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Show Notes
What happens to authority when hierarchy begins to disappear? And why might leaders themselves be part of the problems they are trying to solve?
In this episode of Edgy Ideas, Simon Western is joined by Dr Larry Hirschhorn - founder and Principal Emeritus of CFAR and a leading thinker in systems psychodynamics and organisational consulting.
Drawing on a lifetime of working with organisations, Larry discusses the tension between the independence leaders need and the danger of becoming caught in an idealised image of themselves. Challenging the notion that authority disappears in flatter organisations, Larry shares how it actually becomes more personal, relational and political.
Larry introduces his idea of ‘Primary Risk’ - asking what we foreground and what we fail to notice when making strategic decisions. He also shares his most interesting emerging work with Reversal Theory, offering a less pathologising way of understanding how groups actually work.
Simon and Larry also reflect on why systems psychodynamics remains at the margins of organisational life. The conversation ends with a refelction on how might we create a good life that holds together our desire for individual freedom and our yearning for collective life.

Key Reflections

• Leadership requires separateness, but this can easily slip into self-idealisation.

• Less hierarchy does not mean less authority; it makes authority more relational, personal and political.

• Primary Risk asks us to notice what our strategies push into the background.

• Groups need to move between challenge and consensus, purpose and playfulness.

• Leaders are part of the systems they are trying to understand and change.

• Psychodynamic thinking may be most useful when the theory stays in the background and the organisation’s real challenges stay in the foreground.

• The good life requires finding ways to hold individual freedom and collective belonging together.

Brief Bio
Dr. Larry Hirschhorn is a founder and Principal Emeritus at CFAR, a management consulting firm specialising in organisational development, strategy, change implementation, collaboration and leadership transition. With over four decades of experience as an organisational consultant, scholar and thought leader, Larry has worked extensively with leaders and organisations on strategy formulation and execution, organisational diagnosis and organisational design.
He is the Director of CFAR’s Dynamics of Consulting Program, an advanced programme for experienced consultants and coaches that explores the intersections between business dynamics and psychodynamics.
Trained as an economist, with a PhD from MIT, and later as a psychoanalytically informed organisational consultant, Larry is widely recognised for his work on the psychodynamics of organisations and for connecting the deeper dynamics of groups, relationships and decision-making with the practical realities of strategy and organisational performance.
Larry is also a founding member and former President of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO). A prolific writer, he has received several awards for his work, including the Eliot Jaques Award from the Society of Consulting Psychology, as well as journal awards for his writing on organisational life, leadership and moral purpose. He has also held faculty and teaching roles at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton, Fielding Graduate University and the William Alanson White Institute.

We only had 24 hours, the trip was cut short by an important football competition that came at very late notice, and which my son Albert didn’t want to miss, … but we went anyway. A two hour bus trip from Galway to Cleggan Pier, then a 35 minute ferry to Inis Bofin Island (derived from the Irish Inis Bó Finne translates to the Island of the White Cow).

Within 3 hours we were transported to a new land.

There is something special about travelling by ferry; a small boat bouncing precariously in the sea, the salty air, the wind in the hair, the spray in the face……I am always affected by the experience….emotionally uplifted and melancholic at the same time, memories of previous ferry trips with my other beautiful son Fynn… and looking forward to the adventures to come.

We arrived on the island, hired bikes and cycled to the camp site next to the hostel, put up the tent quickly and went exploring. The landscape is phenomenal, a wilderness surrounded by the distant mountains of Mayo and Connemara, big, big skies with moody white-grey-black clouds, showering us with light rain between bright sunshine.

We walked, cycled, and got hungry, so went to our favourite eating place … the bus-cafe which serves the freshest fish taco’s and mackerel sandwiches you will ever taste! The bus is like a surreal artwork, an out of place object, that has become an essential part of the place. We became friends with the owners whose children play footie with Albert. They brought the bus here on a barge, and told us of how it nearly toppled into the sea as they were landing it on the beach. The bus has a particular resonance, a special homely feel to it for me as I grew up in Bristol, where the bus was made, and I travelled on these buses, painted in Bristol Green, frequently as a child.

The haunting singing seals

What inspired this essay however is the deep experience Albert and I shared after he spotted a distant seal on a rock….. we discussed for a while whether it was a seal or just a rock, and we wondered what the eerie, ghostlike wailing was in the distance…. was it humans or the wind blowing through the rocks….. Albert was totally entranced and inspired us on a venture of discovery. What we found after navigating our way to the very tip of the island, clambering over seaweed and rocks, was a large colony of seals. The eerie sound was the singing seals…

Seals are hugely culturally significant, with lore around shape-shifting seal folk or ‘selkie folk’ ever-present throughout Celtic and Norse mythology. A beautiful but haunting sound is that of the seals singing, particularly in rocky bays where the sounds echo around the cliffs. Indeed, scientists at St. Andrew’s University, Scotland, found that grey seals are ‘versatile vocal learners’, capable of copying melodies and mimicking vocal sounds.

Albert was mesmerised by what can only be described as a sublime experience, a total immersion with nature where the beauty and awe fills your body.

We clambered back to find our bikes and walked-cycled to a magical beach and swam in the cold, crystal blue waters. Albert immersed his body in sand and I took in the breathtaking nature and views.

Encounters with the sublime

The idea of the sublime as used by the Romantic movement has always spoken to me at an experiential level. When I see Romantic paintings of Turner I recall encounters on the mountains of England or the Himalaya’s and experiencing the sublime awe they identify with..

Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (1757) connected the sublime with experiences of awe, terror and danger. Burke saw nature as the most sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations in its beholders. This Romantic conception of the sublime proved influential for several generations of artists. who were fascinated by the awe and terror

The experience of the sublime in Romantic thought, often got caught up in the idea of being out of control, where nature takes over, where meaning is lost…. Yet Wordsworths opens another path, where rather than place the human outside of nature, trying to make sense of it….

Wordsworth sought to recover a state of harmony or balance between the two which obviated the need to assert priority to either term. In the final phase of the Wordsworthian sublime the mind is no longer painfully burdened with an unintelligible world or frighteningly identified as the sole source of meaning. Instead the mind works joyfully with nature itself, its ennobling partner and constant ally in the discovery of truth.

The Romantic movement is not one thing, it emerged over different time periods and regions, as a reaction to the fast growing scientific, rational and industrial paradigm with the aim to reclaim the importance of being human, valuing art, nature, human subjectivity, and emotions.

This movement perhaps needs revitalising at a time where AI and technology is rampant, and where nature and the environment are so devalued.

My own experience is that when I return to being immersed with the living environment, when I encounter beauty and awe, when I bring my children into contact with the sublime, I become re-enchanted.

And this is the important thing….. we all need to be re-enchanted in this disenchanting world.

Mainstream leadership Development repeats an assumed theory of change that is highly contentious:

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Firstly: it explicitly or implicitly uses the “banking model” critiqued in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire.

Banking Model: The Master Discourse

The Expert/Trainer- ‘the one who is supposed to know’

The leadership trainer/academic is seen as the one with the expert knowledge. Lacan the psychoanalyst, calls this role as coming from the Masters discourse; the master is ‘the one who is supposed to know’

The Learner: A place to deposit knowledge

Course participants (leaders) are treated as empty accounts into which knowledge is deposited.

These days this the expert is often camouflaged beneath people-centred learning approaches that convey the appearance of more egalitarian approaches, yet it is the trainer who holds the power-knowledge expert position (to draw on Foucault) and speaks from the masters discourse (even when preaching servant leadership).

The Wrong Knowledge: The Messiah Discourse

The knowledge deposited in the majority of leadership programmes is taken from mainstream leadership theory which reproduces outdated theories of heroic leadership. These approaches mainly focus on individual competencies and ‘transformational leadership’ which is underpinned by what my research calls the ‘Messiah Leadership discourse’.

Messiah leadership is part of the problem, as it individualises leadership (which is always collective and relational) and it recreates the fantasy of a heroic leader who inspires, influences followers through their expertise and character. Today this is often soft-sugared and repackaged as Servant leadership or authentic leadership, yet these ideas still position the leader as a hero, albeit a more humble, kind leader with great people skills. These approaches focus on the individual leader, rather than a leadership process.

The theory of change assumptions

When transformational leadership knowledge is imparted to the leader in a workshop or course; the theory of change it assumes goes like this (see diag above)

• Trainer shares their expert knowledge (deposits it in the leader)

• Leader cognitively understands this new knowledge deposited in them

• This new knowledge/insight (magically) changes their behaviour

• They then act differently; influencing their followers more positively and effectively i.e. their leadership performance improves

• The positive performance changes are measured using pseudo-scientific ‘evidence based’ approaches (which cannot account for the multiple factors and influences that cannot be measured; and are filled with biases that fulfil the expected changes — supporting the financial investment in the training)

These theory of change assumptions have been with us for decades: impart knowledge, new insights gained, behaviour change occurs.

Yet as any psychotherapist will tell you (I am one), to create change in a persons behaviour is a very complex, slow and tricky business! A few coaching sessions or leadership workshop just doesn’t cut it!

So whats wrong with this model?

i) The theory of change is flawed

ii) The wrong kind of knowledge is being shared

iii) It assumes that transformational leaders are commonplace and really exist

iv) It assumes transformational leadership can be trained?

The Results

Only 11% of more than 500 executives surveyed by McKinsey strongly agreed that their leadership-development interventions achieved and sustained the desired results.

A Fortune CEO survey cited by McKinsey found that just 10% believed their leadership-development initiatives had a clear business impact, while only 7% believed their companies were developing effective global leaders

The Costs

A 2025 industry analysis projected global leadership-development revenue to surpass $100 billion in 2025 - thats expenditure on training!

But the real costs are that there is a collusive, unconscious attachment to Messiah Leadership and the trainings, although they fail still reproduce this status quo ideology of individual heroic leaders as saviours

What can be done?

We collectively need to traverse the fantasy of Messiah Leadership and the leadership Development it evokes.

1. Re-think what leadership is: i.e. a relational process, a collective endeavour, a context-dependent process, a plurality of approaches, not a one size fits all, and one that is partially culturally determined …..

2. Understand more about the underpinning assumptions and hidden discourses that shape what leadership is…

3. When we better understand leadership and the unconscious discourses and assumptions that frame our thinking, we can better plan what kind of leadership development may work…

For more see Leadership a critical text Simon Western 3rd ed Sage

The Hidden Leadership Questionnaire - a profiling tool that reveals the hidden discourses

or contact the Eco-Leadership Institute for a friendly exploration

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Show Notes
In this episode of Edgy Ideas, Simon Western is joined by Maria Guerrero - social entrepreneur and leadership educator - to explore leadership, power and human development.
Starting from Maria’s work in education, faith-based institutions and social transformation, the conversation asks what kind of leadership is needed when expertise and authority are no longer enough. Drawing on Adaptive Leadership, Maria asserts that many of today’s challenges require collective learning, shared responsibility and the willingness to engage with uncertainty rather than seeking quick answers.
Simon and Maria examine how power operates in organisations, churches, universities and society, often shaping whose voices are heard and whose knowledge is valued. They discuss the importance of recognising lived experience alongside expertise and explore how leadership can emerge from unexpected places.
The conversation also moves into the embodied and spiritual dimensions of leadership. Through stories of facilitation, peacebuilding and contemplative practice, they reflect on silence, discernment, movement, fragility and interdependence. In a time marked by polarisation and rapid change, Maria offers a vision of leadership rooted in connection, purpose and our shared humanity.

Key Reflections

• Leadership is less about position or authority and more about the capacity to help individuals and communities navigate meaningful change.

• Many of today’s challenges are adaptive rather than technical, requiring participation, experimentation, and collective learning rather than expert solutions.

• Power is often embedded in organisational cultures and social norms, influencing whose voices are heard and whose perspectives are overlooked.

• Real transformation requires the ability to stay with uncertainty, discomfort, and not-knowing instead of rushing towards certainty and control.

• Embodied practices such as movement, silence, and deep listening can reveal forms of wisdom that are inaccessible through rational analysis alone.

• Human fragility and interdependence are not weaknesses to overcome but realities that can deepen connection, compassion, and collaboration.

• Engaging constructively with difference is essential for leadership, peacebuilding, and creating communities capable of addressing complex challenges.

• Spirituality, understood as connection to self, others, nature, and something beyond ourselves, remains a vital but often neglected dimension of leadership development.

Brief Bio
María Guerrero is a social entrepreneur, leadership educator, and facilitator working at the intersection of social change, collective learning, and human development. Trained as a lawyer and economist, she began her career in corporate law before leaving the profession to found Acción por la Música, a pioneering organization in Spain that uses collective music-making as a platform for inclusion, community building, and social transformation.
Over the past decade, María has combined her practical experience leading social innovation initiatives with a deep exploration of how people, organizations, and societies navigate complexity. Her work draws on Adaptive Leadership, collective sensemaking, adult development, conflict transformation, and traditions of spiritual discernment. She has designed and accompanied large-scale participatory processes in educational, social, and faith-based institutions, helping communities engage difficult questions, navigate polarization, and develop the capacity to learn their way forward together.
María teaches leadership at Comillas University and works internationally as a speaker, facilitator, and advisor. She is part of global leadership networks connected to Harvard Kennedy School and Acumen, and is currently pursuing doctoral research on leadership development and organizational transformation in complex systems.
At the heart of her work is a simple conviction: many of the challenges that matter most cannot be solved by expertise alone. They require people to learn, adapt, and discover new possibilities together.

You are invited to join us for a discussion on my new book today Monday 15th 6pm UK .

The book first addresses key events.... recent Wars, Covid, Death of a Monarch

Then it explores Rising Tides of culture changes, and our entanglements between politics and personal, the culture wars, soul and work, and much more

I bring psychoanalysis, personal reflection, critical insights, ecosystem thinking and spiritual experience together ........... an entangled mix for an entangled age

Kate Pearce from Karnac Books the publisher will introduce the book

I will be discussing how we live well in an entangled world.
Ali Curran will converse with me

My two children Lily and Albert will do two readings and Charlotte Balfour-Poole a third

Register free here

Book Discount
ENTANGLEMENTS20 is the discount code for those attending the book launch, valid until 30th June. Just apply the code to the basket at karnac checkout to secure 20% off the RRP of the book.


Thanks to Carlos Remotti-Breton Olya Khaleelee and OPUS for generously hosting this


If you cant make this, we have an event on Jun 23, 2026 ⋅ 8am – 10am UK kindly hosted by NIODA link here

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Today was my psychoanalysis day: a train ride from Galway to Dublin, cycling in the rain to lie on the couch.

The times before and after the couch are as important as the time on the couch.

There is a conscious and unconscious journey travelled, an emotional and bodily processing that takes place.

Composting

I call this process composting, which means ‘putting things together’. When we think with others, human and non-human others, when things come together in our body, mind, soul; something magic happens. In gardening compost nutrients come from waste...... rich nutrients emerge to feed the plants, and likewise when we compost, nutrients feed our minds and bodies.... new life, new shoots, and new ideas come from composting......

Composting comes from the connectivity, breaking down, putting together of stuff..... Composting is an entanglement of living things.... whether in the garden or in ourselves and each other.

A while back I used to think, and was trained to think, that being a therapist and working on the self was about untangling messiness, sorting oneself out, gaining insights that would help clarify the confusion of life, heal the pain, and iron out the problems.....

Enjoy your Entanglements

Now I realise that the process is not like this at all..... it’s about finding ways to ‘enjoy my entanglements’. To do this is to step out of the victim ‘wounded-self’ stance, so common in therapy and self help. It is also to step out of modernities iron cage, to stop focusing on a utopian future where everything is in its place, where we are in control……

To take this further:

One of the major problems we face as a society is working out how to stop trying to untangle ourselves, and learn how to live well in our precarious and delicious entanglements.

Modernity has taught us that entanglements are bad, it trains us to sort out, to categorising, to put into boxes, to create borders and boundaries, to put things in their right place.....

The mentally ill go to the asylum

The poor go to the ghetto

Kings and Queens go to their palaces

Animals go to the zoo or abattoir

People go to the office, factory, or warehouse

In most westernised societies, the human place was over nature

Modernity took this a step further; nature was too entangled and wild, and like human nature, it needed taming in order for us to feel in control, and to extract what we needed from it.

But what if we embraced our entanglements, what if we enjoyed being entangled with nature rather than being above it, separate from it?

What if we enjoyed our hybridity with each other, and stopped pretending to be pure and separate races.....

Sometimes entanglements need loosening for sure; when an entanglement ties us in knots it may require attention...but don’t act without asking how the knot serves us, how it serves others -human and non-human- and you may find that the knot and the entanglement are telling you much more than you bargained for…

To hear more about Entanglements: Join my book launch, hosted by OPUS on June 15th 6pm UK link here https://lnkd.in/e4DNbbHJ

or on June 23rd hosted by Nioda for Pacific-Asia timezone https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfL_NZyToN7pryMjKuLvS3dylaXX_1vgxTkwKrQF_66S76rog/viewform

8.00 – 10.00 am Monday 23 June London 🇬🇧

5.00 – 7.00 pm Monday 23 June Melbourne 🇨🇰
3.00 – 5.00 am New York Monday 23 June (eek!) 🇺🇸
3.00 – 5.00 pm Monday 23 June Singapore 🇸🇬
12:30 – 2:30 pm Monday 23 June New Delhi 🇮🇳 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfL_NZyToN7pryMjKuLvS3dylaXX_1vgxTkwKrQF_66S76rog/viewform

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Show Notes
In this episode, Simon Western is joined by his long-time colleague, Leslie Brissett, to explore the history, purpose and enduring relevance of Group Relations Conferences. They trace the roots of this pioneering methodology from the early Leicester Conferences and the Tavistock Institute tradition to its contemporary applications in leadership, organisations and society. They discuss how Group Relations creates a temporary learning organisation where participants study authority, leadership, membership, and the unconscious in real time. They reflect on why these conferences can be deeply moving, often revealing hidden assumptions, internal constraints and patterns carried from our earliest relationships.
Simon and Leslie also discuss the changing nature of leadership, the growing prominence of identity and systems thinking and the need to reconnect questions of soul, embodiment and spirituality with organisational life. Along the way, Simon shares how a Group Relations Conference helped him discover a different path to leadership - one that emerged not from hierarchy, but from working at the edge.
This is a conversation about learning, freedom, authority and what it means to become more conscious participants in the systems we inhabit.

Key Reflections

• Every Group Relations Conference is a unique, temporary learning organisation that can never be repeated in exactly the same way.

• Authority is not simply something exercised by leaders; it is shaped by how each of us relates to systems, roles, and early life experiences.

• Experiential learning can reveal aspects of ourselves that remain hidden in traditional education, coaching, therapy, or leadership development.

• Freedom often exposes the internal constraints and assumptions that unconsciously shape our behaviour.

• The origins of Group Relations are rooted in post-war efforts to understand authority, democracy, and the conditions that give rise to authoritarianism.

• Leadership does not only emerge from formal positions of power; it can arise from the edge of a system through connection and influence.

• Identity has become a more visible and important aspect of organizational life, inviting deeper reflection on both self and system.

• The future of Group Relations may lie in integrating embodiment, spirituality, and ecological ways of thinking with its psychoanalytic foundations.

Brief Bio
Leslie has worked in organisational and community leadership for over 30 years. He is on the advisory board of the Eco-leadership Institute. He is the former Group Relations Programme Director at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and is currently serving as the Board Secretary for the International Psychoanalytical Association. Leslie has studied human dynamics in experiential settings in many countries and acts as an adviser and consultant to boards, nations, groups and individuals seeking to improve the quality of life and deepen what it means to be human and humane. Leslie holds multiple degrees including master’s degrees in Health Education from Kings College and Organisational Psychology, Social Policy and Non-Profit Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as a PhD in Unconscious Decision Making from Trinity College.

I have developed this critique through PhD research, post-doctoral research but mainly from my direct work with leaders in the field. For many years I have worked in executive education and in leadership development at University business schools across world. I was Director of Coaching at Lancaster University Management School and Director of Masters in Organisational Consultancy and Leadership at the Tavistock Clinic, and held honorary university positions in Birmingham, Dublin, Birkbeck London and Moscow.

However this critique comes from my observations and direct leadership development and organisational change work with senior leaders in organisations across the globe and across diverse sectors.

The ten point critique below is adapted from my book Leadership a critical text first published in 2005, and now in its 3rd edition

Critique of Mainstream Leadership Development Practices

1 Individualistic: Develops leaders not leadership. Very few approaches try to develop OD interventions to generate leadership across the whole organization.

2 Conservative: Old is dressed as new in a risk-averse training industry. Executive education reflects Messiah and Therapist dominant approaches. These trad’ approaches are individualistic and conservative, lacking the ability to address the challenges and take advantages of the digital age and organisational complexity.

3 Elitist: Leadership Development positions leadership as an elitist power position, rather than distributed phenomenon. High-potential leaders are selected, trained and groomed for succession. The masses remain as low-potential, and are devalued as ‘followers’ wasting much of the organization’s potential and lowering morale.

4 Technocratic & Reductionist Leadership Development often follows reductionist and technocratic thinking. It talks of behavioural change, as if leaders are to be trained for the circus. It instrumentalises human and relational experiences for the ends of performance and productivity. Empathy to gain trust to optimise the individual/teams performance. Leadership is reduced to a set of techniques and universal measurable competencies, which misses the point.

5 Business-focused not leadership-focused: Business schools focus too much on the functions of business, and not on the complex experience of being a practising leader, or practicing leadership collective.

6 Gap between theory and practice: Many academics and trainers are too distant from practice. Leaders and managers often express the gaping hole they experience between what they are taught on courses, and the application back at work. Many who experience a feel-good workshop, find application back in the office soon vaporises.

7 Add-Ons: When social purpose, sustainability, systems thinking and distributed approaches to leadership are taught, they are often add-ons rather than central concerns, integrated into the company strategy.

8. Where is the Philosophy? Leadership is taught as a mechanism to optimise productivity but rarely is the question asked what is leadership for? What are organisations for beyond profit and growth? How do we create good organisations for the good society? At the Eco=Leadership Institute our work with leaders begins with philosophical foundations; we ask “How can we support leaders to work in good faith to help create the good society”

9. Lack of Applicable Critical Theory Critical organisational and leadership theory is taught in the margins of business schools, but is rarely picked up and used in the world of leadership development run by consultancies and training organisations. When it is taught it is critiqued as being too ivory tower for the real world.

10. Power and Politics are largely avoided in the field of Leadership Development, and when they are addressed it is with kid gloves and very politely. Yet power is at the heart of any leadership and followership dynamic and politics a central part of any organisational dynamic. Power and politics should be at the heart of any LD process.

Quotes from Leadership Scholars critiquing the field

“Leadership development remains dominated by an emphasis on individual leader capability, often at the expense of understanding leadership as a collective and relational process.”
— Bolden, R. (2011). Distributed Leadership in Organizations: A Review of Theory and Research.International Journal of Management Reviews, 13(3), 251–269.

“The search for a definitive set of leadership traits or competencies has proved fruitless.”
— Grint, K. (2005). Leadership: Limits and Possibilities. Palgrave Macmillan.

“If leadership training were a drug, it would not be approved by the FDA.”
— Pfeffer, J. (2015). Leadership BS.

“We are training the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences.”
— Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers Not MBAs. Berrett-Koehler.

“The leadership industry has failed to make leaders better.”
— Kellerman, B. (2012). The End of Leadership. HarperBusiness.

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“Leadership learning has not kept pace with the changes in the world… It is outmoded.”
— Kellerman, B. (2012). The End of Leadership.

Kellerman argues that despite billions spent, outcomes are not improving proportionally.

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“There is remarkably little evidence that leadership training programs actually produce better leaders or improve organizational performance.”
— Pfeffer, J. (2015). Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time. HarperBusiness.

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“There is a danger that leadership development becomes a mechanism for reinforcing prevailing power structures rather than questioning them.”
— Bolden, R. (2016). Leadership, Management and Organisational Development. In Leadership, Management and Organisation (pp. 3–24). Oxford University Press.

What are your thoughts on the leadership development you have experienced?

Coming soon……. Leadership Formation …. leaders are formed through experience and through context …….

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Show Notes
In this episode, Simon Western speaks with seasoned psychoanalyst and organisational consultant Dr. Anton Obholzer about the hidden emotional and relational dynamics shaping leadership, organisations and society. Anton is a hugely respected organisational consultant from the Tavistock tradition, and it is a delight to hear his wisdom and insights on this podcast.
Moving beyond technical models of management and mental health, the conversation explores organisations as living systems embedded within wider social and political realities. Anton reflects on the Tavistock tradition, the influence of Eric Miller and the importance of understanding organisations not simply as structures of efficiency, but as emotional containers carrying anxiety, projection, creativity and possibility. Simon and Anton discuss leadership as a protective and generative force, creating the conditions for growth, talent and human flourishing.
The dialogue explores the erosion of relational life in contemporary society, the dangers of organisations becoming spaces for unmanaged social anxiety, and the increasing dominance of technological and managerial rationality over human connection. They examine the importance of experiential learning, vulnerability, observation and creative practice in sustaining healthy organisations and societies.
At the heart of the episode is a deeper question about how we live together in increasingly uncertain times. Rather than retreating into expertise, certainty or control, Anton calls for greater relational awareness, collective responsibility and societal imagination.

Key Reflections

• Organisations are emotional and societal systems, not simply technical machines

• Leadership involves creating protective spaces where people and creativity can flourish

• Psychoanalysis offers ways to understand the hidden dynamics shaping organisational life

• Relational intelligence matters more than purely technical expertise

• Organisations often absorb and enact wider societal anxieties and fractures

• Creativity, art and dialogue are essential to organisational and societal health

• Experiential learning creates deeper awareness than abstract theory alone

• Technological advancement risks intensifying alienation and loss of human contact

• Mental health cannot be separated from political, social and organisational conditions

• Healthy societies require interdependence, vulnerability and collective responsibility

Brief Bio
Dr. Anton Obholzer is a psychiatrist, Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and both a child and adult psychoanalyst, trained at the Tavistock Clinic and the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. Alongside his clinical work, he trained as an organisational consultant under Eric Miller at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, helping pioneer the application of psychoanalytic thinking to organisations, leadership, and institutional life.
Until 2002, he served as Chief Executive of the Tavistock & Portman Clinics in London and continues as Chairman of the Consulting to Institutions Workshop and Senior Consultant in the Tavistock Consultancy Service. He has designed and directed group relations and management conferences internationally, and lectures widely on organisational change, leadership, and resistance under conditions of stress and turbulence.
A Visiting Professor at the Universities of Vienna, Graz, and Innsbruck, faculty member at INSEAD’s Advanced Management Programme, and teacher across Europe, Dr. Obholzer has spent decades exploring the unconscious dynamics that shape organisations - especially when systems are under pressure.
He is also the co-editor of the influential book The Unconscious at Work, a seminal text that examines how unconscious anxieties and emotional dynamics operate within organisations and institutions. His writings and publications have profoundly shaped the fields of systems psychodynamics, organisational consultancy, and leadership studies.

Thank you for listening: In this series will be offering short readings from my new book Entanglements, Weaving Our Futures. I begin with chapter one: ‘What authored the author’ a reflection on my very diverse working life and its impact on me. Today’s reading reflects on my first job in a factory at the age of 17.

You can buy the book here: https://www.karnacbooks.com/product/entanglements-weaving-our-futures/98489/ or https://www.amazon.co.uk/Entanglements-Weaving-Futures-Simon-Western-ebook/dp/B0GZNNLCB4

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I was struck by Arundhati Roy’s account of being listened to by her friend John Berger. She describes a listening that is deeper, more embodied; a soul listening that takes us into different relational territory.

Arundhati Roy was staying with John Berger in his house in the French Alps, and my hunch is that the setting mattered. Being in the mountains has always impacted on the way I listen, both to nature and to my own body and thoughts. Berger asked Arundhati Roy if she would read from her new novel: The paragraph below captures her experience:

“John Berger could have written a book called ‘The ways of listening’. He listened with his hold body. As though my words were rain and he were the earth. He absorbed everything, gathered every drop, missed absolutely nothing. His listening eyes were lakes in the high mountains. It was love, there was no other word for it. I don’t think that stillness, that quality of attention is even possible in digital age humans who suckle on mobile phones from the day they’re born. It’s a generational thing. Lost forever I believe.”

Arundhati Roy ‘Mother Mary comes to me’ pg 328 .

Her writing raised two questions for me.

Listening in the Digital Age

Firstly, the question about how the space for listening is being eradicated by the digital age. I understand and share her concerns, but also I hope that this isn’t totally the case. There are folks who read to their children, who tell them stories and adults who listen in theatres, or go to mountains and forests and to monasteries to soul-listen in more expansive ways.

Expansive Listening

Secondly, I reflected on professional listening. How we psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, coaches, counsellors and spiritual directors listen. We are trained to be active listeners, (I never quite understood the meaning of this). Lacanian psychoanalysts pay particular attention to wordplay, double meanings, connections, gaps...... Freudians pay attention to verbal slips, (parapraxis);the analyst listens for patterns, continuities, breaks and surprises in our speech. The analyst/therapist is trained to suspend their attention hoping to capture moments when the unconscious speaks. Counsellors and coaches are less focused on the unconscious and more on their ‘presence’ and ‘unconditional regard’ as Carl Rogers puts it. Yet these techniques, whilst useful in helping/analysing the client, are not the same as the expansive listening. Expansive listening goes beyond what we hear, it’s a deep and rich listening to the other’s words, and also to how they are spoken and presented. Expansive listening involves listening to what is being spoken, and to the context- environment from which the words emerge (for words are not owned only by the speaker).

Expansive listening allows us into a different relationship with the other, to listen to them with our bodies and souls, and to let the unconscious speak between us, and give space for nature and the social to speak through us.

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When was the last time you were expansively listened to?

When did you last expansively listen to another; including yourself, your body nature and the social?

Introduction

I have recently spent a fascinating and moving week in Rome, working alongside members of the Catholic Church; priests, nuns and lay people from across the world who are part of a Jesuit led leadership programme focusing on bringing to life Pope Francis vision of a synodal church. The synodal church is a radical vision of a listening and inclusive church. I will share more of this work on the synodal church, which aligns closely to our Eco-Leadership ethos in a following essay.

This essay reflects on questions of power and hope, inspired how I perceived the architectures of power, symbolised by the Catholic Church, that have parallels in today’s secular organisations.

The Easter message is one of sacrifice, grief, renewal and hope. It is also a story of the inversion of power, of a world-turned-upside-down. The Messiah is not an all-powerful emperor but a vulnerable yet transcendent human, who suffers alongside societies outcasts, before redemption signifying a completely different kind of power, one of love and forgiveness.

This essay is my offering for Easter. A message of hope that each of us can work to transcend a desire for worldly power over others, and work towards love, mutuality, peace and care for all those who suffer.

Awe, Architecture and Art

If you look closely at the opening picture of the basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, in the top small circle, I think I spy God..... maybe it’s not a picture of God, but from my perspective of looking up - that’s how it appeared. God at the top, looking down on us, metaphorically reminding us not only of a traditional sacred order, with heaven above earth, but also of how the Catholic Church is structured.

I write as a non-catholic, as a Quaker, as a person of faith who spends time praying and in communion, in forests, by the sea, in mosques, temples and synagogues, wherever the spirit is at work, and I engage in soul work wherever the opportunity rises.

Stepping into the culture of the Catholic Church as an outsider, I experience it with fresh eyes. Engaging with perhaps the world’s best known global institution, that continues to have extraordinary reach and influence, was for me a deep, moving and intriguing experience.

Whist in Rome I visited small peaceful chapels, I prayed and celebrated mass with friends and colleagues and I conversed with priests, laypeople and religious women living and working alongside the poor, immigrants, prisoners and homeless families. We stayed in a spiritual centre/convent near the Vatican, a quiet, simple and peaceful space to do our work together. Being together in this simple community, focusing on gospel love, clashed with the experience of being overwhelmed by the architectures of power I encountered in Rome. The architectures of power, manifested both in the external buildings and also in the structures and culture of the church itself, carried by those I worked alongside.

In Rome I entered churches so grand that on entry you experience yourself as shrinking. The size of the great churches and basilicas are immense, the architecture conveys a particular kind of beauty alongside an overwhelming statement of power. As one wanders Rome, architectures of power appear at every corner, as different histories reveal great colosseums and temples preceding and alongside the Christian era.

The grand churches I entered have interiors adorned by huge, richly coloured paintings and mosaics. When viewed individually they can be magnificent works of art, but seen together they merge into what I experience as ‘Catholic Bling”. There is gold everywhere, framing these dominating murals capturing biblical images, each with its own story. My experience is of an assault of visual grandiosity, with occasionally transcendent beauty, but more often what I feel is awe. An overwhelming sense of a powerful ‘Big Other’ being evoked in order to keep me and all of us sinful ‘lay folk’ in our place.

A generous interpretation of these architectures of power is that they diminish our ego, undermining our narcissism, in order to help us realise our place in a greater cosmos, elevating God and the transcendent.

A less generous interpretation is that it imposes the power structures of the church upon us, re-enforcing the authority of the Vatican, the clerics, bishops and priests. These huge structures filled with gold and ornate art speak loudly and clearly saying “Know your place! The church is the master”.

Tensions and paradoxes: Power and its inversion

What struck me on this visit was the paradox of how the Catholic Church wrestles constantly with the tensions between its hierarchical structures and cultures that proclaim centralised and top-down power (from God, to Pope, to Bishops, and priests) and another culture following the teachings of Christ that embraces gospel love to our enemies and the poor and marginalised. There is constant cultural struggle within the church between a worldly dominating power-over, versus the power that comes from love, and which emerges from within and from below.

At times in history the power-over was so dominant and so unchecked that it unleashed cruelty beyond belief, decimating indigenous peoples and engineering oppressive cultures that entered the daily lives of millions and led to abuse and suffocation of individuals and social wellbeing.

Today the church remains structured as a patriarchy, with centralised and top-down power, and yet the gospel it preaches turns this on its head. Pope Francis saw this and addressed it directly, warning of the dangers of ‘clericalism’ i.e. the power of love being reduced to the clerics having power-over the lay church.

There are many (and I was one of them for many years) that discarded the Catholic Church as it was a living example of power misuse and abuse, an anachronism of patriarchy and colonialism that needed eliminating. However now I feel differently. Today I see two choices:

i) where we see only one side of the Catholic Church, where we project our own desires for power onto the ‘bad-church’, in order to purify ourselves.

ii) where we recognise that the Catholic Church, has both a power-over culture and also a rich counter-culture within it, and a church that symbolises a much wider power-struggle going on across all society and in secular workplaces and our daily lives.

I chose to follow the second choice, which means joining a real struggle for change.

Secular struggles with power

The Catholic Church, clearly has patriarchal, colonial, hierarchical and many other issues to address, yet I see its struggles with power, as being a symbol of many other organisations I encounter.

Many of the secular organisations and social institutions we work in also have hierarchical structures that clash with a vision of more egalitarian cultures.

The corporate and financial-capitalist world today replicates the architectures of power of the church. When the Church buildings were constructed they were the top-dogs, cathedrals of power, imposing themselves above all else on the horizon. Today in New York, London, Dubai or Shanghai, the high-rise towers of capitalism surpass them, symbolically representing a more recent power-grab. The financial institutions and global corporations scream from their glass towers in the skies “We have the phallus now!”

Whilst the Catholic church struggles to find its way between gospel love and worldly power; the global corporations perhaps have a greater challenge, as they lack any real inner conflict. Their gospel is aligned, they seek worldly power to make money, with no deeper counter-narrative, no gospel love or transcendence idea of good, to strive against a system of consumerism, wealth accumulation and environmental destruction. Neo-Liberal Capitalism aligned its ethics with greed, releasing business from centuries of social and community relationships, when In 1970 when Milton Freedom famously wrote:

“The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”

There are leaders and organisations that try to do good, who take the environment and social justice issues seriously, but most do this at superficial levels and these are outweighed by the structural and cultural norms of the rest and the neo-liberal system.

Corporate leaders look down from their glass phallic towers, and attempt to cover over their shame, by trying to reframe their ‘winner takes all’ ethics. They employ brand agents to write grandiose vision statements, proposing to bring goodness to their employees, customers and the wider world, whilst in reality ignoring the environmental and social justice issues they claim to uphold.

In many of the organisations I engage with (public, private and non-profit) the vision for employees is for them to be passionate, innovative and to support their well-being, but their lived experience is one of relentless demands, top-down control and cultures of silence and dependence.

Individuals feel powerless in such organisations.

Easter Hope: A new church and new society is possible

Pope Francis (and now I believe/hope Pope Leo) have been working alongside many, many others striving for a church that represents a gospel of love for the poor and marginalised, a church that listens, discerns and includes, that turns power-relations upside down. There are many who say too late and not enough, and I would love to see quicker change, but the reality is that there are power-struggles and conservative traditions wedded to the status quo. Change takes time, particularly in a religious institution centuries old. Yet within the church there has always been a radical counter-culture, a liberation theology and those who are living with gospel love, giving their lives to undertake extraordinary work.

The Easter hope I wish for can be summed up by the words of a monk I once met, Thomas Cullinan who spoke about ‘political love’. Political love embraces the tensions between worldly power and gospel love, it is not a utopian idealist heaven on earth, but it realises that to bring about the kingdom, means to engage in the messy world of power and politics at all levels. Gospel love is not to pretend that power is easy, or that social justice will solve itself if we all engage in mindfulness or prayer alone. It is to apply gospel love to real world life situations. When we ran a retreat on the Soul at Work, one of the core discoveries was to acknowledge that soul work has frictions and tensions, is messy, is incredibly tough, but to achieve soul work is continue through, staying with the trouble, with transcendent love as our guide.

The task to counter authoritarian tendencies, whether in a religious institution or in secular life means co-producing together what Gramsci calls a counter-hegemony. This means to challenge the existing hegemony, and normative culture, and creating a different narrative and reality that will open the door to change. Yet what is missing from Gramsci and Marxist readings is that this doesn’t work if its only a political ideal, there has to be a transcendent ideal as well, that brings it to life, and holds us to account.

This means co-creating and supporting a wider cultural change, a bottom up, and middle out movement, that opens a different cultural space, which in turns enables structural changes to take place. To counter the hegemony of capitalist greed or Catholic church patriarchy and authoritarian leanings, means to hold truth, love and transcendence in our hearts, and then to get to work.

This thinking is part of the Eco-Leadership Institutes theory of change, and it aligns to Pope Francis call for a synodal church:"“The path that God expects of the Church of the third millennium”, which is why I was invited and readily agreed to engage in this exciting work in Rome.

Wishing all Easter blessings, renewal and hope, from whatever faith or non-faith tradition you read this.

Kathy’s legacy is so needed in today’s world.

May her life continue to speak to us.

Below are the podcast notes and the bio note she shared with us

Podcast Show Notes
This very special episode of Edgy Ideas addresses issues of race from MLK to BLM, on a journey experienced by my esteemed guest Dr Kathleen Pogue White. Kathy met Dr King as a student and shares her unique experience of living and working through periods of hope and despair in relation to racism in the USA and beyond. As BLM puts racism back at the top of an international agenda, Kathy shares her experience of working in organisations to address ‘white supremacy’ and structural racism. Kathy brings immense depth of wisdom to share, drawing on psychoanalytic insights and a lifetime experience of working with leaders from all sectors.

BioNote
Dr Kathleen Pogue White, is a psychoanalyst who applies the profession's core knowledge and skills in her multi-sectored work in organizational consulting, executive coaching and leadership development. Dr. White’s practice is based in Manhattan and she has vast experience in consulting to multi-cultural, multi-national, and diverse groups and organizations; her work ranges from Goldman Sachs to the Jewish Board of family and children’s services. Dr White also has many professional affiliations, to name a few, she is a founding member and past Director of the Program in Organizational Development and Consultation Program at the William Alanson White Institute for Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Distinguished Member of ISPSO, the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations and is an Associate of the Tavistock Institute.
Please share this post and the podcast link - as Kathy's voice is very much needed today.

Power has a magnetic allure. Yet it sits in a deeply paradoxical place in the human psyche, caught between pleasure and displeasure, mastery and anxiety, control and vulnerability.

Through a psychoanalytic lens, particularly Lacan’s notion of jouissance, power is never simply something we have or don’t have. It is something we experience often ambivalently, often unconsciously. It moves between people and systems in fluid, uneven, and sometimes invisible ways. At times it is brutally obvious, as in coercive or violent domination. At others, it is subtle, diffuse, and difficult to locate.

And wherever power exists, ambivalence follows.

The necessity of ambivalence

Those who hold power often feel both its pleasures and its burdens, the satisfaction of influence alongside the anxiety of responsibility. Those subject to power may resist it, resent it, or often gain comfort from their dependency, or investing in the hope of a saviour figure.

The absence of ambivalence is where danger lies.

When leaders utilise power without experiencing doubt, ethical tension or reflecting on their use of authority, the potential for misuse grows. Equally, when individuals see themselves only as powerless victims, they surrender their agency entirely. As Alice Walker reminds us, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

We often repress the discomfort power brings. We project our anxieties onto leaders either blaming them for our own feelings of inadequacy or idealising them as saviours.

Power should always awaken ambivalence and curiosity. Without this, power becomes unethical, unexamined, and potentially destructive.

Power in lived experience

Power is not abstract. It is deeply personal. It can be experienced in moments of violence, in institutional systems that overwhelm, or in the unbearable reality of total powerlessness, for example when a child is murdered, when nothing can repair what has been lost.

Yet there is also a power of love, friendship, inner will, nature and beauty, these counter the pain even in the enduring presence of those we have lost. The power of reparation, of healing of the grace and beauty that lead to new life and hope are an essential part of our lived experience.

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Power operates in both material and non-material, seen and unseen ways.

Power at work: from control to surveillance

The workplace is where power is most visible in everyday life.

Hierarchies define who decides and who follows. When I worked as a nurse for example, I experienced the power range from near-total control over a patient’s life (a coma patient for example) to moments of shared decision-making that move toward mutuality, though such balance is often lacking.

Modern organisations have shifted from overt control to more subtle forms of power. Surveillance technologies, performance metrics, and cultural conditioning now regulate behaviour. Power flows not only from the top down, but through peers, and ultimately through ourselves, as we internalise expectations and track our own behaviour.

AI and algorithms deepen this dynamic, shaping what we see, choose, and even think. Power is no longer only held by people; it is embedded in systems.

The psychoanalytic theatre of power

In psychoanalysis, power is not denied, it is worked through.

At the beginning of a Lacanian analysis, the analyst is perceived as “the one who knows” a Master figure onto whom the patient projects authority and certainty. The analysand comes with hope that the analyst will help them, or cure them of their anxieties. In this relationship the unconscious and transference emerges.

Over time, the analysand discovers that they must confront their own role in their suffering and take responsibility for their desires. By the end, the analyst becomes “waste” no longer needed as an authority. The patient realises that it is not a cure they need but to find a way to put their symptom to work, and live a good life. Power, in this setting, is transitional, the power of the expert/master must dissolve for autonomy to emerge.

Power is everywhere

Foucault reframes power as being everywhere. It is not just held by leaders or institutions. It is embedded in relationships, language, norms, and knowledge itself. Power produces what we consider truth, it shapes identities, and regulates behaviour.

Power is not only repressive. It is productive.

And where there is power, there is always resistance.

Foucault described Disciplinary societies where institutions, knowledge and discourses were utilised to control citizens. Later Deleuze reframed this as “control societies,” suggesting that power today operates through networks and continuous monitoring, and surveillance, it is digital, invisible, and internalised.

Hegemonic power and cultural struggle

Power is not only exercised through force, but through consent.

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony shows how norms, values, and beliefs are shaped so that power appears natural and unquestioned. Today, this operates through media, digital platforms, and cultural narratives.

When competing hegemonic systems collide, conflict becomes intractable. Each side is embedded in its own worldview, unable to see beyond it.

The allure of power

Power promises agency. It offers the fantasy of control in an uncertain world.It also shapes identity. Leaders become vessels for projections—admiration, envy, fear, desire. These projections are internalised, often distorting self-perception.

Leaders may feel both omnipotent and deeply insecure, often at the same time.

Power may corrupt—but projections corrupt more.

Surrounded by affirmation and insulated from challenge, leaders can lose their grounding in reality. It is not top-down power alone that distorts, but the projections from others are perhaps the greatest danger.

The pleasures of power

Power can be intoxicating. Yet in many progressive spaces, its pleasures are denied. Leaders speak of service and humility, while repressing their enjoyment of influence. This repression drives power underground, where it re-emerges as shadow behaviour passive aggression, control, and toxicity. Ironically, organisations built around “good causes” can become some of the most dysfunctional.

At the same time, a new generation of leaders openly embraces power—sometimes with little regard for ethics, using it to dominate, profit, and provoke.

Power used well can create positive change.

But it always carries a cost.

The displeasures of power

Power brings scrutiny, pressure, and isolation.

From a Lacanian perspective, it traps individuals within structures of expectation and law, where desire is never fully satisfied. Leaders may even derive a strange enjoyment from their suffering—a form of jouissance where pleasure and pain blur.

Power separates. It elevates—and in doing so, alienates.

The leader becomes both central and alone.

The inescapable tension

In my paper Anarchists Lead the way I explore how the attempts to escape power entirely; through egalitarian or leaderless systems often fail. Power does not disappear. It becomes hidden, unacknowledged, and therefore more dangerous. Only by making power visible can its dynamics be worked through.

Power, as a psychic and social phenomenon, is inseparable from the pleasures and displeasures it generates. Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories reveal that power is both a source of satisfaction and suffering, mastery and alienation. The pursuit of power is driven by the fantasy of completeness, yet this very pursuit engenders a jouissance that blurs the boundaries between pleasure and pain.

Psychoanalytically, power is tied to desire itself. It often becomes a stand-in for what we lack, promising completeness but never delivering it. Like love or wealth, it is pursued as if it could fulfill something fundamental within us.

It cannot.

Note: This essay is a a shortened version of a published paper in the journal below: To Cite Western S. (2026)The Pleasures and Displeasures of Power: Psychoanalytic Explorations Socioanalysis Vol 27 29-41 pg Pub. Group Relations Australia

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The Eco-Leadership Institute has colleagues and students currently getting bombed in Ukraine, Beirut and Iran.

Colleagues and friends suffer under oppressive regimes

One colleague with a new baby in Ukraine, has been without heating in freezing conditions, and is constantly under the threat of attack.

I write this to bring these 'distant' wars and oppressive regimes into closer focus. The news portrays wars as dramatic soap opera's. The TV channel changes... Ukraine to Gaza, to Venezuela, to Iran..... our attention displaced from one storyline to the next, whilst Sudan and other terrible wars get almost completely ignored.

The gratuitously dramatic and violent language used by the protagonists is a disgrace, they turn these wars into video games on social media outlets. This creates a dissonance between the imaginary and the real.

These wars are not abstract, they are horrendously violent and brutally damaging to millions of lives, creating fear havoc and loss to so many displaced and living in fear or grief.

To say no to war is not to support authoritarian regimes. This binary choice is a cynical narrative sown by those inflicting the violence for their own ends.

We must show solidarity with those suffering. We must constantly argue against authoritarianism, oppression and violence in all its forms. Whether in Russia, Iran, Venezuela or when ICE create fear on the streets of the USA, or UK police arrest pensioners holding placards to support Palestinians. We must work together with individuals and organisations to support humanitarian work striving for peace.

The war in Iran is not a solution, it will most likely lead to further fragmentation across the middle east and maybe in Iran. Some say it will strengthen the theocratic regime, others predict an increase in local and global terrorism - the lessons from the Iraq invasion have been buried......with the exception of trying to keep US soldiers away from danger....with the aim of marketing a 'utopian war' where one side inflicts maximum damage with minimal injuries their own side. The trouble is that no war is utopian.

What has happened to our collective humanitarian souls? Where is the leadership that once fought for humanitarian ideals? Who will say enough is enough?

It will take courageous and rigorous leadership to re-establish an international order that 'albeit imperfectly' values human life, respects diverse others, and aims to protect the environment on which we all depend, and which is another casualty in these wars.

I say rigorous, because it requires deep thinking and a re-awakening, combined with moral leadership and disciplined action to rebuild civil societies that can minimise these conflicts.

Like so many I feel impotent: yet we must speak.... Collective voices telling political leaders we are 'against war' have made a difference in the past, and can do so again......

My latest publication in the excellent journal Socioanalysis examines how Salvation Aid remains alive and strong in the humanitarian sector despite conscious awareness and ethical desires to move to decolonise aid. This substack post highlights a few chosen themes: to access the full paper click on journal link

This special edition on social justice and organisations was edited by Barbara Williams. The title ‘Salvation Aid to Eco-Mutualist Aid’ draws on my direct experience of working in the humanitarian sector in recent years.

Salvation aid refers to the idea that the humanitarian is a saviour, and it frames the recipient as victim and helpless other. This idea has been dominant in humanitarianism from the beginnings which wee often unashamedly inspired by Christian values with salvation at its centre in early days. Recognising that we had a moral duty to the ‘distant suffering other’ was an important moral step forward led by people such as Eglantyne Jebb who founded Save the Children and drafted the first Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1924.

Saving the suffering from physical trauma was often accompanied by saving their souls too, and this carried on beyond Christian approaches through secularised humanitarians who had a civilising and democratising mission to the under-developed nations (they should be more like us).

Today, whilst Salvation aid is consciously rejected and post-colonial approaches are argued for, salvation aid remains alive and well at unconscious levels, especially in the large INGOs (International Non-Governmental Organisations) I encountered.

The paper explores why, if the INGO humanitarians consciously reject Salvation aid, it continues to relentlessly. One hypothesis from the global south is that it’s a continuing colonial power-play dressed up in new clothes. I agree this is part of the challenge. Yet there is also another explanation that demands an understanding of unconscious dynamics.

Humanitarianism forms around an identity of the ‘good-self’ which gets internalised in individuals, organisations and in wider society/nations.

The ‘good us’ identity helping the ‘poor helpless other’ is a seductive narrative and continues to be produced with gusto during the annual fundraisers such as Red Nose day for example.

When we over identify with a good-self an internal and unconscious split occurs. We project our fears vulnerabilities and parts of the self we cannot tolerate onto a ‘bad other’. The split between the ‘good us’ and the ‘helpless them’, then creates the dynamic of power-over, superiority, however much the rhetoric is of collaboration and decolonisation.

This split is demeaning to both parties. The recipients of aid and local NGO humanitarians are diminished by The INGO Gaze, and are reduced to ‘helpless victims’ in the INGO eyes. This plays out in many ways, for example small NGOs in Ukraine who were striving to help those traumatised by war had to fill out endless bureaucratic forms to get funds, and the way funding was spent was determined by centralised bureaucrats. Local NGOs experienced this as not being trusted, as a power-play and hugely frustrating in the crisis they faced.

The humanitarian INGOs also demean and dehumanise themselves in this process, which accounts for some of the shadow toxic behaviours and bureaucratic craziness experienced in the sector.

Psychoanalysis teaches that when we split off parts of ourselves, we become part-objects not whole functioning humans. Humanitarians who cannot own their whole selves, who project their weakness, vulnerability into the ‘poor other’ and don’t own their own human desire for power and set themselves up as the good saviours are dehumanised in the process.

The paper goes on to claim that two key changes are required by the large INGOs.

1. Move away from top-down, bureaucratic, over-centralised large INGOs delivering aid. Adopt an #ecosystems approach which begins with local actors including aid recipients determining what and how aid is required and delivered.

2. Change the linear pattern of aid deliver that follows this path

Trauma-Empathy-Compassion-Salvation aid

to this pathway

Trauma-Empathy-Mutualism-Eco-Mutualist aid

Recognising trauma and offering an empathetic response is important and reaching out to the suffering distant other should be welcomed. However rather than move into the compassion for the suffering other phase, the sector needs to train and embody the idea that the next step should lead to mutualism, which completely changes the power and underlying emotional and psychological dynamic. Mutualism infers solidarity collaboration and partnerships and it undermines any form of power-over or salvation aid.

During my work with the sector, I engaged with dynamic and talented individuals and collective groups, often very frustrated by the INGO sector. I was most inspired when working in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and with the Ukraine response. I met local NGOs who were working with an eco-mutualist aid approach, as it was their normative way of working. I was so impressed by how NGOs found gaps in the ecosystem and also found resources to fill the gaps, how they were fluid and adaptive reacting to crisis with other organisations in a mutual way such as charities, faith groups and local government.

Salvation mindsets and cultures are a common challenge for many in charities and not-for-profits, and also in social movements more widely. The creation of the good-self identity must be countered through open and transparent acceptance that whilst we are motivated to help others, to do good in the world, to drive positive social justice and change, this doesn’t diminish our capacity for all human emotions and dynamics, including the desire for power and for ego recognition.

Michel Foucault; the most cited social science scholar in the world, is demonised and despised by the populist right.....

I have been wondering why his theories threaten them so much, and came to the conclusion that it’s not the theories they hate. Actually they have learnt from Foucault and use his thinking whilst at the same time deriding them. What they despise then is something else…….

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Introdcution

Foucault’s work is wide ranging and his theories changed and developed over time…. as he once said about himself “do not ask me who I am, and do not ask me to remain the same” . This short essay does not try to give an overview of his work, which I find thought provoking and very useful, whilst also disagreeing with some of it. Here I pick out a few key points that help understand the dynamic between the populist right and Foucault’s work.

Michel Foucault

Foucault, with other post-modern theorists, challenged mainstream ideas that dominated contemporary thinking. They deconstructed modernist ideology, claiming the end of the ‘grand narrative’ i.e. that universal truths and narratives of continued civilisation, development and progression were no-longer plausible.

Foucault argued that scientific knowledge was not only about discovering facts and truth, but it was also about the dynamics of power. That didn’t undermine science per se, but it did remove the idea that science was neutrally produced, rather it was a social practice. Foucault claimed that political power wasn’t only an oppressive top-down power that was administered through hierarchy, political and legal means. He said that power was everywhere and it circulated through culture, discourse and language. He explored how Bio-politics was a part of this cultural power i.e. how our bodies and minds are treated and ‘cared for’ through social policy, medical and health practices shapes our understanding and experience. His work revealed and explores how history and culture shapes society and subjectivity. His provocative and thoughtful influence has been huge in many social fields.

These ideas that post-modernists explored aimed to create a more emancipatory social field, where people were not bound by simplistic binary choices, or a natural logic which determined their place in society. Hierarchies, boundaries, categories and reductionist science that underpinned modernist thinking became blurred and more fluid in this work. Pre-existing social orders that reproduced power elites were no-longer a taken-for-granted norm.

Let me explore three examples of his thinking that influenced and impacted the Populist right.

1) “Natural” hierarchies

Foucault argued that social categories such as normal/deviant, sane/insane, criminal/citizen are historically & socially produced, not timeless ‘natural’ truths. This seems self-evident when examined. Medieval ideas about mental health are clearly different from contemporary ideas, and different cultural settings change how madness and sanity are experienced. Foucault’s theories challenge idealised conservative claims more rigid and fixed orders of gender, hierarchy, tradition and truth were produced by a natural order.

The Populist Right View

What is paradoxical is how populists, whilst claiming conservative roots and trying to reclaim authoritarian hierarchy through ideas such as strong male leadership and Christian cultural nationalism, are ripping up traditional conservative positions of stability, rule of law and order. Trump has taken over the conservative Republican party with his MAGA movement with the explicit aims at disruption of the social order, to flood the zone with chaos. The rhetoric is too replace the current liberal order with a more traditional authoritarian regime, but there are also voices particularly from his technology supporters that call for constant disruption.

2) Power is everywhere, not just at the top

Instead of seeing power only at the top of the social ladder, Foucault shows how power is everywhere and works through knowledge and discourse. Power is exerted in indirect forms through cultural practices and rituals and through institutions; schools, prisons, medicine, media all have a powerful influence. Power comes in ‘soft forms’ via social discourses and social norms, through language and everyday practices . He says that wherever there is power, there is also resistance.

The Populist Right View

Populists have learnt a lot from Foucault here. Whilst their claims aim to put power back in the hands of authoritarian leadership, (top-down power) their practices can be observed to utilise a Foucauldian stance. They argue that liberal elites have very effectively used soft power through institutions such as liberal Universities, legal and medical institutions and traditional media. The populists target these institutions claiming they have to be destroyed to eliminate ‘woke ideology’. It seems they are in close agreement with Foucault about how power works, but disagree in terms of using this for emancipatory purposes or oppressive ones.

3) Truth and knowledge are culturally produced

Foucault’s exploration of “power/knowledge” suggests that scientific knowledge is not simply a search for truth, but is also about how power works. Science is a practice that involves social and political forces. Truth itself is shaped by culture, power, language discourse and politics. Critics caricature this as “everything is relative,” fearing how it erodes absolute moral or universal truths. Foucault and others argue their approach offers a greater understanding of how power works, and that power shapes all things including science. Be revealing how power works, society can then gain greater control and influence over our social lives.

The Populist Right View

Populist rightists argue for ‘conservatives’ truths.... men are men, women are women, hierarchy is a natural order, humans are on top of the golden chain of being, they dominate nature, Christian/European culture is superior etc. Whilst in contradiction to this, they tear up the idea of truth, enjoying conspiracy theories and abandoning rational facts or truths that get in their way. Populists have utilised Foucault and have been playing the cultural truth and power game to their own rules, and have been far more impactful than the liberal/progressives in this domain. Populists have gained a lot of political power through the use of language, through culture wars and through libidinal power, abandoning any conservative ideas of truth being universal, neutral or sacrosanct.

Foucault the despised cultural icon

Foucault inspires others who strive for social justice to critique traditional authority. His work has influenced feminism, queer theory, postcolonial studies, and critical race scholarship, fields often framed by the populist right as “woke ideology.” His success meant that he soon became identified as an icon to many on the left, and the iconic villain to those on the right. His name became a shorthand way to critique liberal universities, intellectuals, and cosmopolitanism. Having an individual to demonise is useful in culture-war rhetoric.

Foucault as the most influential figure from the ‘post-modernist left’ became an easy target and hate figure. I am sure his openly gay promiscuous lifestyle and writings on sexuality also influences the hatred from the conservative right. Populism thrives on its followers identifying as the good saviours fighting off the bad other. They set up culture wars to establish good versus evil and often harness religion and its language to further their cause. One clear reason for their hatred of Foucault is that he became a conduit for this hatred.

Identification with the hated object

However Foucault is hated beyond being an object and icon of the left, so what’s really going on?

Surplus Enjoyment

When a person or group enjoys too much, when they take excess pleasure in their hatred of an individual, as the populists do with Foucault, we know something beyond the rational explanation going on. Jordan Peterson gives us an example of how he takes too much pleasure in his displeasure of Foucault. His surplus enjoyment of hatred is evident as he can hardly contain his bile in this video of his very poor demolition job, which hardly touches on Foucault’s actual work and thinking.

This isn’t just about hating Foucault because he is a symbol of the left, or of woke ideology. There is a remnant, something left over in the unconscious which hasn’t been processed. My reading is that the surplus here is a strong populist identification with Foucault and his work that cannot be faced or consciously acknowledged. The Populists debt to Foucault cannot be erased.

Without Foucault (and other post-modernists theorists) there would be no populist right, no MAGA. Populists have used Foucault and other post-modern ideas to inform their political rise. Zizek called ‘Trump the ultimate post-modernist’ because the post-modern critique of universal truth has been claimed and amplified by the populist right who have made it their own. They have bastardised and overturned the post-modernist movements emancipatory gaze. They live in a post-truth world of conspiracy theories, of truth manipulation and are happy telling lies which suit their political cause without any need for reasonable or rational justification or explanation.

They have learnt from Foucaults’ work how culture and institutions shape politics/power and have attacked what they see as elite liberal institutions that wield cultural power. The populist right have selectively learnt from and utilised Foucaults’ thinking in a devastatingly successful way.

Conclusion

Foucault and aligned theorists tried to create an emancipatory social field, deconstructing existing power norms and opening a space for the new.

Progressive Elites

However the progressive left whilst consciously aiming for social justice have unconsciously drifted into creating new elites using these same theories. Elites based on identity politics and the use of politically correct language that alienate many of the working class, marginalised and dispossessed who then turned to the populist right. The USA Democratic party and UK Labour party are examples of how the political left became institutionalised, both became inward looking and conservative powerful elites, reproducing the existing system to retain their own power, rather than really address the social disparities and inequalities that exist.

Foucauldian Right

This enabled the populist right to point to these liberal powerful elites and show how they utilised their power to reproduce the social norms they hated…. just as Foucault taught. The populist right across Europe, the USA and beyond then began to dismantle these liberal institutions and elites.

The culture war began in their own backyard, the first job was to utilise new social media opportunities to spread conspiracy theories, to flood the zone and undermine their conservative homebase’s (eg the Republican party in the US, or as Farage is doing with the Conservative party in the UK).

The populists utilised Foucault and post-modernism harnessing it in a perverse oppressive way. They used cultural power and created a post-truth milieu to rip up the social status quo, to deconstruct norms, and disrupt the post-war democratic, and international order.

Looking in the mirror the Populists are horrified to see a reflection of Foucault looking back at them. Identification with someone you despise, and with ideas you both use and hate is intolerable. It evokes even greater projections of hate onto the figure in the mirror who has become a persecutory object…

After all, the worst kind hatred……… is self-hatred.

Read more

The essay below is the script of an introductory talk I gave at the first ‘Soul at Work’ event run by the Eco-Leadership Institute. We were hosted by the wonderful sisters of the Claretian Missionary Sisters Convent, Reus Spain 2025. 19 Participants arrived from across Europe, Brazil, the USA and from corporate and business life, social activism, academia, coaching and more. A diverse group with the commonality of wanting to explore what it means to bring the soul to work, and to create more soulful workplaces.

The introductory talk below aimed to share a personal perspective and I wanted to offer a framing for the 3 days of soul searching we were undertaking together. The essence of the talk was to reflect on the most important (soul) work we do.

SOUL AT WORK EVENT: OPENING TALK

Thank you all for participating in this event that has been many years in conceiving and planning. This introduction is a product of personal ‘composting’ and experience. It doesn't define anything, it's just a sharing, it's an offering to try and make some sense of why we're here and perhaps to guide the journey. So, let's go.

I'm reading this from my notebook because I like to be careful about the words I share. I think words are important. Writing words down, thinking about them and re-working them over and over again. These words aren't finished, but as I process them they become filled with my spirit, and a collective soul.

The two words—Soul and Work - have become master signifiers of my life and they inspire this event. If I had to capture my life in a few words, soul and work would be high on the list. I want to explore both of these words and then share some personal associations to them.

Both of these words have multiple meanings. Different people and different contexts interpret them in very different ways.

SOUL

Starting with soul.

I use the word soul in its broadest sense, with a generosity. This is to enable others to bring their own personal meaning to the word soul, and not have it defined by me or others. Soul music is a good metaphor. You don't need to have a shared meaning to enjoy the music.

The word soul conjures up the idea of human and spiritual essence. But soul is also relational. The soul is not a nugget of gold to be discovered through a deep interior excavation. Soul is relational—to the divine, to God and to other people in our lives. It is also relational to nature, to the world we live and work in, and to the cosmos. To reflect on the soul, is to reflect on right relationships with all of these different others we encounter on our journeys.

WORK

Now to Work. I share some brief reflections on work drawing from the Westernised/modernity culture I grew up in and because this is the environment and culture that those of us here live and work in. I am conscious that this doesn’t account for other cultural and social ways of thinking about what work is. I have been strongly influenced by indigenous peoples understandings of our spiritual connectivity to all things, how our relationships transcend humans and extend to everything; rocks, rivers, plants, animals, stars, weather, landscapes, ancestors past and children yet to be born…. all that make up the cosmos. Perhaps one of our tasks when engaging with the Soul at work is to get beyond the westernised concepts of work, and to transcend modernities influence.

Plato and Aristotle thought that manual work was only fit for slaves, that it was demeaning and it corrupted the soul. The Abrahamic faiths believed that work was a curse. In punishment for sinning in the garden of Eden, Adam was to toil in the fields and thistles to make and gather food for the rest of his life, whilst Eve was to suffer the pain of childbirth. It is interesting that we still say that women go into labour i.e. they are entering a time of work when giving birth.

Somewhere along the journey, Christianity flipped the narrative. St. Benedict, the founder of monastic life in the west, created the motto: Ora et Labora, prayer and work. He thought of work as prayer, and prayer as work, and this idea remains strong in the Christian monastic tradition.

The daily routine and rhythm of the monastery is one of prayer and work. The monastery also has a seasonal routine, the Christian calendar and the natural seasons align, Christmas and winter solstice, Easter and spring renewal. When monks are working on their farms and gardens, then pray seven times a day in the chapel, their prayers and work come alive together. Monks undertaking labour also brought self-sufficiency to the monasteries, so that they weren't beholden upon wealthy others. Work, value, money and economics are companions. I have spent many hours contemplating in these monastic settings. The monastery is one of my places, and I've been very moved and influenced by the idea of work as prayer, which I take to my own home. When I make bread, when I garden and pick vegetables or hedgerow fruits with my children and then make chutney and jams, I remember my ancestors. My mother, who made jams and chutneys, my father, who did the gardening. The cooking the smells evoke their spirits, inviting them into the kitchen, each autumn as the weather chills they are called and they enter to spend time with me whilst I work. Our work transcends time and generations.

Work Steady

Once when in a monastic settings in the Big Sur California, I was working in the kitchens with one of the monks, and trying to be very helpful. After a while the monk I was helping said, “Simon, slow down……… work steady.” These two words, work steady, have stayed with me. When I find myself rushing, which like many is my default way of being, or when I find myself working with stress or anxiety, I now recognise it and I slow down and I ‘work steady’.

Luther and Calvin the protestant reformers, reclaimed work—firstly from a curse to a duty, and then from duty to salvation. Work became a personal noble calling. The idea of vocation became widely accepted, and to work hard and be frugal was a pathway to attain salvation. Max Weber theorised this as the Protestant Work Ethic, claiming it was this that fuelled capitalism.

In contrast Karl Marx critiqued industrial modern work as alienating to the human soul. Today, work can be modern slavery and precarious economic survival, or it can be secularised into a new form of salvation. Nicholas Rose wrote that ‘we come to work to work on ourselves’. In 1960s, the counter-culture introduced this change and this expressivism and individualism was imported into the workplace. Today professionals are encouraged to be passionate about their work, to choose work they love, to follow their bliss. Maslow and others claimed that works highest calling was to lead us to self-actualisation ( secular salvation).

Work comes in many flavours

There are many forms of work. There's paid work and unpaid work. Children do homework, adults do housework. There's manual labour, cognitive labour, emotional labour. We work on ourselves for personal growth, and we work out at the gym. The workplace in late secularised society has become a site not only for earning a living but also for making meaning and a site for community, perhaps replacing the church and other institutions that have faded in the past 50 years.

My associations to Soul at Work follow a personal journey. My work has taken me from a factory to academia, from being a nurse in a hospital to corporate business, from working in Zimbabwe with humanitarians to working in global banks and tech companies.

The pairing of the words soul and work brings together the unseen and the seen. The ethereal and the real. They bring together eternal time and present time.

FIRST SOUL ENCOUNTER

My first encounter with the soul came at the age of 18 when I was an atheist, a rebel, an anarchist. I was a student nurse in a big hospital caring for the dying, nursing patients with care and tenderness as they passed away. One elderly patient I was caring for died, and I was laying out her body. Laying out a patient was the final act of care you could give to somebody, to wash the body and prepare them for their relatives to visit before the body was taken to the mortary. To do this with compassion was very special to me. With Jenny after laying her out, at some point I suddenly realised that her body had changed, or something had changed. I then realised that the soul had left the body., this was no-longer the person, but just her body; her soul had departed.

I didn't have the word soul in my mind at all, I hadn't even thought about it. This was very powerful to me and it stayed with me all my life. It was one of the events that inspired me to become a seeker. What was this thing called soul?

MY MOST IMPORTANT WORK

The most important soul work I've done is unpaid work. When I was 25 years old, I became father to a child. His mother and I separated, we agreed to co-parent and I spent four years at home as a single parent on welfare and his mother chose to return to work. This choice shocked family and friends, it was counter-cultural for a man not to work in the early 80s, and I left a wonderful job I loved. I was very poor, but incredibly rich in terms of love, soul, adventure, joy and I was time-rich. These four years at home, just me and Fynn, were very special times, perhaps my most happy times. Later I found myself as a single parent alone with Fynn in his teenage years. As he grew up we had numerous adventures, we climbed the Himalayas, we visited China, Turkey, New York, we stayed with the Amish, and each year we visited Galway in Ireland and the famous Appleby Travellers Horse Fair.

We a very special relationship. Fynn died at the age of 23, killed in a knife crime. When Fynn died I was heartbroken (and still am). In the months after his death I was also suicidal and in despair. I lost my job at this time in the most insensitive way, and without Fynn, and without the routine and meaning of work and colleagues as anchors, I was in despair.

SOUL-WORK

Retrospectively, I can see that my soul was guided to spend so much time with Fynn when he was young. When he died, a small comfort was that I realised his life had been so full, he had lived much more than most, and with great spirit in his short time on earth. The work of parenting, that I took so seriously, was the most important work I have done. It was pure soul-work.

I also realised that the other most important work I had done, was the work on myself. The therapeutic journey and my spiritual journey I had taken had saved my life. This is really soul and work coming together. Had I not had that psychological grounding and understanding of what was happening to me, I fear the worse would have happened. Realising that to be in despair was part of grieving and that I wasn't going mad, that I wasn't in some wild depression. I refused anti-depressives the doctors tried to give me, believing I had to grieve…. grieving was the only work I had to focus on. Understanding that this was a process that had to be worked through saved me. I had also been on a long spiritual journey through my life, taking me to diverse and special places. I knew how to pray, I knew how to be in contact with the soul.

Each day I would read Psalm 40:

“He led me out of the slimy pit, out of the mire and the mud, set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. A new song was put into my mouth.”

These words were part of my comfort. I walked to the River Thames most days. I met beautiful friends who held me. I went to churches, I went to mosques, I went to Hindu temples. I allowed myself to fully grieve. I didn’t flee from grief. I refused the Doctors antidepressants believing I had to travel this path. This soul work, this preparation, I believe, was hugely important to me surviving and starting a new life.

Conclusion

My work journey has been very creative, at times painful, at times a struggle, but always infused with spirit and soulful…. a very enriching journey shared with so many special people.

I’m sharing these reflections to open this event and ask you to hold these two words, soul and work, together throughout it. The question we face here is: what soul work are we being asked to do, and what soul work are we being led to do together in this community, in this place, and at this time?

Reflect on these three simple questions. They can really help guide you to live a ‘good life’, (the life you want for yourself), and to help you to participate in creating a ‘good society’ (which is foundational in living a good life)

What is the most important work you have ever done?

What is the most important work that you need to do?

Where is your soul in this work?

Soul & Work Webinars The Eco-Leadership Institute has a membership with monthly webinars on the theme Soul & Work -

Soul & Work Event We will be meeting in Spain again next year 6-8 Nov for a Soul & Work event contact info@ecoleadershipinstitute.org for brochure 2026

Soul Guide Coaching our Diploma in Leadership Coaching - with Depth and Soul Guide approaches - restarts in January 2026

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A free live webinar with Dr Simon Western

Sponsored by the Eco-Leadership Institute

Systems-Psychodynamics is a methodology that has been around a long time. It offers a way of working that brings together two key ideas:

1. Our workplaces are interconnected and relational systems,

2. The unconscious and emotions are a core part in organisational life, and we ignore them at our peril.

Psychodynamic insights, observations and experiences applied to work, inform how we think about how organisational systems function.

Amongst the early pioneers were the Tavistock Institute who brought together multidisciplinary professionals to work collaboratively on how organisations and society could become more effective, engaging and democratic. Group Relations Conferences (GRCs started in 1955) became important experiential learning laboratories to explore the systems-psychodynamics of group and organisational life. BART exploring the dynamics of organisations through the lens of ‘Boundaries, Authority, Role and Task’ emerged as a way of applying systems psychodynamics in practice, and it remains a dominant acronym in the Tavistock tradition today. However the BART approach doesn’t account for the rapid social and workplaces disruptions we face.

Precarious-Interdependent Age (Western 2023)

The technological revolution, environmental crisis, and rapid social changes means we live in a disruptive age. Precarity demands adaptive and agile work places and our inter-dependencies are not only within organisational ecosystems but also reach into the social and environmental world around us. This wider ecosystem context requires embracing by systems-psychodynamic approaches.

New Systems-Psychodynamic approaches

Applying Systems-Psychodynamics in this disruptive age requires new theorising and new practices.

1. ‘Organisations are ecosystems within ecosystems’ (Western 2019).

Organisations can no-longer be seen as stable hierarchies, operating like efficient machine-like systems. The ideal of clarifying boundaries, roles, authority relations and tasks to optimise efficiency is outdated when working in complex ecosystems that blur boundaries, roles and create multiple tasks.

Organisations are interconnected ecosystems consisting of technology, people, and the environment (our built environment and the natural world). Working systemically means engaging with the ecosystem that consists of technology, people and nature together. This takes systems thinking into a more generative and realistic space.

Organisational ecosystems operate within wider social-political, technological and environmental ecosystems. In the leadership and organisational literature, the wider ecosystems that influence and impact on organisations is marginalised or ignored. The ecosystem approach opens this space to work in.

2. NIPI: Networks, Identity, Power and Influence

Working as an organisational consultant and designing and directing GRCs (group relations conferences). I have been pioneering a new acronym that aims to help systems-psychodynamic practitioners move away from BART, which limits the potential of our work. When we look differently, we see things differently. NIPI offers a different framework from BART and other traditional ways of understanding organisational dynamics. It changes the way we perceive and interpret what is happening in organisational ecosystems.

Using NIPI

NIPI encourages us to ask:

• Networks: What connectivity in the ecosystems and networks is at play here? What are the networks we are working in… digital, social, emotional, environmental? Where are the nodal that can be leveraged to influence change in the network?

• Identity: How are identities being shaped, contested or protected in our teams and organisations? Whose stories are being amplified or marginalised? What identities are explicit and implicit? How can we create identities of belonging of solidarity in our work?

• Power: Power is everywhere not just in hierarchies. How does power from above, within and from below play out in this organisation? How does power circulate through discourse (the language and messages) and in practice ‘how things get done’. Who has explicit power and where does hidden power lie. How can we mobilise the diverse power that exists in the organisation to drive positive change?

• Influence: Who is influencing whom, through which channels and relationships? How is lateral influence reshaping decisions and authority. How are wider societal, environmental and technological changes influencing the work and the organisation? How can collective influence be harnessed to drive positive change?

Framing conversations through NIPI helps leaders and participants see beyond linear hierarchies and engage with the complex, fluid realities of contemporary organisational and social life.

NIPI has now been used in 5 group relations conferences, two in China and three online. I also use this framework in my consulting work with organisations.

3. Unconscious Dynamics in Organisational Ecosystems

Systems-Psychodynamics has been dominated by Tavistock approaches that draw mainly on Kleinian psychoanalytic approaches. Having taught and studied at the Tavistock Clinic, I wrote a dissertation that critiqued this approach as being too pathologising and always focusing on the wounded-self and ‘shadow side’ thereby missing out hugely important areas of unconscious and emotional life in organisations. I utilised Lacanian psychoanalytic approaches to bring new insights. Organisations have an unconscious life: shaped by desire, enjoyment, jouissance as well as anxiety, defences, and lack. These libidinal forces influence decision-making, relationships, and an organisations collective capacity to respond creatively to disruption.

What will happen in the webinar?

I will share some insights into my theorising and thinking, and some short case stories and reflections from the work of the Eco-Leadership Institute’s consulting services across three contrasting sectors:

• Global manufacturing

• High-tech organisations

• Humanitarian sector

There will be space for dialogue and discussion. Together, we will explore how psychodynamics move not only between people but also through our relationships with digital systems, AI, and the natural environment — and how raising awareness of these dynamics can help leaders and organisations respond ethically, intelligently, and sustainably.

Themes

🔹NIPI - Networks, Influence, Power, and Identity
🔹 Desire in Organisational Life – How unconscious desire drives leadership, creativity, and resistance.
🔹 Ecosystems of Relationship – Seeing organisations as ecosystems of human, digital/technological and ecological interaction.
🔹 Distributed Containment How to distribute leadership and how to distribute containment to create reflective spaces for meaning-making, creativity and connection.
🔹 Unconscious and emotions as a viral, rhizomatic force

🔹Reimagining Social Purpose – Exploring what it means to live and work well in a disruptive age.

Join the Conversation

This webinar is for leaders, consultants, coaches, and change agents who wish to deepen their understanding of how unconscious dynamics shape complex systems — and how to work with them creatively and ethically.

Date: 25th November 2025 at 4pm GMT
Registration Link: https://forms.gle/54594awe2Gp98VJV7
Hosted by: Eco-Leadership Institute

Western, S. (2023). Covid: an intrusion of the Real. Chapter 10 p.139-156 in The Covid Trail - Psychoanalytic Explorations by Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleeleee. Phoenix Publishing House, ISBN-13:978-1-80013-136-1 2023