Two weeks ago I wrote about a failing organisation, and I explained how, as a consultant to that organisation, I felt I was being projected into. A couple of people asked me to explain what “projection” means in a work context. Although it is a psychoanalytic concept it is a defence mechanism that is not too hard to understand.
From our earliest days feelings and sensations we do not like or want to experience can be dealt with psychically by dissociating ourselves from them. We take these feeling and push them away from our minds and perception and project them outwards – spitting them out. Our earliest and most primitive feelings of frustration, inadequacy or anger are not pleasant to contemplate so we have great difficulty owning them. I am sure you will have had an almost automatic response when something goes wrong to immediately feel someone other than oneself is to blame. I do it all the time!
The unpleasant or unbearable feeling is pushed aggressively away – nothing to do with me, mate – and it lands on someone else who will be blamed. We push these feelings into another person – firstly our mother/parent and then later into our siblings, friends, partners. Our unconscious wishes and ideas are allocated to others.
In a work context perhaps we are not finding our work easy. We try hard but we can’t fix it. Our manager has noticed and is on to us. As we do not want to accept it as our responsibility we are likely to blame our manager who has conceived the work badly, has asked for the impossible, is being unreasonable, has a terrible manner, is stopping me be successful etc.
The time when we are most likely to deploy this defence mechanism is when we are facing anxiety and difficulty at work. Like all the defence mechanisms projection is something that happens in an automatic and involuntary way. It is an unconscious process. That feeling you get when another driver does something stupid is a feeling of projection. At the time, in the heat of the moment, we are not able to fully appraise what actually happened, which is one reason we have a legal and parliamentary system. We are rarely able to see the whole picture – we inevitably respond and have feelings which entirely support this response – from our personal point of view. The feelings that we throw out are likely to be the exact issue we face ourselves. For example a stroppy driver accuses the other driver of being aggressive. A lazy and inattentive manager complains his team is not sufficiently on the ball. Later, when we reflect, we may be able to see what we are projecting on to others which properly belongs inside ourselves.
When we project our feelings on to others it brings a sense of relief and allows us to get on with what we are doing. By shouting at the other driver or blaming our manager or team for our ineptitudes we can calm down, and move on. We get a sense of satisfaction having got rid of our angry feelings about ourself and the feeling dissipates.
As chief executives or senior directors we will always be a site for projections. People who are frustrated with their own efforts will often project into us and see us as responsible for their own inadequacies and incompetencies. Careful reflection is required for us to understand what is going on here. If we reflect on the experience we can often get an insight into how others are really feeling, even if they don’t admit it. At the same time we do not need to accept these projections. We can explain that this is indeed being put on to us and does not arise from our own behaviour.
I feel sure you will be able to recognise this in yourself and see it in others too. There is another aspect that I want to mention.
Let us say you have someone on your team who is just not very good. Beware of them being used to project all the group’s negative feelings onto. It’s interesting how all the phrases to describe this phenomenon come from livestock – giving a dog a bad name, the scape-goat, or becoming the black sheep of the family. What we see is that once the group collude that someone is vulnerable we can turn on them and blame them for every bad thing going. Before long they adopt the personality of the outsider, the baddy, and their behaviour often escalates. If you see this happening in your own team you will need to take action to bring the black sheep/goat/bad dog back into the fold. Make sure you deal specifically and fairly with any issues they may actually have. This can be difficult once a group makes up its mind that the individual “needs to go” (into the wilderness). If a weaker member of staff is being projected into make sure to name it and turn it around.
The Compassionate Manager 