The psychodynamic approach is very interesting to me because personality conflict is one of the biggest issues within my work center. It seems like everyone is at each other’s neck and complaining about one another. It’s hard for me to comprehend the constant hostility, because I get along with almost anyone and consider myself easy to work with. I understand that everyone responds differently and needs to be approached differently. Leaders are more effective when they know and understand both their own psychological makeup, and also their subordinates (Penn State University, 2018). I have a lot of learning to do, but I do recognize the importance of understanding myself and the people I lead.
The Air Force actually focuses a lot of our leadership-focused professional development on knowing each other’s personalities and stresses the importance of adapting our own responses and actions to meet the needs of our troops own personalities. We’re given a color personality test (orange/green/blue/gold). We then compare the colors to try and understand how they differ from our peers and discuss why people think and react differently based on their personality color. I found a website where you can assess your own personality for free. Follow this link if you’re interested https://www.americandancetrainingcamp.com/blog/true-colors-personality-test/. I’m primarily orange and secondarily green, which I believe is accurate. Most of my classmates claimed that the test correctly described them. This assessment focuses on an individual’s traits, but it can’t tell you why or how your characteristics are established.
Our leadership behavior starts developing from a young age. The psychodynamic approach focuses on the following five concepts: family of origin, maturation and individuation, dependence and independence, regression and the shadow self, and archetypes (Penn State University, 2018). “Like mother, like daughter” and “like father, like son”, are phrases we hear all through our life. If you really want to understand someone’s personality, it’s important to learn about their family and how they were raised. Our relationship to authority figures and intimacy correlates with the leader-follower relationship, which dictates how well the two responds to one-another. Repression and the shadow self refers to our own negative traits that we tend to “overlook” because it’s unacceptable and often makes us feel self-conscious. According to Penn State University (2018), “It is helpful for leaders to be able to recognize their shadow selves. Since other people can often recognize the shadow, they react to it.” The first step to fixing any problem is admitting it’s there in the first place. For example, many leaders over-micromanage, which causes their subordinates to believe that their leader doesn’t trust them or considers them incapable of successfully completing the task. The leader may not realize that their a micromanager, but in recognizing their actions and how it makes people feel, they can work toward giving their subordinates independence while building trust.
The psychodynamic approach is based around knowing individual’s personality, emotions, and behaviors, and how it’s all applied when in a leadership or follower position. According to Northouse (2016), the three key concepts to understanding organizational behavior are as follows: focus on the inner theatre, focus on the leader-follower relationship, and focus on the shadow side of leadership (p. 301-306). Focusing on the inner theatre goes back to family of origin. In order to be a better leader and know your people, get to know them and their past experiences. Build a solid relationship with people by asking questions about their personal life and past jobs. Because each individual behaves differently, focus on the leader-follower relationship between yourself and each subordinate. There are different styles of leader-follower relationships, and knowing which style each relationship is will help the leader respond appropriately. People will use different methods to deal with organizational stress and anxieties, such as social defense mechanisms, mirroring and idealizing, identification with the aggressor, and folie a deux (Northouse, 2016). Once these behaviors are identified, it may be possible to understand the actions of the individual. When focusing on the shadow side of leadership, understanding constructive versus reactive narcissism can shed some light on the reason behind an individual’s actions.
Reference
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Penn State University. (2018). Psych 485: Leadership in work settings. Lesson 3: Psychodynamic approach. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1925331/modules