the organization in coordinated and cohesive way (Hoyle, 2018)

Consultants are professionals who are expert in their fields and have a deeper understanding of the industry they are part of. On the basis of their knowledge, they provide suggestions, analysis and recommendations to an individual, organization or group of individuals to help them improve their performance.

• Consultants helps their clients in achieving the goals by giving them the advices and suggestions on the basis of their knowledge. Moreover, they advise them on matters related to business development, finance, marketing, sales, operations, accounting and financial planning and so on.
• They focus on figuring out the short term or long-term goals of an individual or group of individuals (Pooley, 2018).
• They conduct surveys and interviews with the purpose of collecting data and evaluate the data with the purpose of identifying the root cause of the problem.
• After conducting the in-depth survey, they present the actual scenario in front of management.
• After identifying the weak areas, they suggest improvements to achieve the goals of the organization.
• They formulate the plans to apply the changes and provide required training to the staff members to cope with the changes of the organization.
• They will figure out the most reliable solutions at hand of the existing problems of the organization.
• They also help their clients to run their business more successfully by regularly giving them the recommendations as per the existing situations (Diamond, 2008)

Role of researcher: Researcher uses the scientific method and processes to solve the current problems of the society. Firstly, they collect data during the project life cycle, then evaluate the data and publish the findings. It helps to derive out new information for the betterment of the society.

Ethnographer: The role of ethnographer is to research about a particular group of society with a purpose to understand them and describe them to the others.

Consultant: The role of consultant is to offer suggestions and advices to the organizations in order to help them improve their profitability, management and strategy (Halton, 2019)

Therefore, their role differs from each other as, all of them conduct researches for accomplish different objectives.

Business experts have many tools to monitor business performance and keep a track record of their growth. Here, are some of the tools which business consultants use to improve the performance of the organization.

Benchmarking: It is a tool used for the purpose of comparing the company’s performance with the other competitors of the same industry. Common parameters of benchmarking include revenues, production costs, employee turnover and so on. These are used to monitor the progress on regular basis in order to improve the performance of the business premises (Long, Newton and Sievers, 2018)

Balance scorecard: It is a comprehensive set of objectives that one can monitor over a period of time. It includes certain components such as revenues, market share, quality, employee motivation and others. Moreover, it is used to track companies current progress and making appropriate changes to improve the financial performance.

Porters five forces: It is a model introduced by Michael E Porter. It is developed with the purpose of conducting an industry analysis for framing a strategic plan. Moreover, these are certain strategic forces that influence profitability and growth of the company. It includes competitive rivalry, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat to new entrants, threat of substitutes (Weick, 1995)

BCG growth share matrix: This tool is developed by Boston consulting group which is used to assess the strength of product lines within their portfolio. It classifies products into four categories name as, stars, cash cows, question marks and dogs (Miller, 1995)

• Role analysis: It is a technique used to measure the value of profile on the basis of demands and responsibilities.
• Psychodynamic: It is used to understand the emotions and unconscious behaviour patterns of the individual. It helps them to know themselves better and take better decisions for themselves.
• Coaching: It is a technique through which coach supports a client to achieve their personal and professional goals by providing them proper training and guidance.
• Appreciative enquiry: It is the positive approach to introduce changes in the organization and human systems. It focuses on what is working in the organization rather than focusing on what is not working in the organization. It is used to introduce the positive changes in the business premises (Obholzer and Roberts, 2019)

Armstrong, D., 2010. Meaning found and meaning lost: on the boundaries of a psychoanalytic study of organisations. Organisational and Social Dynamics, 10(1), pp.99-117.

Armstrong, D., 2018. Emotions in organizations: disturbance or intelligence? In Working below the surface (pp. 11-27). Routledge.

Armstrong, D., 2018. Organization in the mind: Psychoanalysis, group relations and organizational consultancy. Routledge.

Cooperrider, D., Whitney, D.D. and Stavros, J., 2008. The appreciative inquiry handbook: For leaders of change. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

Dawson-Shepherd, A., Kellner, K. and Neumann, J.E., 2013. Developing organisational consultancy. Routledge.

Diamond, M.A., 2008. Telling them what they know: Organizational change, defensive resistance, and the unthought known. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44(3), pp.348-364.

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Hinshelwood, R.D. and Skogstad, W., 2002. Observing organisations: Anxiety, defence and culture in health care. Routledge.

Hoyle, L., 2018. From sycophant to saboteur—Responses to organizational change. In Working Below the Surface (pp. 87-106). Routledge.

Long, S., Newton, J. and Sievers, B. eds., 2018. Coaching in depth: The organizational role analysis approach. Routledge.

Miller, E., 1995. Dialogue with the client system: use of the “working note” in organizational consultancy. Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Obholzer, A. and Roberts, V.Z., 2019. The troublesome individual and the troubled institution. In The unconscious at work (pp. 144-153). Routledge.

Pooley, J., 2018. Layers of meaning: a coaching journey 1. In Executive Coaching (pp. 113-130). Routledge.

Rioch, M.J., 1970. The work of Wilfred Bion on groups. Psychiatry, 33(1), pp.56-66.

Roberts, V.Z., 2019. The organization of work: Contributions from open systems theory. In The unconscious at work (pp. 37-48). Routledge.

Weick, K.E., 1995. Sensemaking in organizations (Vol. 3). Sage.