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Management Training Without
Social Defenses: Terry Martin |
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Introduction There is currently widespread agreement about the importance of appropriate education and training for those who both aspire to and hold posts of managerial responsibility within the educational system. Precisely specifying what constitutes a valid and appropriate educational or training experience is not so easy. The policies and proposals of the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) in the UK do not always seem to recognise the complexities of the processes involved in organising courses and learning experiences but are embedded within a rationalistic discourse where objectives, standards and outcomes only need to be stated clearly and all will be well. ‘Clear’ is an overused word in TTA documents. Using an alternative discourse within the psychoanalytic tradition, Hirschhorn (1990) offers a more reality based analysis. He examines management training as a ritual, an organised system of behavior whose manifest and covert functions contradict each other. …… Ostensibly organizations support management training so that their managers can become more effective as supervisors, planners, and decision makers. Yet learning about management can itself promote significant anxiety. Behind the problems of management there frequently lie difficult interpersonal problems as managers find it hard to evaluate employees, confront peers, or correct superiors. Paradoxically management training frequently conceals and disguises this interpersonal dimension by offering managers a set of techniques and methods with which they can in fact bypass the interpersonal domain. The trainers promise the managers that they will be in control when they master the methods for evaluating subordinates or negotiating with peers. But this promise of control is nothing but the promise that the manager will not be surprised by anxiety, by feelings of danger and uncertainty. (106) Through a case study on insubordination he defends and elaborates upon this claim and demonstrates the powerful collusive dynamics at work for those engaged with management training and education. Schein (1987), from a very different starting point, describes his experiences of a ‘shocking revelation’ that he and other colleagues in academia placed little credibility upon professional journals as a source of research results for informing their own classroom teaching about management. Schein and his colleagues were relying instead upon their first hand experience as consultants or practitioners. Schein goes on to describe the setting up and running of a ‘clinical seminar’. Our goal was to bring live case material into the seminar and to discuss together how our "on-line" experience could be converted into credible, reliable research data. How did we each manage this transition in our own head, and how could we communicate our insights to colleagues? (14) In this paper I want to describe and reflect upon a ‘clinical seminar’ which is modelled upon the insights of both Schein and Hirschhorn. Live case study material is presented by the participants as a means to helping them solve their own management problems. The challenge was to run management training which did not reinforce those same defences which lie at the very heart of the problems the participants were most anxious to solve. The course, Clinical Approaches to Management, is attended by mid-career professionals in various branches of education and is part of the masters programme in the Research and Graduate School of Education, University of Southampton. The term clinical deliberately evokes associations with a medical consultation:
The initial diagnosis and prognosis is made by the presenter through a briefing paper given to the participants in advance of the case study presentation. Through the process of presenting their particular case study, described in more detail below, each participant acquires deeper insight into their own situation from which they can construct for themselves more effective courses of action. The focus of the course, therefore, is on current understandings about organisations and how individuals locate themselves and make sense of their lives within them. Most of us spend much of our lives within a variety of organisational contexts; life in organisations is often experienced as complex and baffling, particularly as the pace of change endlessly quickens. Insight into both inter and intra-psychic processes, stimulated largely by psychodynamic theories, can be helpful to those in management roles who need to be aware of the different perspectives and psychological contracts that those in other roles construct for themselves. Making sense of what happens involves making sense of the behaviour of others.
What is a case study? Case studies are a well established methodology in management courses, Easton (1982), and in research, Stake (1995). They help in particular to develop the competencies of problem analysis, judgement and communication. They also contribute to developing the abilities of applying educational values, organising work, working effectively in a team, leadership of teams and decision making. Live case studies bring the added advantages of immediacy and relevance into a management course. Managers, like teachers, confront a steady stream of ‘happenings’ to which they must respond in some way or another. Most of the time their response is appropriate, finishes the business and life moves on. Often matters are not so simple and a ‘happening’ becomes a problem or issue requiring more sustained attention and action. Choice of descriptive words at this point is significant as they frame our subsequent attitude and approach. These particular ‘happenings’, problems, issues, etc. constitute the raw material of the cases to be studied. The term predicament will be used to cover this class of such management situations which are characterised by:
The choice of the term predicament is deliberate, since as Cox (1978) indicates:
Some of the predicaments experienced in organisational life literally make us weep. They are expressive in some way or another of the human predicament. My central contention is that we can make such predicaments the focus of enquiry within the context of a learning group, drawing upon the insights and methodology of case study research in order to:
As managers typically we do not go out of our way to choose predicaments; rather the predicaments have an uncanny knack of choosing us since by taking on management roles we have put ourselves in their way. Presenting a case Each participant on the course is required to prepare and present a case study of a particular management predicament of real concern to them in their institution. In order to enable everyone to come informed for each session they prepare in advance a short written briefing paper of their case study containing a brief description of:
An example of one such briefing paper prepared by a deputy head teacher can be found in Appendix 1. Through the process of presenting the case to the group the focus of the predicament often shifts as deeper issues are brought to the surface. A variety of presentational formats and processes are possible in order to explore a predicament, each offering certain advantages and drawbacks. As the course progresses the participants have the opportunity to learn much from experimenting with different formats. The following formats have all been tried during the course:
The choice of which format to use is deliberately left to the presenter. A summary of the process which was used for the same deputy head teacher can be found in Appendix 2. Key questions and issues of cases Whichever of the presentational formats is adopted careful questioning and attentive listening are essential in order to uncover the deeper meanings and processes at work. Some key questions and associated issues are summarised in Table 1 below.
Table 1: Questions and issues in case study presentations In presenting questions and issues in this way I do not want to give the impression that the process is a mechanical one. On the contrary the enquiry is usually fluid and open ended in which there is a collective search for meaning. The formulation of these questions has arisen inductively as part of this case study research into my own practice of facilitating the course and reflecting upon the processes and outcomes. Reflecting on cases As a result of their presentation to the group each participant hopefully acquires new insights and understandings from which fresh effective courses of action can be generated. As an aid to this some personal reflections by the tutor are produced on each case study presentation; an example of such reflections for the case study presentation of the same deputy head teacher can be found in Appendix 3. For the course assessment each participant writes up their case study in which they include the initial briefing paper, their own reflections on the process of giving their presentation and an analysis which incorporates a theoretical framework and a critical evaluation of the whole process of the course. The questions in Table 1 have been useful in structuring these accounts, which often include encouraging evidence of subsequent action taken by the presenter as a result of which predicaments have been significantly resolved. The theoretical basis for both the analysis of the case studies and the processes at work during the presentations come from the psychodynamic and system perspectives on individual and group behaviour as developed by the Tavistock and Grubb Institutes and used in their consultancy and teaching work, (Reed and Palmer 1972). These perspectives will come as no surprise to members of The International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO), but they are neither well known nor used in most educational management courses. I have written elsewhere in more detail about this theoretical framework, (Martin 1995), and here briefly summarise two key points:
The systems perspective, often now linked to the concept of a learning organisation (Senge 1990) is essential in providing an overview of the whole organisation, without which individuals can pursue their own objectives rationally and sincerely, but unwittingly work at cross purposes. Game Playing is endemic in organisational life and an analysis using the concepts of games and the drama triangle, derived from the more familiar psychodynamic school of Transactional Analysis, can be extremely helpful, (Weber 1989). The psychodynamic perspective is essential in drawing attention to the importance of feelings and emotions in influencing and determining human behaviour. The perspective is set within a wider frame of hermeneutic enquiry and phenomenological and constructivist paradigms.
The role of the course tutor in case study presentations The course tutor has a crucial role in managing and facilitating the process of a learning group. She or he must provide a role model in being as free as possible from the anxiety driven defensiveness which produces the kind of management predicaments presented through the case studies. The group can be considered a learning laboratory (Bradford, Gibb and Benne 1964) in which participants have to feel sufficiently safe and secure to lower their own defences. In such an environment they can be open to insights, often painful, about the ways in which they precipitate and propagate those predicaments which they bring for analysis to the group. Presenters quite often, for example, get angry with the tutor and the tutor needs to contain this anger and constructively re-direct the energy behind it. Clinical supervision for tutors, not often considered a priority in academic contexts, is very important. The tutor needs to keep a balance between respecting and valuing the experience of participants and making interpretations of that experience informed by psychoanalytic theories. The more familiar aspect of the tutor’s role on a course is in imparting relevant conceptual knowledge, which as outlined above is drawn from psychodynamic and system perspectives on organisational behaviour. This conceptual knowledge can be taught using traditional didactic methods but the most effective learning is often generated experientially and inductively. Evidence from both course evaluations and course assignments suggest that once initial anxieties and apprehensions are overcome the group functions highly effectively. Participants regularly report significant and lasting changes within themselves which often remain elusive on more traditional didactic courses and the skill and expertise of the tutor in facilitating the process has been valued and acknowledged. Conclusion Generalizability is an important issue in case study research, (Simons 1995), and the issue is relevant here on two levels, namely:
According to phenomenological, constructivist and subjectivist perspectives on organisations, (Greenfield and Ribbins 1993), ultimately the only reality is that created by individuals inside their own minds. Hence the ultimate source of all predicaments is the way in which individuals construe and make sense of their experience. Building up from this theoretical base some common themes and understandings that have emerged through a number of case study presentations can be identified, and the kinds of action that are likely to prove productive in solving, resolving or dissolving them. The organisational predicaments and underlying issues which surfaced during the most recent course presentations are summarised in Table 2 below. Included in the first column is the title given to the subsequent tutor reflections on the session.
Table 2: Organisational predicaments and possible underlying issues In almost all cases an essential component of the required action is confrontation; indeed the ultimate cause of many predicaments is the widespread reluctance to confront and the avoidance of issues perceived to be painful and difficult. This avoidance lies behind the game playing referred to previously. The course itself is highly confrontational in style, exposing the defensive manoeuvrings within organisations, and for many it provides a unique opportunity to experience a more authentic engagement with others. A few are either unwilling or unable to sustain this level of engagement and paradoxically become more defensive and subversive of the process. This case study approach has been illustrated with one example; there is an accumulative impact as the course unfolds and each participant in turn presents their case and the group experiments with different ways of working and common themes emerge. The theoretical framework outlined above has enabled participants to enhance their conceptual understanding of organisational issues. The avoidance of defensiveness operates at two levels: in analysing and understanding the deeper meanings in the cases presented and their own contributions to the problems. in the processes within the group; transference patterns often emerge within the group and by inspecting its own processes light is shed both upon the case study problem under scrutiny and the seductive pull of defensive dynamics. Competency based approaches to management training are helpful in making explicit what we need to achieve but are not necessarily able to specify how the essential knowledge, skills and understandings are acquired. A case study approach as outlined in this paper, which is firmly rooted in a hermeneutic tradition of enquiry and the experiential learning cycle (Kolb 1984), can help individuals learn in a deep and lasting way. Appendix 1: The case study briefing paper produced by a deputy head teacher and distributed to the group one week in advance of the presentation Background The school is a 350 pupil primary (age 4-11) in the centre of a built up town and has a mixed catchment area of lower income families in council housing and owner occupier homes. The school has 12 classes. The school had an Ofsted inspection in January 1994 as part of the pilot. Problems were identified in the quality of teaching and learning, a low expectation of more able pupils and the need for schemes of work in all subjects. English was identified as key area for development, particularly at Key Stage 2. The Curriculum needs are identified in the school development plan. Core subject managers have a team or working party to help them deliver the needs of the curriculum. These teams meet a minimum of twice a term. The English manager was given the task in January 1994 of producing an English Scheme of Work.
The Problem After my appointment as deputy head teacher, but before I took up the post in December 1994, I attended a meeting of the Governing Body as an introduction to the job. At that meeting , the English Manager was also present to discuss the scheme of work in English. He unfortunately was not able to give a full presentation as there were still some aspects to be completed, but he assured the Governing Body that it would be completed by May 1995. At his staff development interview in February he thought that it would not be ready until September 1995. Despite numerous meetings and discussions, it is still no where near completion. The English team meetings lack preparation, direction and substance. When asked if the team has an issue to bring to a staff meeting the answer is always 'no', putting me in the position of saying that I would like us to discuss an aspect of English. He arrives at 8:30 and leaves at 3:40 ( to play golf ) making it difficult to meet and discuss things with him. Last term he started applying for jobs that gave him 2 additional incentive points and were key management positions. On discussing this with the head teacher, it was suggested that from the point of writing a reference he needed to prove that he could manage a team well. This was not seen as useful advice which resulted in him contacting his union for support against the head teacher. Action already taken
What next?
Appendix 2: The presentation of the case study by the deputy head teacher reconstructed from notes taken by one of the group Prior to her presentation to the group the deputy head teacher had disclosed that she had had a difficult week as her ex-husband had died. She was also flustered by having left her tape-recorder in her car. Nevertheless she wanted to proceed with her presentation as planned, which after discussion and negotiation with the group was organised along the following lines:
Based on notes taken by one of the participants the initial one-to-one session with her uncovered that she was experiencing a lot of unexpressed anger at the situation and that there were significant issues for her in relating to both the male teacher who was the apparent source of the problem, and the male head teacher, who whilst initially was in the background turned out to have a crucial role in the dynamics of the situation. During the subsequent questioning by the group it emerged that the head teacher had a reputation for bullying staff and had been confronted a couple of years before by teachers’ unions about his behaviour. In a further brief one-to-one session with an interpretation was suggested in terms of Transactional Analysis (TA) using the concepts of ego states and the drama triangle. The head teacher has withdrawn into a nurturing stance, the (maverick) teacher is in Free Child and flipping between Victim and Persecutor Role, and she is being manipulated into Critical/Controlling Parent and a Persecutor Role, having exhausted the rescuing strategies outlined in her paper. After the session the tutor summarised his thoughts and feelings in the following reflections which, after checking with her, were distributed to the whole group the following week. Appendix 3: Tutor’s reflections on the case study presentation by the deputy head teacher ‘Mrs Nasty and Mr Nice’
The head teacher of the school (50 year old male) has a reputation for bullying staff which has led in the past to confrontations with the unions. He now seems to have been frightened off by these experiences, his bluff has been called, and has now changed to a ‘being nice with everyone but don’t bother me with your problems’ style of management. Particularly in a familial type of organisation, as primary schools tend to be, those in authority and leadership positions will inevitably be experienced as parent like figures and there will be strong emotional expectations that they will fulfil this role by providing both controlling and nurturing functions. This is quite appropriate and necessary within bounds, particularly within an organisation dedicated to the well-being and development of children. As containing both these controlling and nurturing functions within one individual is difficult, a process of ‘splitting’ often occurs, whereby one person takes predominantly the controlling role and the other the nurturing role. As the roles are deeply engendered there are strong pulls towards men as controllers and women as nurtures as is the case in traditional family organisation, (‘just wait till your father gets home’), and in many secondary schools with pastoral and curriculum deputies. ‘Splitting’ is a defensive process which conceals rather than solves problems. In the case study school there appears to be an interesting gender role reversal as the reformed Mr Nice Guy fulfils a much diluted nurturing role and the (female) deputy head teacher takes on the controlling role. The unions in the background play a dual role of being protective of members upon whose interests they act, and being threatening to anyone else who might challenge them. The school as a whole, through the emasculated leadership, has a shortfall in genuine nurturing. One individual, (30 year old male), through a combination of personal predisposition and the particular emotional configuration outlined above, acts out a maverick role. He is not fulfilling reasonable expectations of his co-ordinating role whilst enjoying considerable freedom and creativity within the classroom where he is an accomplished performer. He is difficult to pin down, and if efforts are made to do so, he threatens union action. In Child ego state (Little Professor) he is skilfully playing ‘Dad’ off against ‘Mum’. By exploring this issue one-to-one with the (female) deputy head teacher I (male) forced some of the issues to the surface. Acting in a maverick way, asking unexpected questions, I partly re-enacted the situation she is struggling with, but in the context of a very supportive and nurturing group. The latter was very important to ensure (psychological) safety, particularly because of her recent bereavement. In my closing comments to her I said:
Unless all parties can confront the underlying issues in an Adult manner, a way forward is difficult to see. Recognising some of the teacher’s needs for a creative maverick role the deputy head teacher has already given him a responsibility for organising social events. In the long term, the basic emotional configuration of the organisation will need to be shifted, as the current configuration provides a waiting arena in which endless games can be played. Reintegration of roles requires each individual to have some share, not necessarily equal, of the basic nurturing and controlling functions. We all need a balance of both, individually and collectively, and an essential part of personal development is the internalisation of these into our own selves so that we can provide them for ourselves and others. Recent events in schools, which have been widely reported in the press, show how situations can seriously deteriorate when the balance goes wrong. An excess of control through external inspectors and enforced change of leadership are often the only ways of significantly shifting the balance. The costs of these draconian measures are painfully obvious. Management is primarily the lifelong process of managing the boundaries of one’s self in the presence of others. (Rance 1994: 99) References Bradford, L Gibb, J & Benne, K (1964) T-Group Theory and Laboratory Method. John Wiley and Sons Cox, M. (1978) Structuring the Therapeutic Process: Compromise with Chaos-The Therapist's Response to the Individual and the Group. Oxford: Pergamon. Cox, M. & Theilgaard, A. (1987) Mutative Metaphors in Psychotherapy: The Aeolian Mode. London and New York: Tavistock Publications. Czarniawska-Joerges, B. (1992) Exploring Complex Organizations. London: Sage. Easton, G. (1982) Learning from Case Studies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Greenfield, T. & Ribbins, P. (Eds) (1993) Greenfield on Educational Administration. London: Routledge. Hay, J. (1992) Transactional Analysis for Trainers. Maidenhead: McGraw Hill. Hirschhorn, L. (1990) The Workplace Within-Psychodynamics of Organizational Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Kolb, D. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Martin, T. (1995) ‘Institutional blockages to learning and changing -a psychodynamic perspective’, Educational Change and Development 16(1): 45-50. Rance, C. (1994) ‘A Group Analytic Perspective on the Management of Change in Organisational Life’, in Collected Papers 1984-1993 Cambridge Group Work. Reed, B. & Palmer, B. (1972) An Introduction to Organisational Behaviour. London: Grubb Institute. Schein, E. (1987) The Clinical Perspective in Fieldwork. London: Sage. Senge, P. (1990) The Fifth Discipline. London: Century Business. Simons, H. (1995) ‘The Paradox of Case Study’, Cambridge Journal of Education 26(2): 225-240. Stake, R. (1995) The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Weber, R. (1989) ‘Game
Playing and the Psychodynamics of Organizational Life: Games Managers
Play’ in Morgan, G. (Ed) Creative Organization Theory. London: Sage. |
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