THE TWENTY-FIFTH (25TH) ANNIVERSARY OF DR. FISHER'S CAREER CHANGING SPEECH -- PART TWO

THE TWENTY-FIFTH (25TH) ANNIVERSARY OF DR. FISHER’S CAREER CHANGING SPEECH – PART TWO

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 30, 2009

REFERENCE: 1984 DCAS FORUM, FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1984, CARIBBEAN GULF RESORT, CLEARWATER BEACH, FLORIDA 33515

“PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT – AN ADVERSARY POINT OF VIEW"
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REFERENCE TO PART TWO:

This second part deals with Erik Erikson's six stages of development: (1) autonomy; (2) trust; (3) initiative; (4) accomplishment; (5) identity; (6) intimacy.

By a curious coincidence, I found these stages reflected in the complex organization, and thus explained to me why it remained caught in arrested development. My charge then (as now) is that toxicity has poisoned these stages in the organization, which are revealed by the immaturity of workers, and the failure of such workers to act and take charge as adults.

Just as we have many children who grow up and never find security as adults in terms of self-control (autonomy), self-trust (motivation), self-initiative (self-direction), self-worth (accomplishment), self-acceptance (identity) and self-love (intimacy), the complex organization, since it is a human group, has experienced similar difficulties.

Twenty-five years ago, I had the audacity to use a psychoanalytical model to illustrate this fact. If you see me putting myself in jeopardy, I should remind you we have two more segments to cement the case. Part Three will deal with "The Search for a Quick Cure."

What is sad is that my speech made a prophet of me like Cassandra. There is nothing in this presentation that has not materialized into our history. Nothing!

Who was Cassandra? In Greek mythology, she was the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. She was endowed with the gift of prophecy from the god Apollo. The problem for Cassandra was that she was never believed. I know the feeling.
JRF

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TOWARD A CONCEPTUAL GRASP OF THE PROBLEM: ERIK ERIKSON’S MODEL OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

To illustrate my point, let us walk through our cultural conditioning to the way the majority of us are today. We need look no further than Erik Erikson for a referent model, his six styles of human personality development

(1) Autonomy; (2) Trust; (3) Initiative; (4) Accomplishment; (5) Identity; (6) Intimacy

The reason I use the Erikson Model is because it is more relevant to interior development than such management models as Herzberg’s “The Motivation to Work” (1959). Moreover, it supports my basic belief that the dilemma facing modern management is the problem dealing with a wrongly conditioned workforce, a workforce which experiences little autonomy, only contrived trust, and is basically devoid of either initiative or industry (accomplishment), and which continues to have identity problems (viable role models), and avoids confrontation (intimacy) at all costs.

From the crib to the company the workforce experiences arrested development in all these respective stages. At a time when it is critical that management deal with the workforce as adults, as mature and ready participants, there exists a frustrating breakdown in communications. It is as if management naively believed it could will the workforce into maturity by establishing synthetic systems such as Quality Circles, Quality of Work Life Programs, etc., and realize gains. Obviously, this has not been the case.

Instead, what has happened in countless cases is that the workforce has met this new wave of challenges/opportunity with:

(1) Doubt if not shame (for failure to know how to act)
(2) Basic mistrust
(3) Guilt
(4) A sense of inferiority
(5) Role confusion
(6) Isolation

This has understandably perplexed management and has severely damaged the participative management process.

What needs to be done to correct this near fatal flaw in the approach, fortunately, is also revealed in Erikson’s Model. Management must be willing to put forth the effort and to maintain the patience with the process. It needs to restrain itself in terms of a demand for quick victories and to see the long-term benefits to a low profile. Remember, management is dealing with a workforce which, for all intent and purposes, has been protected from life and pain. This workforce is mainly passive and reactive. It is secure in comfort and has little real acquaintance with inconvenience much less survival issues. It is arrested in the early puberty mindset.

If it is to become truly participative or a full partner in enterprise, it must be put to the fire of reality and not shielded from it. If this is done, Erikson’s six stages of development may have this type of impact:

(1) A SENSE OF AUTONOMY will build “self-control” (self-management) and “will power” (disciplined behavior);
(2) A SENSE OF TRUST will fuel “drive” (motivation) and “hope” (faith in the future);
(3) A SENSE OF INITIATIVE will give “direction” and “purpose” to work;
(4) A SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT will demonstrate “method” and “competence”;
(5) A SENSE OF IDENTITY will create “devotion: and “fidelity”;
(6) A SENSE OF INTIMACY will promote “affiliation” and “love.”

These virtuous outcomes ultimately lead to a much more productive and caring workforce. But it is not the easy road that has been laid out thus far. Let us now look at Erikson’s Model in greater detail to discover why.

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The first stage of personality development involves the “formation of basic trust.” This is critical during the first year of life. And it goes beyond meeting basic physiological to psychological needs. If they are not met, such needs as being rocked, cuddled, sung to, comforted and loved, the infant will develop a basic sense of distrust. The infant will perceive the world as hostile and ungratifying – “dog eat dog.” Obviously, the trust level in the best organizations is only slightly above the “dog eat dog” continuum.

In Erikson’s conceptual framework, the second stage of personality development is viewed as the time of the “development of a sense of autonomy.” Interestingly enough, “autonomy” is one of the buzzwords of OD types, as is “trust” as you may know.

Autonomy begins at about the age of one and continues for the next two years. Here the child’s energies are centered on proving that he is a separate person with a will of his own. At this stage, the child must be allowed to make choices in order to develop the critical sense of self-reliance. Concomitantly, he must be protected from exceeding the boundaries of propriety in this self-determination. He must be kept within the bounds in which he is capable. Or he will become frustrated and agitated directing his frustration at himself or someone else. Once again, the interaction between child and parent is critical as it determines the success or failure of the development of this fragile sense of autonomy.

Should such parental supervision be lacking, autonomy will likely gravitate to shame and doubt. “Shame” for his inability to live up to his parents’ expectations – this rises out of a high need to please others at the expense of pleasing himself. “Doubt” for his inability to keep up with others, to cope with new experiences, to be equal to the unexpected. This gives way to paranoia, suspicion, and intimidation.

The behavior that is reflected in the organization is the failure to take necessary risks, the playing of “cover-your-ass” games, which, as you will see, overflow into the next developmental stage.

In Erikson’s third stage, at four years of age, the child begins to want to find out what kind of person he can be, “to develop a sense of initiative.” He observes others; especially his parents, and tries to imitate their behavior. At no other time in his life will he be so avid to learn and to do. Given the opportunity, he will explore, experiment with his own body and other little bodies from animals to peers. He will become a battering ram of questions about everything and anything that triggers his sense of imagination. He is alive with life and brilliant in all its colors

Parents should always support and encourage this explorative bent, this initiative, but it is especially important that they do it during this time of life. Unhappily, what commonly happens is that parents step on this fledgling curiosity projecting their own private guilt (about sex) and secret fears (about fantasies). When initiative gives way to guilt, it is frequently at the expense of joy while in the company of self-punishment. Therefore, he comes to believe “If it feels good, it is bad.” And if it comes naturally, “It isn’t worth much” because “Life is hard and things don’t come easy” and “The only really worthwhile things in life are bought at a high price,” and other such driveling clichés.

Only four, this is when he first hears these trite expressions, which are to be repeated throughout his adult working life, ad infinitum. Too often, as a result, his behavior becomes obsessive compulsive fluctuating between guilt for “being on the make” to guilt for “making it.” Moreover, should he find work that is pleasing and fulfilling to him, work that he does because he wants to rather than because he has to, he will become suspect.

There is no simpler stronger word for why than “pleasure.” Pleasure is implied whether he is aggressive (on the attack) or pleased (with his conquest), whether he is driven by an internal need (to possess) or an external need (to conform).

Very soon, the child moves into the fourth state. He wants to engage in tasks that give him a “sense of accomplishment.” During this stage, the child acquires not only knowledge and skills, but also the ability to cooperate and interact positively with others. If he encounters situations in which he is labeled too often a failure, he will develop a sense of inadequacy rather than one of accomplishment.

At this time in his life, the school and its personnel play an important interactional role with the child. By experiencing positive and negative reinforcement in the school situation, further groundwork is laid for the development of a healthy or unhealthy personality. This is manifested sometimes in being preoccupied with what he doesn’t have and can’t do at the expense of what (opportunity) he has right under his feet (and can do). So, he compares himself to others to his own detriment who have more or different assets than he has instead of concentrating on what he does have, can do, and enjoys doing.

Thus the conflict between being purposely industrious or self-consciously inferior arrives. Already at this early age, psychologically a rudimentary parent, he now learns to win recognition by producing things, by being able to function (walk, talk, go to the potty himself, etc.), “By learning to take care of himself.”

At first his ego boundaries are not known to him, nor are his use of tools and his skills. These are all new discoveries. The pleasure of work is also new to him. If he is taught the pleasure of working to completion by steady attendance and persevering diligence, it will stick with him. If not, there is the danger of a sense of inadequacy and inferiority. If he despairs of his skills or his status among his friends, he may be discouraged from identification with them. To lose hope of such association may pull him back to the more isolated, less challenging familiar rivalry of an earlier stage.

Should the child despair of his ability to contribute and should he consider himself doomed to mediocrity, it is at this point that the parents should counsel and coach the child into an understanding of meaningful roles and which roles best fit his skills and disposition. Many a child’s development has been disrupted when family life has failed to prepare him for school life, or when school life has failed to sustain the promises of the earlier stages. Consequently, stripped of a sense of achievement, he may wallow in what he isn’t and what he doesn’t have, that is, he may experience a sense of inadequacy or inferiority. Ironically, he is apt to become as difficult to intimidate as to motivate.

The fifth stage occurs when the child enters adolescence. At this stage the central issue becomes the establishment of a “sense of identity.” Who is he? What will his role in society be? What job or profession will he seek? Will he marry? Will he be a success or failure?

This is a worrisome time. He worries about his acceptance by his peers. He worries about his future. He becomes anxious, even fearful of his developing sexual drives. And he is overwhelmed by the whole world of psychological relationships.

Small wonder that this identity involves a massive problem of role confusion. The growing and developing youth, faced with this physiological revolution within him and with tangible adult tasks ahead of him, is now primarily concerned with what he appears to be in the eyes of others as compared with what he feels he is.

He is also concerned with the question of how to connect the roles and skills cultivated earlier with the occupational demands of the day. In his search for a new sense of continuity and sameness, the adolescent has to refight many of the battles of earlier years, even though to do so he must artificially appoint perfectly well meaning people to play the roles of adversaries. For in order to establish his own identity, he must first cut himself (rebel!) clear of the identity of others. But then he is ready to install lasting idols as guardians of a final identity.

Role confusion sometimes manifests itself in temporary over identity to the point of apparent complete loss of identity with the heroes of cliques and crowds. This, too, initiates the stage of “falling in love,” which is by no means entirely a sexual matter. To a considerable extent, adolescent love is an attempt to arrive at a definition of one’s identity by projecting one’s diffused ego image on another and by seeing it thus reflected and gradually clarified. This is why so much of young love is conversation.

This, too, is a time of clannishness, of exclusion, of separating the “ins” from the “outs” by skin color, cultural background, tastes, special talents, and often such petty aspects as dress and gestures. It is a time for stereotyping and pledging fidelity to a gang, a fraternity, a club, a team, a cause. It is important to note that such intolerance acts as a defense mechanism against a sense of identity confession.

Perhaps not surprising, identity crisis have shifted from the adolescent to the mature adults with broad implications in the organization. We have such expressions as “mid-life crisis” and “male menopause” and “role demands” versus “self-demands” – all signaling the persistence of this stage in later life.

As the adolescent matures into adulthood, he must now be capable of developing a “sense of intimacy with others,” or Erikson’s sixth stage. This sense of intimacy is necessary for the mature emotional give-and-take essential to a successful career and marriage. Some people, because of inadequacies in previous stages of emotional development, can never get close enough to others to achieve this sense of intimacy. They tend to retire into psychological isolation and maintain contacts on a formal level, which is lacking in true warmth and spontaneity.

Put another way, the strength acquired at earlier stages is now tested. Thus, the young adult, emerging from the search for and the insistence on identity is eager and willing to fuse his identity with that of others. He is ready for intimacy, the capacity to commit himself to concrete affiliations and partnerships and to develop the ethical strength to abide by such commitments, even though they may call for significant sacrifices and compromises.

View this against the organization. Intimacy in the organization is translated into involvement and commitment, of dedication and loyalty, of the fusing of the individual will to the corporate will.

What we actually see in the organization, however, is the rhetoric, the intellectualizing of these behaviors, which becomes a substitute for commitment. It may be a gross analogy, but it hits home: a chicken is involved in the breakfast meal of bacon and eggs, but the pig has made a full commitment to it.

In any case, these behaviors form a backdrop to the possible way we are formed. There is much evidence that these stages undergo some erosion as we experience the cultural conditioning of our society. This manifests itself in the way we behave in a given situation.

CASE IN POINT: THE MORE IT GOES AROUND IT COMES AROUND

In terms of maturity, it has been my experience that the modern complex organization is predicated on immaturity. Too frequently, the individual is punished again and again for a faux pas committed literally years before. Consider this against the fact that a truly participative organization gives everyone the right to fail, the right to be wrong, and the right to their own opinion. It is this liberal climate that fosters risk taking and growth.

It is the absence of this climate that identifies a self-deceiving organization that behaves differently than what it says it values. And just as an individual who behaves inconsistent with his values has low self-esteem, so also the organization has low esteem and high stress that behaves inconsistent with what it says it values. To put this into graphic terms, take the case of Fred Shawn.

(FISHER MATRIX was then shown against the Erikson Model in terms of process and outcomes: autonomy (process)/self-control (outcome); trust/motivation; initiative/purpose; industry/competence; identity/devotion; intimacy/caring.)

FRED SHAWN

Fred grew up in an Irish ghetto of a large city. His father was an alcoholic and his mother always was in poor health. Early on, to keep the family literally from starvation, he had to quit school and contribute to its support. When his father died, he became man of the house. He took charge.

Later, he was to join the US Navy, a life ambition following the exploits of a favorite cousin. He took the most demanding training that the navy offered becoming a submarine sailor and then a frogman. He loved it.

When he left the navy, he married and settled down. He took a job with a high tech company. Went to school nights. Finished his high school. Then took some college courses.

He found he had a flair for dealing with people. For taking charge. His no nonsense approach got results. But his lack of education and formal training played havoc with his sense of security. He found himself inventing credentials, experiences, and even accomplishments, despite the fact that what he was doing was top drawer.

The word spread that he was full of Irish blarney. He took it in good humor. But as he made his way up the organization, always taking on assignments of high risk with high success, incredibly, the “liar” tag went with him. Also the braggadocio reputation. Not surprising, his detractors welcomed this tag to diminish the power of his accomplishments.

He was judged, as a consequence, on what he was, not what he did. Despite his success, he was failing to benefit from what management usually enjoys, that is, as a manager goes up the organization typically management is less dependent on what “he does” and more on what “he is,” as his role moves from concrete experience to symbolic appearance.

Conversely, from the base of the pyramid of the traditional organization it is more important what “he does” (concrete experience) than what “he is” (symbolic appearance).

A manager can be a real nerd on the line, but if he knows his stuff the troops will follow his lead because they trust his judgment. They feel confident they can learn from him and grow with him.

Fred, at this writing, is still cutting out new territory, new successes. But like Rodney Dangerfield, he still has no respect.

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Yet, the organization continues to be immature in its appreciation of the Fred’s of the world, paying too much attention to their negative experiences, at the expense of their positive contributions. Others see this and decide not to take risks. Not to grow. Whatever experience may be, its significance is only in the context of the whole (one’s career).

Another way the organization demonstrates immaturity is in terms of its insensitivity to what can best be described as common decency. In this rush to create a more participative organization, for example, there has frequently been a glaring neglect of common decency. To wit:

One day a manager went to his office and found a maintenance man boxing all his office supplies. “What’s going on?” he asked, the blood rushing to his head.

“Hey, man! I don’t know,” the maintenance man rejoined. “I got a work order to collect this stuff and that’s what I’m doing.”

Then his secretary appeared. “We’re moving to another location,” she stated flatly. “Your boss just took us off this assignment.”

Stunned. Silent. He stood there. Obviously, he knew he was in some trouble so this was not a total surprise. But no one had talked to him directly about it. Actually, he was waiting for it all to come to a head. But he didn’t expect this.

Somewhat quick tempered, he came to me to ask for guidance on what he should do. We took a drive. As his captive audience, I let him get some of this hostility out of his system. Then I said, “You can’t change this. It’s been done. What you can do is prevent it from happening in the future.” Chances are he didn’t hear this. What he did hear, however, was my admonition not to hurt himself. Not to go off half-cocked accusing management of what they had done. He would only hurt himself. This he heeded because he gradually got his feet back on the ground and went forward.

By a strange set of circumstances, he was put into a similar position where he now had to deal with a manager under him, who had been effective for years, but now was considered to have an anachronistic “management style.” Here was an opportunity to make amends for the way he had been treated less than a year before.

What did he do? You guessed it. He did precisely what had been done to him. Only in this case, the manager came back from vacation to find his office empty of every piece of furniture. It had all been either repossessed by other managers, or sent back to the company warehouse, the thinking being that in his new “non-doer” job he would not need such plus accommodations.

And so the insensitivity carries on. What damage this behavior does to the organization’s affectivity is incalculable. It is also invisible. But it is very real.

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© Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D. This is the second segment of a multi-segment reintroduction of “Participative Management: An Adversary Point of View,” which was presented on March 30, 1984. The next segment will open with “The Search for A Quick Cure” of organizational malaise. This speech is being presented exactly as it was given twenty-five years ago.