What happens when the fragility of the leader meets that of the coach/consultant/practitioner/supporter?

Fri, 6th December, 2024 from 10:00 AM, in London

In this session we will explore how we collude with others and delude ourselves to manage our own anxiety and shame.

The field of Organisation Development, and indeed many others, encourages us to be critically reflective. ‘Self as instrument’ started out as a radical invitation to use one’s own experience of self as the primary sense making lens, an invitation to treat everything as data in the here and now in service of forming hypotheses and devising invitations in response to messy reality. Yet this is set in the context of client-helper relationships where the overarching need for clients is to find someone onto whom their projections of  ‘expert’ and ‘expertise’ are validated. This requires those of us working with clients to be aware (enough) of our own ego ideals, the intoxicating effect of projections that feed our narcissism and the lurking shadow of shame.

What is little acknowledged, or discussed, is what happens when the fragility of the client or leader meets that of the practitioner. What do we do when our shame – whether related to our work identities and roles or more archaic – is evoked? Do we really embrace ‘self as instrument’ and do our work, or collude by keeping the inquiry relatively superficial? It is all well and good gathering in communities of practice to reflect, and the question arises as to how deep we are really prepared  to go.

In this session, Steve Hearsum, author of a new book on how unconscious processes driven by shame and anxiety fuel collusive behaviours that maintain the market for quick fix/’Silver Bullet’ solutions, will host a conversation and inquiry that explores how we may be part of the problem, both colluding with clients, eachother and ourselves. Come prepared to engage in useful discomfort in service of your own and collective learning; and bring your sense of humour, because even in the darkest moments absurdity lurks.

Steve Hearsum is a consultant supervisor and coach, and the author of No Silver Bullet: bursting the bubble of the organisational quick fix, which looks at how leaders and organisations unconsciously collude with the purveyors of quick fix, Silver Bullet solutions for complex challenges. Steve is a board member at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and was formerly the Co-Chair of the Organization Development Network Europe.

This event will be held at The Amadeus Centre near Paddington and Little Venice in London.  It will start at 10am and finish at about 4pm.  A light fruit/pastry breakfast and coffees/teas will be available as we gather from 9:15am onwards and lunch will be provided.  As it is our last event this year, a few of us might drift across to a local pub for a quick drink afterwards.

You know, of course, that Sadler Heath does not make profits and noone gets paid anything.  We all come at our learning edge.  However we hope you will be OK to contribute £60 to cover the cost of the accommodation, the refreshments at the event and the lunch.  If there is any excess it goes towards the cost of the accounting and the website.