Presenting issues
and, while they often found the exploration of their past enlightening, they wanted to know what to do about their current problem. They also did not want to spend months or years in counselling. While they quickly understood that I couldn’t tell them what to do, they wanted to work on what to do themselves. I realised I needed to add a solutions-focused approach to my psychodynamic training, which given my background in the empirical world of business and fi nancial journalism suited me too. So what, once he has explored his past familial relations, should Terry do? First, I would encourage him to view Miles, annoying as he is, as a person – possibly, as Martine said, an unhappy one. Not because Miles’s problems are Terry’s to solve – they aren’t. But because it might help Terry get on better at work. There are questions Terry could explore. What work pressures is Miles under? How does he relate to the other two partners in the fi rm? Do they seem to be more competent than him? Do the other two seem to gang up on him? What targets does Miles have to meet? Is Miles in any way threatened by Terry? Does he regard him as more capable? Does he perhaps even see him as a rival? If he understood what Miles was up against, Terry could think of ways to help solve Miles’s problems, reducing Miles’s pressure on him. In my experience, both in the workplace and as a counsellor, employees don’t spend time wondering about how their bosses came to be the way they are. It is not that they are not aware of their foibles – they are subjected to them every day. It is just that they don’t see that their bosses’ problems are theirs to deal with. And why should they? Their bosses hold higher positions than they do, with all the perks that go with that, including higher pay. The reason I encourage people to think about what their bosses are going through themselves is both therapeutic and pragmatic. Therapeutic because it enables them to see their bosses as humans, with their merits and demerits – a development that mirrors the way a healthy child reaches a necessary disillusionment with its parents. This is Klein’s depressive position, where, as the psychotherapist Lavinia Gomez says, ‘the good and bad mother, father, self, are
to understand how unsettling it is to deal with unpredictable people. But the next thing to explore is Terry’s friend Martine’s question to him – why does he care what Miles thinks of him? Yes, there are the promotion prospects and the money that Miles controls. But beyond that? Beyond that are probably memories of relations with parents and siblings. I have noticed in these early stages of my counselling career that clients who come to speak about problems with work and di ffi culties with their managers – their presenting problem – quickly start to talk about their upbringing, what their parents expected of them as children, how their parents treated their siblings and how they, the clients, got on with their parents, if they were still alive, and their siblings today. Maccoby provides a striking example of how transference operates in the workplace. He describes a patient he calls Sylvia, a manager in a US marketing research and advertising company. She admired her boss, who took her under his wing. When a new, more senior position opened up, Sylvia was con fi dent her boss would give it to her. Instead he gave it to another employee who he regarded as more capable and with better people skills. Sylvia’s reaction went beyond disappointment. She was explosively angry. She became so unco-operative that her boss thought he might have to fi re her. Maccoby, in his work with Sylvia, heard that she was the eldest of fi ve children and craved her father’s recognition. But he constantly preferred her brothers. Being rejected by her boss when she applied for promotion at work ‘reopened a wound that had never healed’, Maccoby said. 2 It would be worth exploring Terry’s relationship with his parents and his siblings in a similar way. Does Miles’s unpredictability remind him of anything in his past? Does he have any recollection of being unnerved by parental or authority fi gures before he became Miles’s team member? And how did he deal with it? Solutions I fi nd the ‘what is to be done?’ question important. Although my training was strictly psychodynamic, it soon became clear to me that it wouldn’t be enough for the clients I was taking on. They were business people
complex, whole people about whom [the child] has mixed feelings’. 4 We can relate this seeing of bosses as ordinary people to the child’s realisation that their parents don’t have all the answers and aren’t always perfect. Did Terry perhaps experience the same unrequited desire for consistency and approval from his parents as he does from Miles? There are also pragmatic reasons for Terry to view Miles as an ordinary person, possibly struggling to make his way in the fi rm too, in spite of being one of its owners. We can encourage Terry to try a few experiments. When he has his next meeting with Miles, instead of waiting for the axe of criticism or the wreath of praise, he can ask Miles how he is getting on. How are things going for the fi rm? What can he, Terry, do to help? Miles might relax. He might come to see Terry as a potential ally rather than an antagonist. Or he might not. Miles might be so sunk in his own quandaries that he doesn’t have the emotional energy or insight to respond to Terry’s openings. In which case, my advice to Terry would be to fi nd work elsewhere. Because this is the great advantage of the o ffi ce over families – families are yours forever, but you can resign from a job. ■
REFERENCES 1. Shragai N. Why we see bosses as parents. Financial Times 2014; 5 March. bit.ly/3T4qnW2 2. Maccoby M. Why people follow the leader: the power of transference. Harvard Business Review 2004; September. bit.ly/433lH7F 3. Kets de Vries M. The leader on the couch. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons; 2006. 4. Gomez L. An introduction to object relations. London: Free Association Books; 1997.
About the author Michael Skapinker MBACP is a contributing editor at the Financial Times and a career and retirement counsellor.
39 MAY 2024 THERAPY TODAY
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