Psychomanagement. Robert Spillane
based on personal attraction. Given the behaviour of leaders in the twentieth century, many people have concluded that it is dangerous to follow individuals because of personality, ‘vision’ or ‘mission’. History tells us, or most of us, that if we follow leaders we are likely to end up in chains behind them.
Using psychology to manage others has great attraction because it offers managers the means by which they can control their colleagues. The problem is that psychomanagement requires knowledge and skills that managers don’t have. When managers become psychomanagers they have to gain insight into the inner lives of their colleagues, understand various personality theories, tests and therapies. Failing this, they yield their authority to counsellors, coaches or consultants who cannot agree on the basic assumptions about human behaviour. And when they try to apply psychomanagement, they undermine their authority because the relationships of psychologist and client and of manager and subordinate colleague are mutually exclusive.
Psychomanagement combines attention to performance and an obsession with personality and an assumption that the two are linked. They are not. Nevertheless, psychomanagers continue to promote the view, discredited by sixty years of research, that personality predicts managerial performance. Furthermore, psychologists cannot agree on even the most fundamental principles of personality. Behaviourists and existentialists argue against the existence of personality traits, and psychoanalysts claim they cannot be assessed by psychometric tests.
Managers who find the task of making employees’ strengths productive too onerous emphasise employees’ weaknesses. Their attempt to eliminate employees’ personal deficiencies encourages them to practice counselling in which they are not trained – and neglect skills in which they are. Once they embrace therapeutic counselling, the roles of manager and counsellor collide. Their point of intersection represents one of the major challenges for Australian managers who are required by occupational health and safety legislation to provide an occupational environment adapted for the physiological and psychological needs of employees. Clearly, those who want to manage by performance have had their waters muddied.
The popularity in Australian management of personality, motivation, bonding, emotional and moral intelligence raises interesting questions about the changing face of management. How did it come to pass that managers today are expected to ‘bond’ by howling at the moon, or walking on fire to demonstrate their ‘spiritual’ ability to defy the laws of physics? How did new age spiritualism, folk psychology and soft-skill management become part of the practice of management? Or, as the ancient Romans asked, Cui bono?
Traditionally, the role of psychology was to provide the opportunity for individuals to master themselves, not to manipulate others. Originally known as moral philosophy, psychology defended the maxim ‘know and master yourself’. As we shall see, psychologists have been welcomed into Australian management: some work with managers to encourage them to master themselves; others work for managers to encourage them to master others.
Australian managers are told that they should be managers and leaders, managers and mates, managers and mentors. They are told that they need coaches, consultants and counsellors. When they were confronted with ‘epidemics’ of Repetition Strain Injury, occupational stress, personality disorders and mental illnesses, many concluded that managing in Australia is a challenging business.
This book, then, is about Australian managers, their long-standing affair with psychologists, and the rise of the psychomanager. It is written by an Australian academic who for half a century has studied, taught and consulted with managers and participated in several of the social movements in which they have been embroiled. It is therefore a personal, selective, account of a professional life spent studying the problematic relationship between managers and psychologists.
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Egalitarianism: The belief that all subordinates should submit equally.
One of Australia’s glorious sisters, Miles Franklin, noted that one of its brilliant sons, Henry Lawson, called Australia the paradise of mediocrity and the grave of genius. She advised visitors who become perplexed by its contradictions and inverted emphases to soak themselves in its atmosphere before arriving at dogmatic conclusions.1
English novelist D.H. Lawrence did not live long enough to benefit from Franklin’s advice. He visited Sydney in 1922, stayed for three months, and wrote one of his worst novels – Kangaroo – which included wonderful descriptions of the Australian landscape and hilarious descriptions of Australian manners. Lawrence described Australia as ‘a weird, big country. It feels so empty and untrodden...This is the most democratic place I have ever been in. And the more I see of democracy the more I dislike it...You never knew anything so nothing...They are always vaguely and meaninglessly on the go. And it all seems so empty, so nothing, it almost makes you sick. They are healthy, and to my thinking almost imbecilic. That’s what life in a new country does to you: it makes you so material, so outward, that your real inner life and your inner self dies out, and you clatter round like so many mechanical animals...I feel if I lived in Australia for ever I should never open my mouth once to say one word that meant anything. Yet they are very trustful and kind and quite competent in their jobs. There’s no need to lock your doors, nobody will come and steal. All the outside life is so easy. But there it ends. There’s nothing else...Nobody is any better than anybody else, and it really is democratic. But it all feels so slovenly, slipshod, rootless and empty, it is like a dream...There is this for it, that here one doesn’t feel the depression and the tension of Europe. Everything is happy-go-lucky, and one couldn’t fret about anything if one tried. One just doesn’t care. And they are all like that. Au fond they don’t care a straw about anything: except just their little egos. Nothing really matters... 2
Australia is a land of paradoxes, inversions and sardonic humour. Its paradoxes are exasperating, its inversions frustrating and its humour invalidating: such is life for a people who value liberty and equality; egalitarianism and bureaucracy; achievement and failure; heroes and underdogs. Australians aggressively insist on the dignity and importance of the individual but do their utmost to eliminate ‘tall poppies’. Males are said to stick by their mates but will criticise them the moment their backs are turned. Females are said to be tough-minded but immerse themselves in the sentimental banality of women’s magazines. Friendly and tolerant, Australians are laconic. Or are they merely apathetic? After all, they repeatedly tell each other: ‘No worries’.
These paradoxes are combined with a notable inversion: historically Australians adopted a cynical attitude to so-called leaders – especially politicians, government bureaucrats and business managers – and made them the object of sardonic humour. The Australian way is that of the quiet achiever supported by a gospel of relaxation which emphasises getting on with, rather than dominating others; it is far more subtle than most observers and commentators care to discover, let alone acknowledge. Valuing their quality of life, Australians work quietly to secure it by defending a status quo that has given them advantages which are, they insist, second to none. Since they see their work as relatively unrelated to local luxuries – the weather, beaches and the vast open spaces – they are not obsessively concerned about economic performance. As for long-term planning, well, in the long-term we’re all dead. In Australia the quo truly has status.
The Australian character of the nineteenth century was a mixture of Protestant, Catholic and Enlightenment values. But coursing through the veins of white Australians was European Romanticism. The most popular books in the early days of the colony were romantic: the novels of Sir Walter Scott for instance. As the decades passed romanticism developed an Australian flavour. The bush and bushrangers, the people of the outback, and common soldiers at Gallipoli were romanticised and passed into folklore. No doubt this romanticism had strong links to Irish mythology, but it also had important connections with English and German Romanticism. And while Australians would seem unlikely candidates for the label ‘romantic,’ this influence, although overlaid with laconic self-mockery, runs deep in the Australian character.
Nowadays