LEADERSHIP- A humanistic perspective.

In today’s corporate world, there is a lot of buzz about two words, Professionalism and Leadership.

For a majority of people, one aspect of being professional is to act in a defined and expected manner, even if they are experiencing something else at that moment.  

For them, being professional means to have the ability to wear a mask, or may be many masks, every day;  mask of being perfect, mask of being strong, mask of being practical, mask of being hard task master and most importantly mask of being not having feelings and emotions at the work place.

I am not sure if this facade is of any help to the person, maybe or maybe not.

But one thing is sure that this must be creating lots of pressure and stress on the person. It is not easy experiencing in one way and acting in a different way. The situation becomes more challenging when the person starts identifying with the masks. He thinks his masks are real.

With time this person with different masks, starts leading people. 

As far as I understand about leadership, it is a helping profession. A leader helps his team members to grow and develop their potentials. A leader achieves this goal by developing a genuine and trusting relationship with his team members.

Now the question is, can this person, who is disconnected with his inner-self, be able to develop a genuine and trusting relationship with others? When he is not, he fails to achieve his leadership goal.

As per Rogers, a renowned humanistic psychologist, there are three fundamental conditions for all helping professions.

Empathy

Unconditional positive regard

 Genuineness.  

These conditions are actually the attitude of the helper towards himself and towards the person he helps.

A helper can only help if he is able to accept himself as he is. In Rogers words, “a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which he/she would like to function.”

He understands that a person cannot change unless he/she thoroughly accepts what he/she is now.

Once that acceptance is there change comes naturally.

A helper then shows this acceptance towards others whom he is helping.

People stop pretending to be someone else if they feel understood and accepted. They gradually drop their masks and move towards self awareness, personal growth and self actualization.

When a parent develops a relationship with his/her child based on the attitude of warmth, genuineness and acceptance, the child becomes ‘self-directing’, ‘socialized’, and ‘mature.’

When a teacher develops a relationship with his student based on this attitude, the student becomes ‘self-sufficient’, self-initiator’, ‘confident’ and self-disciplined.

When a leader creates such a relationship within his organization, his team becomes more ‘responsible’, more ‘creative’, more ‘adaptive to change’ and more ‘cooperative.’

As Rogers pointed out, this masked professionalism is actually interfering in developing genuine relationship with others and as a result affecting the growth of individuals and organizations.

It will be a real achievement if people are able to learn those core and fundamental principles of trusting relationship with self and others.

Reference: ‘ON BECOMING A PERSON’ by Carl R. Rogers.

COUPLE THERAPY- Emotionally Focused

It’s one of the first brief couple therapies that uses emotion and attachment to understand and to deal with the couple’s problems. EFT considers “Emotions as the Music of a Couple’s Dance.”

EFT assumes that relationship problems are perpetuated by rigid negative interaction patterns that reflect emotional states of fear and anger. The negative interaction patterns contain maladaptive behaviors that are attachment insecurities resulting in separation distress. EFT explains that affect and interaction form a reciprocally determining and self-reinforcing feedback loop.

A healthy close relationship is defined in terms of secure attachment bond. Distress in relationship is related to attachment insecurity. Insecurely attached individuals either heightened expression of anger and distress and aggressively demand reassurance or they disengage and minimize expression of distress. Relationships-distress perspective of EFT is well authenticated by research.

The main goal of EFT is to reprocess experience and recognize interactions in order to create new cycles of secure bonding that will increase partners’ ability to regulate emotions.

To bring this change, EFT therapist performs some main tasks that culminate in creating a safe and collaborative alliance. By assessing and expanding the emotional responses, the therapist guide the couple’s interactions in the direction of mutual accessibility and responsiveness.

Several steps are involved in this therapy. In EFT building of therapeutic alliance and assessment go hand in hand. By showing empathy and genuineness, the therapist actively intervenes in the interactional process of the couple. As a result a de-escalation process begins. For example, the demanding and blaming partner becomes less reactive while the passive partner becomes more engaged.

In the next stage, there occurs an interactional position shift and new bonding event occurs. The withdrawn passive partner starts taking risk of expression of wants and needs, becoming more emotionally involved. Throughout the process, EFT uses reflection and validation.

At the third stage, the therapist’s goal is consolidation and integration of the changes into everyday life of the couple. This is done by the replays and feedback that slow down the process. The partners ultimately develop more positive perception of each other.