Anton Obholzer > Quotes

“The instrument with which one explores unconscious processes is oneself - one's own experience of and feelings about the shared situation. If the self is to be the scientific instrument...an analyst must first undertake an analysis of their own, through which they should be able to distinguish what comes from themselves...and what belongs to the patient.”
― Anton Obholzer, The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life

“Social systems in the workplace function to defend workers against unconscious anxieties in the work. To the extent that such defences are unconscious, the social systems are likely to be rigid and therefore uncomfortable, but because of their role at keeping anxiety at bay, they may also be very resistant to change”
― Anton Obholzer, The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life

“Change and transformation...requires learning to hear and use the different perceptions and interpretations of people who are not (like) 'us', who have a different way of making sense of the world, and who are telling different stories about what is happening, and what needs to happen next. One of the best pieces of advice ever offered to leaders is Shapiro's (2001) admonition always to ask ourselves 'how are they right?", even - or especially - when they are most obviously 'wrong'...We also need to listen differently to ourselves, to let stifled inner voices emerge, so as to be less prey to joining in with dominant and dominating (but inevitably partial) stories around us. And to recognise that the stories are interconnected: the more 'we' decry 'their' version of events, the more self-perpetuating 'our' stories become...the key issue is not so much about liking or not liking the story we are in, but about finding a way to be more present in the current story, in the reality of the here-and-now, rather than editing a story that shields us from facing our part in creating it, or losing ourselves in longing for a different one.”
― Anton Obholzer, The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life

“True leadership requires the identification of some problem requiring attention and action, and the promotion of activities to produce a solution. In basic assumption mentality, however, there is a collusive interdependence between the leader and the led, whereby the leader will be followed only as long as he or she fulfils the basic assumption task of the group...[such as] providing for members' needs to be cared for...identify[ing] an enemy either within or outside the group...[or] foster[ing] hope that the future will be better...The leader who fails to behave in these ways will be ignored, and eventually the group will turn to an alternative leader...The basic assumption leader is essentially a creation or puppet of the group, who is manipulated to fulfil its wishes and to evade difficult realities.”
― Anton Obholzer, The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life

“Membership of an organisation makes it harder to observe or understand that organisation: we become caught up in the anxieties inherent in the work and in the characteristic institutional defences against those anxieties. This soon leads to shared, habitual ways of seeing, and a common failure to question 'holy writ'. Newcomers may be able to see more clearly, but have no licence to comment. By the time they do, they have either forgotten how to see, or have learned not to. They, too, require defending against anxieties, not least the anxiety of upsetting their new colleagues”
― Anton Obholzer, The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life