Containing Anxiety in Organizations and Groups
One common dysfunction in organisations and groups arises when people have to face challenging situations or tasks and, consciously or unconsciously, have to deal with the high degree of anxiety this causes.
We are living in a moment of continuous change and adaptation that has taken people out of their comfort zone: it is no longer known whether we are working at home or living at work, also how our relationship with family, friends and colleagues has been constantly impacted and has impacted us, etc. There is a long list.
Are we prepared for all the inconstancies we are facing in our lives today? If the world was already volatile, ambiguous and uncertain, now we have entered VUCA-19 mode, one more step away from the certainties and securities that served to calm us, from our soothing projections of the future that seemed guaranteed, even if in some areas of our lifes.
Collectives, groups and organisations accompany people in these uncertainties
In this reality our organisations are getting in touch with something that looks similar to what Isabel Menzies Lyth described in the 60’s when she was studying the behaviour of nurses in British hospitals.
Isabel recognised that the nurses’ task was of great emotional weight. As you can imagine, the task of caring for people comes with another, less technical and perhaps more complex: maintaining a balance between the demand for empathy and closeness with the patient and the detachment and objectivity necessary for the profession. In general terms, hanging between taking good care of the other but also of oneself and the collective system in order to continue to work.
In her observations there were structures and processes to help support this balance, but what it was not accounted for were the emotional aspects and anxieties generated in nurses themselves when the specific context did not match the stablished expected norm.
In one case cited, for example, it was part of a mandatory checklist to clean the patient at a certain time in the morning, but the nurse was conflicted because it was a patient who had finally been able to sleep after a difficult night and, to comply with the checklist, she would have to wake him up. What would it mean to be a good nurse in this scenario?
Isabel, who studied experimental psychology of the individual and also the dynamics of the social world, discovered that both people and organisational structures were not prepared to deal with the intensity of anxiety installed in the system.
What I would imagine as a result was a receipt for burnout. People with a very high level of stress, with difficulty in concentrating on tasks and with a tendency to have less social flexibility when in conflict. Together with that, an over simplification of complex situations, fulfilling blind checklists and procedures regardless of context.
Impact on Decision Making
Sometimes is not about how or what to decide, but whether we can handle it.
To make decisions is to choose paths and therefore to take risks. What Isabel found in her observation is that it was exactly the decision making that suffered in systems with constant high anxiety. Taking risks in a complex environment did not seem to be a good idea, ie, emotionally sustainable.
The most striking discovery was that the whole system accommodated itself to minimize the need to make decisions, that is, strategies, personal and collective, were created not to recognise or postpone decision making.
One path of action, in the case studied by Isabel, the nursing center created precise instructions of conduct that relieved the weight of the contextual decision. Who has never heard the attendant on the telephone: “Unfortunately system does not allow…”?
When taking decisions was inevitable, great lengths were taken to depersonalise the decision maker and therefore avoid responsibility. One way was to delegate the decision to higher hierarchical levels using a narrative of ‘checking and rechecking’ that made the response speed much slower and increased the workload of the average management.
About this strategy, she writes: “taking responsibility may generate satisfaction and reward but it always involves some conflict”. And in an environment with high anxiety, conflict can be a danger to the self-preservation of those who take and perhaps the integrity of the group itself.
Change, as well as decision making, increases stress since it implies leaving aside a family present for a relatively unknown future. — Isabel Menzies Lyth
3 Simple Steps to Contain Anxiety in Organisations
- Nothing that is complex can be worked out using simple steps;
- To follow simple steps is the human being wanting to control anxiety, being their own or the system’s;
- Always remember step number 1. :)
The fact that there is no pre-mapped process to contain anxiety and the way it unfolds does not mean that nothing can be done. Isabel believed that it was possible to have an idea of direction to walk and that solutions could emerge through concrete movements in the system instead of generating abstractions about it.
So before all the talk about safe-to-fail for determining vectors in complex systems, Isabel shared a very similar thought:
This approach, through the construction of models and their progressive modification followed by the dissemination of successful models proved successful in building and rebuilding other types of social organisation. — Isabel Menzies Lyth
How is your organisation coping with the internal complexity imposed by the current moment? How is the level of anxiety?
Do you have an idea of which direction to commit to? What models, processes, experiments can help in the reconstruction of your organisation?
Read more
Menzies Lyth, Isabel — Containing anxiety in institutions — Selected essays, volume 1. Free Association Books Ltd.
About me
I am a consultant and group facilitator working to support people and organisations to collaborate towards the results they want, looking at both systems and teams. Here you will find articles on how people learn, create and produce things together and how the power of conversation can transform our relationships and what we are able to achieve.
Originally published at https://augustocuginotti.com.
