The world has changed so dramatically in the last few years and continues to do so at an alarming pace. We wake up each day to dramatic shifts in our world order and even if we don’t actively engage in the news cycles that bombard us, we can’t help but be affected by the impact on everyone.
Such changes are a reminder of our close connection as human beings, our interconnectedness. This interconnection is represented not only on a practical level, if trade prices change across the world, then our cost of living is impacted, but also our interconnection on an unconscious level. For example, if one person is anxious it is likely someone close to them may also feel some form of anxiety, not consciously but because we are programmed to respond to each other in this way, an instinct which goes back to our inbuilt survival instincts. Humans speak a language that is far deeper than words we use on a day-to-day basis. As hunter gatherers humans wouldn’t be shouting to each, emailing instructions or telling each other where to stand and where to move to, they would do this intuitively. Have you ever watched a herd of horses move together instantly when there is a threat?
Anxiety was important then to keep us safe from predators and be felt amongst the hunting group this served well in such situations. However, when such anxieties are experienced and shared amongst the group today it may not be quite so helpful.
A lion stalking from the trees is a short-lived threatening event, anxiety in this case would mobilise the group to move, attack and almost certain death is averted. Anxiety has done its job in this workplace and served the group well so that they can stay on task and continue to hunt.
But what about in the modern workplace, the predator is not a visible and natural aggressor but often ongoing day to day stressors that flow through the entire organisation. Anxiety as shown in the above example, in its rightful place, serves us well, but ongoing the accompanied increased cortisol and adrenaline and living in a heightened state of arousal is not healthy. It has negative effects on both the body and the mind. Individually it can lead to exhaustion, concentration lapses, frustration, aggression and physical symptoms such as headaches, gut disorders, body aches and general feelings of unwellness. Ongoing and unaddressed will ultimately lead to burn out.
So how does this relate to organisations and the role of the organisational consultant? What if we exist in a space where most people feel this way. If anxiety is rife in individuals and on a group level. We call this organisational anxiety. Organisational anxiety is a collective sense of unease. We may not be aware it is happening even when it is all pervasive. Similar to the proverbial boiling of the frog we may not even be aware of its existence in our organisation. Who is going to jump out when they haven’t even realised the water is heating?
Signs of an anxious organisation include low morale, increased misconduct or acting out, negative chatter, high staff turnover, high levels of sickness absence, poor productivity and low engagement. Long term exposure to ongoing anxiety will likely lead to burnout for individuals and the entire organisation. Gallup studies have shown that since 2020, employee life evaluations have steadily declined, reaching record lows in 2024, alongside deteriorating mental health indicators. Their studies also show that by investing in workplace wellbeing 53% of employees are less likely to be actively seeking a new job.
Organisations are not inanimate entities but are rather emotional and human structures. They are living organisms that are the construct of the humans within them and must be treated as such.
Organisational consultancy is often considered a fixing tool, an intervention that helps leaders and their teams to improve structures and processes. Consultants considered the experts coming in to tell the organisation what they are doing wrong or at the very least what they could do better. But such interventions fail to consider that together with these systems and the structures sits a whole emotional world made up of individuals and groups all with their own set of unconscious processes which also powerfully impact any organisation.
Why is this important?
When we are not aware of our unconscious processes, we are not aware of how these impact our own behaviours and the behaviours of the groups that we exist within. The unconscious is a powerful part of our psyche that drives us to behave in ways in which we have no ‘conscious awareness’. On an individual level this can have far reaching impacts but when unconscious behaviour forms part of a group the dynamics become more powerful and risk being destructive.
It is important that we understand our unconscious patterns and responses, and this is particularly true for leaders and senior managers. Awareness of one’s own drivers but also how a group can be carried by unconscious activity and can be driven to action, decision making and swayed into inaction by the power of group dynamics.
Underlying emotional dynamics are the most likely cause of groups being ‘off task’ or not able to perform their tasks effectively or productively. The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion examined how teams and groups can be off task due to something called a group basic assumption. This is where the group can operate on two levels: that of their work group and the basic assumption group. When operating on the latter they are caught up in unconscious dynamics and not able to get on with the former.
Understanding these behaviours can help leaders and group members recognise when the group is off task and learn how to deal with and redirect the disruptive behaviours in order to get back to the task.
Today’s reality is fixing systems, processes and procedures is not what is going to fix organisations currently struggling under the weight of an all-pervasive global anxiety. What the organisational consultant must be skilled at is being able to provide support in processing the underlying complexities of the organisational human experience.
The organisational consultant needs to be able to get to the root of the problems in any organisation and that means navigating the human dynamics at play. Leaders need to be able to effectively lead their people through change whilst containing their own anxieties and fears for the future, they need help in doing so.
An organisational consultant must be skilled in such work and able to bring entire organisations back on task if they are going to be able to help support leaders and their teams in these troubled times.
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