Impact of organization, psychodynamic theories, systemic theories, emotional workplace

1. Impact of
Organizations on
Workplace
Counselling

2. Introduction
• Counselling is viewed as a private, enclosed space between individuals -
an illusion.
• Organization too plays a dynamic and influential role in the counselling
process
• Organizations create problems within individuals and individuals take on
the ills of the contexts in which they live and relate.
• Psychoanalytic approach - integrated syndrome of pathology

3. Two major Approaches
Psychodynamic
Approach
Systemic approach

4. Psychodynamic Approach to Organizations
• Psychodynamic approaches view organizational development similar to individual
development
• Organizations are living organisms that have a sort of collective unconscious (Not
Jung's) that motivates and drives the organization.
• Splitting - two realities out of one instead of being able to love and hate at the
same time – organizations also split – scapegoat
• Projection – Making others responsible for how one feels
• Employees can project and Organizations can also provide itself onto the individual.
• Projective identification – recipient of the projected feelings acts on them as if they
were his/her own
• Transference - Individuals transfer onto the organization unresolved feelings
towards others in their lives

5. Working with Psychodynamic
concepts
• Listen to the symbolic messages
• Assess the defense mechanisms
• Decide what needs to be worked with: the internal world, the
interpersonal world or organizational issues
• Monitor one's own (the counsellor's) feelings (the counter-transference)
as a way of understanding
• Monitor the culture of the organization to foretell some of the possible
problems that are likely to occur

6. Systemic approaches to organizations
• Systemic approaches believe that connections between individuals automatically create
systems
• A system is a pattern of interaction, between persons and groups, which can be
represented by one or more dynamic eedback loops.
• Circular Causation - Human behaviours cause each other
• Open systems - Continuing relationship between the organization and its environment
• Recursive system - organizations are constantly remaking themselves
• Individuals in an organization co-create their world with all its meanings, problems
• Contexts give meaning and behaviours have a different meaning in a different context

7. Working with systemic concepts
Understand problems as context-specific than individuals
Why is this situation the way it is?
How can we reframe the problem and see it from new perspectives?
What are the Covert and Overt messages of the organization?
Is this problem, a symptom?
Recognize the emerging patterns
Perceive the meanings ascribed to issues, organizations, problems etc.

8. Organizational culture
Organizational culture is
about the ecology, the ethos,
the employees

9. Types of organizational culture
Role culture
Achievement Culture
Power Culture
Support Culture

10. The emotional workplace.