SMRT 106 – Dynamics of

Leadership

The Four Discourses of

Leadership – The Therapist
Discourse
Class Outline

•  Getting relational - Introduction

•  From Human Relations to Human Potential
•  Bringing the therapist into the workplace
•  A shifting global context and the suppression of
emotion
•  Discussion
Getting relational – Introduction
•  The Rise of the Therapist discourse was a response
to a number of broad cultural changes in the west.

•  However we can narrow this down to focus on some

key terms (Western, 2008):

!  Relationships
!  Motivation
!  Teamwork
!  Personal growth
!  Therapeutic culture
!  Emotions
!  Subjectivity
•  Ultimately the approach can be defined as:
▫  A motivationally driven, human focused, and
relational form of leadership.
•  This is still a hierarchical model, with a traditional
leader. However it is much more small team focused,
allowing greater focus on relationships.

Relationships & Motivation

F F
F F F F
F F F L F
L
F F F F
F F
F
F F
F L F

F F
F

Team Leadership
•  It was an approach that was heavily influenced
by a western individualism, and it much more
seriously saw people as complex.

•  There was a consideration that followers in

organizations were reflective and were starting
to question their life.

•  Increasingly leaders had to consider followers in

these ways, finding a model or mode through
which to guide others through this introspective
thinking and orient them towards organizational
outcomes.
•  The therapist discourse of leadership coincided with
a wide reaching questioning of the controller model.

•  As much as this understanding of leadership had

created efficiencies some of these had been oriented
to problematic outcomes. Followers had a new
impetus and confidence to question this approach.

•  Additionally workers movements and the rise of

socialism provided concrete ways in which workers
could exercise their power.
•  This was a discourse of leadership that
attempted to fit with the democratizing of the
workplace.

•  As Western (2008) discusses, the failures of

absolute leadership models (Mao, Stalin, Hitler,
the widespread disillusionment of the Vietnam
War era in America, etc) resulted in a wariness.

•  A sentiment that really carried through to the

end of the pre-9/11 moment
 1999 Seattle WTO protests

Antiglobalization and pro-

environmental movements
‘Battle of Los Angeles’
Protests at the DNC in 2000

"Brothers and sisters, our

democracy has been
hijacked.”
•  There really isn’t a similar movement until the
lack of faith in a return to authoritarian
leadership that came during the ‘great recession’
in 2007-2008.

•  This resulted in many movements, among them:

•  Ultimately again all these processes resulted in
the rise of a discourse that saw followers as more
significant in the leadership setting, a greater
questioning of the approach, and a focus on
people as complex.

•  This discourse is very popular in education and

the public and voluntary sector and other people
focused organizations
From Human Relations to Human
Potential
•  Two big schools dominated this shift to a
humanist approach in the immediate post-war
period.

•  This first being the ‘Human Relations

Movement’ and the other bring the ‘Human
Potential Movement’.
The Human Relations Movement
•  Widely understood to be a movement founded
by Elton Mayo.

•  With others he ran the Hawthorne

experiments at Harvard that looked
at the organizational environment
at a Western Electric Plant.

•  The experiments focused on motivation in the

workplace and its link to outcomes
•  The experiments highlighted that workers were
more responsive to group involvement and
managerial attention than to financial
incentives.

•  As such the first-line manager

was the most influential person
when it came to worker
motivation and productivity.
Human Potential Movement
•  Developed primarily through a group working
out of Esalen CA (Near Big Sur).

•  It brought together scientists, organizational

theory researchers, and new age thinkers.

•  The movement looked to completely reject the

rational controller approach to leadership and
replace it with self-reflection and discovery of
‘the true self’ through contemplation.
•  This movement gave rise to a greater
consideration of identity and the self, which in
turn underpinned the development of a lot of
identity rights movements.

•  Feminism, critical race theory, LGBT rights, and

many others came out of this focus on the
oppression of the individual through persecution
of the identity,
•  The most well know translation of this
movement into the workplace came through
Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs.

•  Organizations started attempting to support

their workers achievement of the higher level
‘self-esteem’ and
‘self-actualization’ in
order to be more
productive.
Bringing the therapist into the
workplace
•  The discourse has entered the workplace as
leaders are increasingly expected to play the role
of encouraging ‘celebrated’ worker behaviors
and offering support for followers that fail to
achieve.

•  The Hawthorne studies and Maslow’s hierarchy

of needs are two big tools that are still drawn
upon as part of the Therapist Discourse in the
workplace.
•  Yet while many have been supportive of the
growth of the Therapist Discourse in leadership
its transition into organizational theory and
business management has not been completely
smooth.

•  There exists a concern that the formulaic

approach to dealing with followers/workers
emotions is just manipulative and coercive.
•  The controller discourse of leadership was
coercive of workers, but at the very least it did
not attempt to veil this with a faux concern for
worker well-being…
A shifting global context and the
suppression of emotion
•  Despite the rise of the Therapist Discourse in the
American workplace in the post WWII context,
this celebration of the approach has been
tempered.

•  This has been a result of many key processes, but

two stand out in particular.
The rise of the ‘Tiger Economies’

•  The first of these was the rapid growth and

maintained success of what has been termed the
Tiger Economies, specifically in the late 1990s.

•  This included a number of South East Asian

nations, but in particular focused on Japan.
•  Despite a culture in which emotion has been
sublimated into a number of highly formalized
rituals, and a extremely strict hierarchical
business leadership model, these economies saw
rapid growth.

•  A legacy that we still experience today in the U.S.

Transnational Corporations
•  The second influence that undermined this
approach was the general changes that were
coming through a globalization of the business
landscape.

•  Organizations were combing or growing and

becoming massive, and were increasingly
needing an approach to leadership that was
focused on this increased scale of business
•  These shifts in organizations and the business
environment in particular have diminished the
prominence of the Therapist Discourse.

•  Yet it is important to recognize that even in part

aspects of this discourse still run throughout the
contemporary approach to leadership in many
contexts, and the expectation on leaders to focus
on emotion and relationships is still strong.
Discussion
•  Split into small groups 2-3

•  Talk for 10-15 minutes and then bring those ideas to the class.

•  Define the application of the Therapist approach to leadership.

•  Discuss different experiences that you have had leaders who act as
the therapist, directly or indirectly.

•  How important do you think emotion is in the workplace? Should

organizations focus more on the rational strategic planning
surrounding the idea of labor as a resource? Are ‘non-emotional’
business cultures, like those found in the tiger economies, truly
devoid of feeling?

•  In developing your own leadership style where can you see the
therapist being appropriate? Also more generally what are some
aspects of this approach that you think fits with your tendencies to
lead?