The Psychodynamics of Enlightened Leadership

Front matter

Management, Change, Strategy and Positive Leadership

Series Editors

Satinder Dhiman School of Business Woodbury University Burbank, CA, USA

Preface

Democracy relies on an informed public responding in rational ways to the real-life facts and challenges before us. But a growing number of Americans are untethered from that. “They’re not on the same epistemological grounding, they’re not living in the same worlds,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation. “You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.”!

The overall picture drawn by [Joseph] Tainter’s work [in The Collapse of Complex Societies*] is a tragic one. It is our very creativity, our extraordinary ability as a species to organize ourselves to solve problems collectively, that leads us into a trap from which there is no escape. Complexity is ‘insidious,’ in Tainter’s words. ‘It grows by small steps, each of which seems reasonable at the time.’ And then the world starts to fall apart, and you wonder how you got there.

AS we write, the 2020 presidential election has just been decided. Nonetheless, the multitude of issues that still bitterly divide us are far from settled. Indeed, as of this writing, they’re only furthered by President Trump’s inability, and that of an overwhelming majority of Republicans, to accept the fact that he lost.

The fundamental problem is that we are struggling to cope with the fact that the basic nature of reality has been altered irreparably. In short, our old ways of thinking are not up to the task. In fact, they are a big part of the problem.

Adding to this is the fact that we are in the midst of one of the worst health crises the world has seen, certainly in the last 100 hundred years. This book is about how we need to think and act differently if we are to have any chance of coping better with—unfortunately not preventing—the next pandemics.

! Charlotte Alter/Milwaukee, “Down The Rabbit Hole, How conspiracy theories are shaping the 2020 election—and shaking the foundation of American democracy,’ Time, September 21/ September 28, 2020, p. 76.

Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, UK, 1988. *Ben Ehrenreich, “Why Societies Fall Apart,’ The New York Times Magazine, November 8, 2020, p. 42.

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Vili Preface

As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said on numerous occasions, we must “Be smart and learn the lessons of the Coronavirus,” for the next pandemics will be even worse. In fact, we have to prepare ourselves for the godawful reality that no matter what we do, it will still be horrific. The best we can hope for is that if we are indeed better prepared then we will recover faster. But even this is not assured.

With regard to the key lessons, first, the coronavirus exposed the latent defects, major flaws, and inherent weaknesses in virtually all of our major systems—the economy, education, healthcare/medical, nursing homes, and public health. The best that can be said about the systems that were supposed to protect and make us safe is that they were not up to the task. In actuality, they failed miserably’.

It also exposed serious weaknesses in our national character and the lack of social responsibility in far too many of our fellow citizens. While many have suffered financially, and thus understandably have pushed back against the persistent injunctions of government and health officials to shelter in place, stand at least 6 feet apart from one another in public, wear face masks, etc., in a disturbing number of cases, the recommendations and orders were met with fierce opposition, and even worse, explicit threats of armed violence. Sizable numbers of people are willing in effect to trade the lives of others, and even their own, to “reopen the country.” The Lt. Governor of Texas had the unmitigated gall to say outright that since the elderly had already lived full lives, they were “expendable.”

Second, correcting the defects in the current systems entails much more than merely patching them up and returning to what they were. Overall, they are in need of serious redesign’.

Third, the systems must be considered as a whole. They are not independent by any means. The virus showed that all of them are inextricably intertwined such that a failure in one led inevitably to failures in all of them.

Like all major crises, the coronavirus is not a single crisis. Lacking a central governing body of some kind for monitoring the system as a whole makes it basically impossible to get out in front and gain control when a crisis of enormous proportions happens. We are lacking one of the critical functions of the Federal Government.

A major part of the problem is that while there were a number of simulations for a global pandemic, and public health officials having been warning of one for years, to our knowledge there were no simulations of the entire system being affected and therefore crashing as a whole.

Fourth, tremendous uncertainty is an inescapable fact of life. One cannot know for certain all of the Systems and all of the ways in which they will be impacted by the next pandemics.

“For an incisive examination of the failure of our health system, see Siddhartha Mukherjee, “After the Storm, The flaws of our health-care system revealed,’ The New Yorker, May 4, 2020, pp. 24-31.

*Tbid.

Preface ix

To pick up on the need for redesigning major systems, nursing homes need to be literally rethought from top to bottom and front to back. Since redoing all nursing homes everywhere all at once is impossible, we need to start with a model that can serve as an ideal testing ground and thereby a national, if not an international, standard. For one, it would have all of the necessary monitoring equipment built-in so that as soon as one entered, vital measurements would automatically be taken of the staff, visitors, service personnel, etc. The same would occur when anyone left the premises and as one moved throughout the facility. (It’s too much to say that it would provide real-time testing for the virus since we’re not that advanced at the present time.) Further, the rooms and layout would be such that it could easily be reconfigured to accommodate those who needed to be separated and quarantined. Needless to say, it would have necessary backup supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE). And of course, staffing needs to be seriously upgraded, if not rethought altogether. Importantly, the pay of nursing assistants and other personnel needs to be raised significantly, especially when they can often make more by working at cheap restaurant chains. In short, such a model would embody all of the ideal features we can envision at the present time.

While social distancing needs to be enforced among the general population, professional distancing needs to be minimized. Thus, epidemiologists and architects need to cooperate in designing better nursing homes. But then the barriers between all of the academic and professional disciplines need to be seriously rethought. They are an impediment to protecting the whole system. Thus, we not only need epidemiologists who have a deep understanding of economics but also economists who have a deep understanding of epidemiology. At a minimum, we need experts who not only respect, but take seriously the professional judgments of others. However, to do so requires a culture whereby one can indeed listen to others with different points of view. For this reason, we talk later about the nature of organizational culture and a specific process for changing it. We also talk about a specific kind of organization, the problem management organization or PMO, for fostering inter- and transdisciplinary thinking and thus the kind of cooperation that the complex, messy problems that we face require.

One can expect all of the various systems and segments of the population that were affected by the coronavirus to be affected once again: the economy, education, entertainment, food, vulnerable populations, restaurants, and transportation. In addition, the time is also now to consider that those aspects that were not primarily affected by the current virus such as utilities will be impacted by future pandemics. (They were certainly impacted by all of the fires raging out of control in the West adding emphasis to the fact that no crisis ever occurs in isolation.) For example, the current pandemic has made it painfully clear that different demographic and socioeconomic groups do not have equal access to the Internet. Thus, the pandemic has exposed, indeed further inflamed, long-standing ethnic and racial divisions, not only in our country but around the world.

Unfortunately one cannot be more specific for again uncertainty is one of the prime features of major crises. All one can do is be constantly on the lookout for the early warning signals of impending crises via the consideration of the worst, worst x Preface case scenarios. Since people in general do not like to hear bad news, one needs to plan for the fact that there will be serious attempts to ignore and block the signals, as was the case with the coronavirus. Thus, local Chinese officials in Wuhan were explicitly warned, if not prevented, from sending signals of the virus on to Beijing for fear of losing their jobs. This is in fact one of the prime aspects of a worst, worst case. But most of all, we should plan for the next major crisis to last longer, affect more people, and take longer to curtail. So even with the best preparations, we may not fare any better next time. This is not to say that we shouldn’t try, for at least we will hopefully be better prepared psychologically.

One thing is clear. One cannot presume for one second that the next pandemic will merely be a global public health crisis alone. Unless we think and prepare broadly, it will exceed our wildest nightmares. It’s not a case of “preparing for the worse and hoping for the best.” It’s “preparing for the worst and expecting it to be even worse.” And that’s the good news!

Finally, as is typically the case with all major crises, other unrelated crises can and will occur at the same time. Thus, during the height of the coronavirus, the tragic and wanton death of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by the Minneapolis Police happened, thereby setting off a wave of largely peaceful protests, literally around the world. As a result, it spurred calls for “defunding the police and using the money saved for greater investments in social programs.” The peaceful protests were unfortunately used as excuses by unscrupulous parties for engaging in looting and violence.

At the same time, we’ve also been in the midst of a long and ugly 2020 presidential election campaign. And once again, Donald Trump has still not conceded. Further, since no major crisis ever happens in isolation, we discuss this as well. Indeed, they are parts of the general overall crisis we are experiencing. They are certainly fundamental aspects of the severe cultural divide in which we find ourselves.

To reiterate, this book is a guide to how we need to think differently if we are to do a better job in preparing for the next Mega Crises. More than ever, we need to face up to painful truths. The most important of which may that because of the enormity of the crisis, we are under enormous stress, more than many have faced and will ever face in their lifetimes. As such, it affects every aspect of our being. It not only affects how we assess the crisis, but respond to it. In other words, the crisis is made worse by the crisis itself.

Finally, we discuss one of the most important topics of all, the enormous and crucial differences between enlightened and malignant leadership and how and why the need for the former has never been greater.

Berkeley, CA, USA Tan I. Mitroff Newport Coast, CA, USA Ralph H. Kilmann

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge our many friends, colleagues, and students who over the years have helped develop and refine the ideas in this book. We cannot thank them enough.

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Contents

1 Wrestling with the Inner Demons of Contemporary Life: A Brief

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Chapter 1 A Wrestling with the Inner Demons crentes of Contemporary Life: A Brief Overview

of Psychoanalytic Thought

We begin our examination of Enlightened Leadership by exploring a number of Psychoanalytically based theories, in particular with regard to what they have to teach us about the human condition. Thus, we briefly examine some of the key concepts and ideas of Melanie Klein, Sigmund Freud, Donald Winnicott, Eric Berne, and John Bowlby. One of the major benefits is that they illuminate important aspects of the Coronavirus that are difficult to ascertain otherwise. For one, each provides a different take on the enormous stress we are experiencing as a result of the Virus. They also reinforce the absolute necessity of following the dictates of reputable scientific experts and science itself if we are to stand any hope at all in dealing with the Virus.

1.1 Melanie Klein Splitting

Melanie Klein is, without a doubt, one of the most influential Child Psychologists/ Psychoanalysts of all time.! Through meticulous observations of how young children actually played with dolls representing the major figures in their lives, namely, their parents, close relatives, grandparents, siblings, etc., Klein was able to witness the great distress and inner conflicts that young children experienced during the first years of their lives. As a result, she essentially created the field of Child/Play Therapy.

'Phyliss Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, Her World and Her Work, Jason Aronson, Inc., New Jersey, 1986.

© The Author(s) 2021 1 I. I. Mitroff, R. H. Kilmann, The Psychodynamics of Enlightened Leadership,

Management, Change, Strategy and Positive Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71764-3_1

2 1 Wrestling with the Inner Demons of Contemporary Life: A Brief Overview...

It is said that if Freud discovered the child in the Adult, then Klein discovered the infant in the Child, thus pushing back even further our understanding of the roots of human behavior.

In a word, very young children experience extreme anger and frustration over the fact that they don’t have complete control over the primary caretaker who is responsible for feeding them both physically and emotionally. When Klein wrote early in the twentieth century, this was primarily the mother. Fathers generally did not play as much of a role as they do now in both the physical and emotional care and feeding of their children.

Under the age of 2 or 3, children literally Split the image of the mother into a “Good Mother” who cares and administers to the child’s every need exactly when the child wants it and a “Bad Mother” who has to discipline the child and can’t be there precisely on time and when the child demands it. Because its mind is not yet developed and mature enough, it can’t comprehend, let alone accept, that the “Good” and the “Bad Mother” are one and the same person. To the young child, there are two separate and distinct mothers.

Splitting is in fact the basis of the world’s great fairytales. Thus, the “Bad Mother” is the Evil Witch or Cruel Stepmother, and the “Good Mother” is the Good Witch or Fairy God Mother. Fairytales have an ever-lasting appeal for children, and even adults, because they allow one to play out harmlessly their fantasy of killing the Evil Witch, i.e., “the Bad Mother.” In this way, they allow children to experience what they cannot verbalize at this stage of their lives.

The Paranoid-Schizoid Position

Klein termed this earliest stage of human development “the Paranoid-Schizoid Position,” “paranoid” because the young child was deeply afraid that the parent would either abandon or hurt him or her, and thus not meet the child’s needs at all, and “schizoid” because of Splitting.

Most children naturally develop out of this earlier stage, but some form of Splitting and paranoia stay with us our entire lives. Indeed, in times of extreme stress or threat, we shouldn’t be surprised to find people regressing to the Paranoid- Schizoid Position. This is exactly what has happened because of the Coronavirus.’ Aided by the Internet, it’s allowed Dis- and Misinformation about who and what is responsible for the Virus to spread around the globe at virtually the speed of light. And, once out there, like the Coronavirus itself, they are extremely difficult to eradicate. We explore Dis- and Misinformation in detail in Appendix 2.

*Max Fisher, “The Infectious Danger Of Conspiracy Theories,” The New York Times, Thursday, April 9, 2020, p. Alo.

1.1 Melanie Klein 3 The Depressive Position

Klein also identified a subsequent, follow-on stage of human development: The Depressive Position. At this point, the child finally recognizes and accepts that the “Good” and the “Bad Mother” are one and the same. The child also accepts that there is good and bad in everyone, especially in him or herself. For the time being, the child moves beyond Splitting. Klein termed this stage “Depressive” because the child remembers and thus feels bad about its previous hostility toward its mother.

Of course, all of this takes place subconsciously. One certainly cannot explain it to the undeveloped minds of children. And, one cannot necessarily explain it to adults as well, especially those who are under the grips of Splitting.

The Paranoid-Schizoid Position and Donald Trump

With his constant division of the world into friends versus enemies, plus his extreme vilification of anyone who is not with him 100%, Donald Trump is a perfect illustration of someone who is under the constant sway of the Paranoid-Schizoid Position. Indeed, he is a constant walking-talking, living-breathing model of it.

Trump’s supporters are also deeply under the throes of Splitting. They are simultaneously both “victims” and “villains.” They are “victims” in that they feel “deeply aggrieved” by those who act “superior and put them down.” As a result, they feel enormous hostility and, thus like Trump, become “bullies” and thereby “villains” in response. The Split is fundamentally due to the fact that they have little understanding that they are caught between two powerful and opposing forces.

One of the most critical things to understand about the Paranoid-Schizoid Position is that when one is under its grips, all thinking—rational thought—ceases to exist. One is constantly in a state of extreme paranoia accompanied by unrestrained Splitting. Thus, everything is potentially if not a real enemy. One’s true friends, if any, are few and far between. And, the forces of evil are literally everywhere. Saddest of all, while one desperately needs adults to come to one’s aid and rescue, the Paranoid-Schizoid Position makes it impossible to trust anyone. No wonder why Trump pushes all adults away, those who could really help him, and us by offering constructive criticism of poorly thought out, impulsive actions, and policies.

Dangers to Society

To say that the country as a whole is deeply in the throes of the Paranoid-Schizoid Position is putting it mildly. Republicans and Democrats generally feel nothing but loathing and outright contempt for one another. Splitting is both the cause and effect

4 1 Wrestling with the Inner Demons of Contemporary Life: A Brief Overview...

of the extreme polarization we are experiencing. It’s been made worse by Republican Senators rushing through a successor to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

We desperately need national leaders who can embrace the ambiguity that is necessary in acknowledging that there is good and bad in all of us. The late Senator John McCain stood out in this respect. While he obviously had basic disagreements with Democrats, he was not automatically willing to write off everything President Obama did and said, especially his calling out the Russians for interfering in our elections and his support for Obamacare. And, on occasions, Senator Sanders has shown himself able to listen to Trump supporters without entirely dismissing them or their concerns. Nonetheless, even he has been prone to Splitting with his “my way or the highway” attitude, and especially with his previous harsh attacks of former Vice President Biden. So has Senator Warren in this regard. Nonetheless, to his credit, Senator Sanders has been a strong supporter of President-Elect Biden.

Make no mistake about it. Splitting is as harmful to society as any threat. Unless more national figures are willing to come forward and reaffirm one another, then we see no hope whatsoever of moving to the Depressive Position. Without this, we don’t know how “any house so Split can survive.” To his enormous credit as well, President-Elect Biden has said time and again that he wants to heal the country and thus move beyond Splitting.

Finally, Splitting makes it impossible to make intelligent distinctions for to Differentiate is not the same as Splitting. For instance, not all brands of Socialism are the same. There are crucial differences between Socialism as practiced in Communist countries and Scandinavian, i.e., Social Democracies. Thus, Social Democracies are not inherently opposed to the holding of private capital and so-called Free Markets. Rather, they believe in putting strong social restraints and safety nets on the worst excesses of Predatory Capitalism so that the poor do not suffer unduly from gross inequalities when it comes to Education, Healthcare, Housing, etc.

Needless to say, with the extreme vilification and the vilest language directed toward those Governors and Public Health Officials who have suggested, and in many cases ordered, people to shelter in place, they have been subject to the worst aspects of Splitting. They have become “evil incarnate!”

There is another aspect which is just as troubling. Because many Health Workers are rightly in fear of transmitting the Virus to their children, upon returning home, they have deliberately refrained from holding and thereby comforting them. The fear is that this will sadly rekindle new episodes of Splitting in young children.

1.2 Donald Winnicott

Donald Winnicott is another leading Child Psychologist/Psychoanalyst. In fact, it was because of his work as a pediatrician that he became a Psychologist/ Psychoanalyst. It led him to observe the critical role of the mother in helping children face the incessant and overbearing demands of Reality.

1.2 Donald Winnicott 5

According to Winnicott, in the beginning, the mother and the infant child are both physically and emotionally so tightly bound together—“fused” as it were— that the experience is that of an indivisible connection. In other words, the child feels that she or he is an integral part of the mother, and vice versa. There is no individuation or separateness as it were.

Over time, and with great sensitivity, one of the most important jobs of the mother is to help the child separate and thus face external Reality. If the mother too quickly and too soon forces the child out of the protected cocoon, what Winnicott called “The Holding Environment,” then the child is not merely overwhelmed, but subject to trauma, thereby harming its future prospects in facing the unremitting demands of life.

With the failure of virtually all of the societal systems on which we depend, it’s no exaggeration to say that a goodly part of the stress we are experiencing is due to the breakdown of the larger “Societal Holding Environment.”

If on the other hand, the mother delays unduly the necessity of separation, then the child is also harmed. He or she is unable to make it completely on their own. In short, one is dependent on others to make crucial life decisions.

This is precisely why Winnicott stressed the role of “The Good Enough Mother.” The primary job of The Good Enough Mother is to help the child be the best he or she can be on their own. To accomplish this, the mother does not have to be perfect, but appropriately attuned to the needs and emotional states of the child. Indeed, demands for perfection actually work against healthy development.

Of course, all of us are naturally dependent on a host of others to function, let alone to exist and develop in the first place. Indeed, society wouldn’t exist without it. The problem arises when we unduly attach ourselves to others who promise to be the “very basis of our being.” When that happens, we are unable to think for ourselves. While we need leaders—indeed, quest after them—who by definition are larger than ourselves, we cannot let them take over completely and control all of our actions and beliefs. But then perpetually navigating the difficult shores of bonding on the one hand and independence on the other is one of life’s crucial tasks. One of the supreme challenges is choosing leaders who will help us be and think for ourselves. While we are incessantly drawn to those who exude charisma, one of the greatest pitfalls is that we’ll be swallowed up by them. Thus, if they fail to achieve what their followers believe that which is their due—for example, becoming the Democratic nominee for President—then they will refuse to vote for another candidate.

One of the most difficult tasks of a leader is helping, if not getting, us to face up to troubling Realities. In this regard, whether we like it or not—and even more whether they like it or not—our leaders are the embodiments of our parents. In effect, they “reparent us” so that we can face more and more difficult realities than our actual parents helped us when we were young. We say more about the crucial role of the parent later and much more about Leadership.

We fear that the Virus will lead many Health Workers to question whether they are “good enough.” If they cannot have direct contact with their children and hold them, then what “good” are they as parents? And since children pick up on the

6 1 Wrestling with the Inner Demons of Contemporary Life: A Brief Overview...

feelings of their caregivers, we also worry about what the children are feeling. To whom can they talk about their deepest feelings?

More than ever, we desperately need “Good Enough Leaders,” not “perfect ones.”

1.3 Sigmund Freud

From the very beginning, when life takes us under its strict discipline, a resistance stirs within us against the relentlessness and monotony of the laws of thought and against the demands of reality-testing. Reason becomes the enemy.’ [emphasis ours] Sigmund Freud

Without a doubt, one of Freud’s greatest contributions to our understanding of the human condition is his concept of Defense Mechanisms. If he had discovered or formulated nothing else, it would have been more than enough to ensure his lasting fame. To give her the proper credit she is due, Freud’s daughter Anna later elaborated on the mechanisms first identified by her father.

Defense Mechanisms not only basically exist, but work to protect one’s mind from events and Realities that are too painful to acknowledge and thereby face forthrightly. Thus, if one has been in a life-threatening situation; witnessed the harm and, worst of all, the death of a close friend or loved one; and been the subject of a violent attack, then the mind can literally shut down in order to protect one from remembering, and hence reliving, the horrific event. But since they are never perfect, painful events constantly resurface in the form of recurring nightmares, extreme sensitivity to sounds such as the backfires of cars, and disturbing images of catastrophes that remind one of the initial traumatizing events.

As one of the founders of the modern field of Crisis Management, Mitroff and his colleagues have witnessed the operation of Defense Mechanisms in countless organizations. While they were first discovered and thus pertained solely to individuals, they apply equally as well to larger groups and institutions. Indeed, it’s been found that the more that an organization subscribes to them, the less prepared it is and thereby the more susceptible it is to crises. And, the more ideological a group, the more it uses them as well to ward off serious challenges to its basic beliefs.

As individual Defense Mechanisms get reinforced and spread among a group or organization, they become an integral part of a group and an organization’s culture. New employees become socialized to unconscious norms such as “This is how we deny Reality around here.” In this way, shared, collective Defense Mechanisms become an organization’s fundamental way of protecting itself from overwhelming, highly stressful, and fearful events.

First and foremost is Denial. In this case, one staunchly denies that a life-threatening or disturbing series of events ever occurred in the first place, or dismisses those entirely with which one doesn’t know how to deal. Or worse, those with which one doesn’t want to deal. Thus, Climate Change Denial is especially

5 Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psych-Analysis, Norton, New York, 1990, p. 42.

1.3 Sigmund Freud 7 high among Trump supporters and Republicans in general. But then so is a host of other things that they are loath to acknowledge. Thus, charges of collusion and corruption by the President are dismissed out of hand. Or, they are the product of Fake News concocted by those who are “out to get the President.” Similarly, the unprecedented numbers of resignations and indictments of those who have served in The Trump Administration are similarly dismissed. So are the charges of his innumerable affairs and constant demeaning of women and minorities, plus of course, payments of hush money to porn stars and others.

In the case of organizations, Denial takes the form of “We don’t have any problems around here.”

Disavowal at least acknowledges that unpleasant events and realities have actually occurred or are very likely to result, but it greatly diminishes their importance or impact. Thus, Trump may have indeed done some awful things in the past, but they don’t distract from all the good he’s accomplishing now. Disavowal is thereby one of the most powerful forms of rationalization. In the case of organizations, it assumes the form “All of our problems are minor and will go away on their own.”