Feedback
We worked with an executive who was cautious in response to requests to take on new projects because he did not want to set up expectations he could not fulfil. He did not realise that his caution led to a lack of confidence among others in his ability to do the work. Our feedback enabled him to become more positive, which led in turn to greater confidence in him and more requests for his work. His problem was not his ability, but a type of behaviour which no-one had previously pinpointed and challenged.

Communicating
‘Secrets’ such as professional ambition can only be revealed if an individual becomes confident that this will be helpful and enrich his relationships with others. We helped one senior executive to discuss her ambitions with her boss rather than keep them to herself as if they were inappropriate or shameful. When she eventually did do, she encountered encouragement rather than the disappointment she had expected. Her boss later built her wishes into plans he was making for restructuring the organisation. Bringing out ‘secrets’ can be helpful to everyone.

Working below the surface
Tavistock consultancy service have the special skills required to help people explore unrealised, unacknowledged thoughts and feelings which can have a powerful effect in the real world, including the workplace. We look in detail at what a person says and does not say, and at their verbal and non-verbal behaviour both at work and in interviews with the consultant.

For example, we worked with a senior executive whose career was faltering because of the inexplicable anxiety he felt when presenting work to senior colleagues. At first it was thought he simply needed training in presentation skills, but it emerged that he was very good at making presentations to his peers. Discussions about this background revealed that he had been severely criticised by his father and had not done well at school. This meant that he had set an unconscious ‘ceiling’ to his own achievements, but he had now reached it and had no idea where to go next. He was helped to confront his unconscious assumption that he could not achieve greater things, and was able to work out new targets for himself and devise a strategy to achieve them. He was also offered practical coaching in how to control his anxiety, prepare more effectively for presentations, and get to know senior colleagues informally.

Working with teams
Unconscious beliefs and ideas can be held collectively as well as individually and can impede the progress of an entire organisation. We encountered this problem when running courses with a global IT company which wished to move from selling products to selling services.

Staff were proving reluctant to re-train in ‘softer’ service skills, and we found that their resistance was reinforced by the company’s own hidden ambivalence about the culture change. The highest rewards were still being reserved for individuals who sold standard products, even though they were simultaneously being told to become customer-focused and work in teams. Their star salesman felt confused, disempowered and angry.

Our task was to expose the ambivalence to the organisation and find ways of indicating that staff behaviour was unlikely to change unless the infrastructure of the organisation was changed as well. Recruitment, induction, supervision, management, rewards and sanctions all needed review if there was to be a real shift from product-led to consumer-led business.

These impressions, gained during our training programmes, were fed back to the leadership with the result that senior managers eventually made changes in the infrastructure. For example, they created special rewards for team effort. This in turn enabled the training programmes to work more effectively. The managing director remarked later: “Yours were the only training events my people have been on which eventually changed their behaviour”.