Edgy Ideas

Dr Mishel McMahon, a Yorta Yorta First Nations woman from Australia, draws from 60,000 years of Aboriginal cultural experience to discuss what she terms ‘Relational Ontology’ - ontology meaning how we understand reality, what’s real and what’s not real.   She says “Relational ontology is a view of reality that all entities; plants, animals, elements, seasons, skies, waterways, the land, the spirit world and humans are in relationship, like a web. First Nations peoples and many other groups around the globe have held relational worldviews for thousands of years”.  The relational worldview contrasts with the European/Westernised mindset which places humans at the centre of knowledge creation.  Mishel discusses the importance of equality between all things, and how country, community and Ancestral knowledge are all infused and animated with spirit.  This rich discussion raises many questions and hopefully inspires us to see the world, and to live in it differently.   BIO  Mishel McMahon is a proud Yorta Yorta woman, she grew up in a large family in the Murray river region of Victoria, Australia. Mishel completed her undergraduate degree of Bachelor of Human Services and Honours in Social Work in 2012 at La Trobe. Mishel has worked at various First Nations organisations, including Indigenous Academic Enrichment Advisor at La Trobe organising Sorry Day and NAIDOC events. Mishel began her PhD, undertaking research that revealed principles of First Nations childrearing, using methodology informed from a relational worldview, and Yorta Yorta language. Mishel recently won Premier's Research Awards for Aboriginal Research 2019, Fellowship for Indigenous Leadership 2019 and recently worked as Social Work lecturer at Shepparton La Trobe, campus. Mishel is in the last stages of developing a First Nations Health & Wellbeing mobile app, and shorts films from her Fellowship. Currently Mishel is Victorian Aboriginal Research Accord Co-ordinator at VACCHO and lives in Elmore, Victoria on the Campaspe river. 

Paul brings deep insights into climate change drawing on psycho-social thinking. This conversation explores climate anxiety, climate denial and climate delay, and how we as ‘moderns’ find it very difficult to escape deeply embedded ideas that entrap us. Paul relates this thinking back to our founding myths from Judeo-Christianity that throws humanity outside of the Edenic garden, and outside of nature, and is always looking for external salvation.  He reflects that “Us moderns live in a kind of cocoon, continuing in our everyday routines, of living in our comforts, which means that we are able to live in this world, where because of mass media and now social media we know about all these terrible things going on and yet somehow or other remain unaffected”The conversation moves to how to engage with climate change and the anxieties it raises, and at the same time retain ‘radical hope’.  Finally Simon and Paul reflect with caution,  on some real changes taking place. Bio: Paul Hoggett is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at UWE, Bristol where, with Simon Clarke, he was a Director of the Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. In 2000, with Larry Gould, he was founding editor of the journal Organisational and Social Dynamics, a forum for those working within the Tavistock Group Relations tradition. In 2012, with Adrian Tait, he founded the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA) and was its first chair. He recently edited a collection of CPA research papers, Climate Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster (2019, Palgrave Macmillan). Previous books have included Politics, Identity and Emotion (2009, Paradigm) and Partisans in an Uncertain World (1992, Free Association Books).

This conversation is important for anyone working in organisations, and trying to make sense of systems thinking.  Jim has been working with systems for many years and offers insights into how systems thinking evolved, why it is so important, and also why it is problematic and creates resistances.  Drawing on psychoanalysis as a ‘moral’ practice, Jim believes that unless we understand the psychodynamics and emotions that are at play when we take a systems approach, it will likely fail.  For example, he describes how systems thinking removes the option of blaming the binary ‘bad other’, which is our comfortable fall-back position in so many instances.  Applying systems thinking we are all implicated and part of the challenges, and the problems we face are about interactions between things rather than the objects themselves. Jim brings a very humanistic lens to systems thinking and it is a  privileged to share this conversation and the wisdom and insights shared.  Bio James Krantz, Ph.D. is an organizational consultant and researcher from New York City, where he is a Principal of Worklab Consulting, LLC.  Jim has written extensively about the unconscious in work organizations, the dilemmas of leadership and authority in new forms of organization, and the challenges involved in developing one’s leadership voice.  His Ph.D. is in Systems Sciences from the Wharton School.   In addition to consulting, Jim has been on several faculties, including those of Yale and Wharton.  Currently he serves on the faculty of the School of Higher Economics in Moscow.  Jim is past President of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, Fellow of the A.K. Rice Institute, Member of OPUS and Chair of the Management Committee of the Organisational and Social Dynamics journal. 

This episode explores what it means to shift our mindsets towards ecological thinking and practice in organisations. This shift is away from the dominance of mechanistic and psychological thinking, not to replace these but in addition to them. Joan shares her long experience of working to disrupt organisations and help them to 'liberate' themselves from patterns that entrap them.  To achieve this, individuals, teams and organisations have to let go of their attachments to the psychological and technical ways of knowing and thinking and move towards ecological thinking – understanding behaviour in terms of connectivity, interdependencies, patterns, and circularity.   Simon and Joan discuss the challenges and aims of co-creating this emergent field of Organisational Ecology and Eco-Leadership that is so urgently needed to address the challenges of technological and environmental disruption. BioJoan is the CEO of Orgonomix. A company she founded in 2009 with the purpose of enabling systemic change and reshaping leadership and organisations to thrive in complexity. She has spent the past 30 years working both within organisations and as a consultant assisting executive teams to lead complex adaptive change and disentangle and repattern the organisational systems they are part of. Her work and unique methodology (OrgonomicsTM) helps her client systems find flow and coherence It provides the scaffold to enable them to change their cultures, business and operating models with transformational and commercial results. Using these transformations as containers for development she helps leaders grow leaders’ systemic lens, extend their relational intelligence and build their adaptive muscle to be System Leaders. She sees this as an imperative for leaders to help them thrive, for optimising organisational functioning but also as a necessity for the survival of our whole ecology which is under threat. Joan is a Fulbright Scholar and has a Masters Degree in Adult Education and Development from Wits University, South Africa and a Masters Degree in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University, NYC. She currently lives in Melbourne collaborating and learning with clients and colleagues to discover new ways for all of us to be at our ‘growing edge’.

Krish Raval is the Founder and Director of Faith in Leadership (FiL), Britain’s main leadership development organisation working with inter-faith communities. As a practicing Hindu he works with senior leaders and clerics from Muslim, Christian and Jewish faith communities.  In this conversation Krish shares his work and experiences of leading this inter-faith community.    Simon and Krish share their thoughts on how Eco-Leadership expresses the inter-dependencies and rich learning potential not only between faith communities but also between faith and secular organisations.   Krish explains that the most powerful learning and development he observes, comes from leaders being with others, and learning how to work with and learn from differences, rather than being taught leadership skills.  This aligns with Simon's theory of Leadership formation, which was inspired by his stay in a monastic hermitage. Simon noticed that monks were not taught 'monk skills' but were formed by the monastic life; the prayer, liturgy, rituals, work, spiritual direction, community life, self reflection and service to others. Krish's FiL work recognises this and he creates spaces for leadership formation to happen. He is currently developing the idea of ‘radical hospitality’, sharing his personal experience that inviting others into your home or place of worship to eat together, can be a transformative act.  In this wide-ranging conversation Krish recalls his conversation with Nelson Mandela and  he shares why he believes faith leadership in our communities is so important, to all society.  Bio   Krish Raval is the Founder and Director of Faith in Leadership (FiL), Britain’s main leadership development organisation to work with senior and emerging clerical and lay leaders from the main faith communities.  Based at St Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, Krish supports and mentors FiL’s extraordinary alumni network. Whether addressing refugee and human trafficking matters, running foodbanks, contending with right-wing agitators outside Mosques or Synagogues, addressing the fallout from the murders of servicemen or dealing with Covid-19, FiL alumni are the nexus of intelligent faith in the public square in Britain today. Krish read law at Cambridge and Sheffield Universities, started a leadership development programme for young people when he was in his twenties, and has interviewed icons of leadership including Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Nelson Mandela and HH The Dalai Lama.  He’s the only person to have been award an OBE for services to leadership education and inter-faith cohesion

Caroline is Professor of Culture and Psychoanalysis and in this podcast she shares her thoughts on a wide range of topics. She shares reflections on how our engagement with social media shapes our emotional and relational lives, and how psychoanalysis can help us untangle ourselves from the pervasive media and culture that we can't escape. Our cell phones are not only objects and tools that we use, but they are both intimately close to our bodies, and they are objects we internalise, taking emotional, affective space in our lives.    Caroline discusses how 'not being able to breathe' has become a metaphor for our time. George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, "I cant breath",  climate crisis with pollution and fires choking cities, the Covid pandemic and millions of respiratory deaths, and the suffocating ideology of neo-liberalism that closes down other spaces, are all part of our emotional, cognitive and physical experience of living today.  Simon and Caroline discuss cinema and much more in this fascinating podcast.    Bio  Caroline is Professor of Culture and Psychoanalysis at Roehampton University, where she is based until the end of July 2021. She's also a practising member of the Analytic Coaching Network. She trained as an organisational consultant at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust. Underlying all her endeavours is a profound fascination with psychoanalysis, which she first encountered as an undergraduate studying languages. Caroline established and co-directed the Media and the Inner World research network between 2009-13, and now co-edits a book series on the theme of popular culture and psychoanalysis for Routledge. She is a widely published author of books and journal articles, a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council, and a former editor of the journal, Free Associations. Outside work she cheers on Liverpool FC through their highs and lows, and makes the most of living close to a beach with an art installation called Another Place. This conjuncture of art on the border between land and sea fuels the imagination and soothes the soul. For more information, see www.carobainbridge.co.uk 

Mark is a pioneer in the field of neuroscience founding the term Neuropsychoanalysis.  In this very rich discussion Mark shares his insights into ‘where the brain meets the mind’.   Previously the neuroscience focus was to study the brain in terms of cognition and behaviour, yet Mark saw that this missed out on what is really astonishing about the brain, that it is an organ of feeling, emotion and subjectivity.  Marks research is extensive, and the application to organisations and leadership is discussed in this podcast.  For example, through his research he shares his findings of how our brains are conditioned towards play in groups, as well as competition.  Play and hierarchy are both part of the same behavioural pattern, where an essential part of play is to act out group dominance.  However Mark describes the 60-40 rule, if an individual dominates play for more than 60% of the time, the play ends- it’s not fun anymore! If we look at leadership through this lens, we see how leaders who are too dominant and too controlling soon lose their followership. Mark’s latest book with excellent reviews is  Hidden Spring A journey to the source of consciousness   BIO Mark Solms is a South African psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist.  He pioneers psychoanalytic methods in contemporary neuroscience founding the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society in 2000.  He holds many roles including the Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town , Founding President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. and Director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation in New York.  In his free time Mark is a passionate wine maker, co-owning a vineyard cooperative. 

David Armstrong is a thought leader and inspiration to many working in the field of psychoanalysis and organisations. In this podcast David shares his experiences of working with pioneers in the field after joining the Tavistock Institute in 1959. David describes how alive the Tavistock project was in its early days.  Innovations coming from the Tavistock Clinic through infant observation, attachment theory and the work of Menzies-Lythe and Ronnie Laing among many others. And from the Tavistock Institute through Eric Miller, Eric Trist and A.K. Rice and colleagues. David shares his experience of attending Wilfred Bion’s study group and how he became engaged in psychoanalytic work led by the Tavistock Clinic.  He shares how the work in the Institute had a radical and political edge.  ‘Democratising the workplace’ was and is, one of David’s inspirations in this field, and remains vital today.   David discusses the question, ‘what is a psychoanalytic approach to organisations’, and highlights the importance of the action-research approach, which he feels has become marginalised, as a drift towards external consultancy now dominates the psychoanalytic-systems approach.  David discusses the mutual interaction between the external and internal world as key to his work, and how there has been a shift from working with the Organisation-in-the-mind, to Networks-in-the-mind.  In this wide-ranging discussion, David shares his interest in how religious dissenting traditions such as Methodism also influenced the psychoanalytic-organisational field, bringing social change and the group to the fore.    Bio David Armstrong  David studied philosophy at Oxford University then trained as a psychologist in Cambridge University and has worked in action research and organisational consultancy for over 60 years. He joined the Tavistock Institute working alongside some of the pioneers in the field.  David went on to work in the Grubb Institute and Tavistock Consultancy Service.  David has worked in this field with senior executives and executive teams in business, government, health and education in the UK and worldwide.  His experience includes working with executives in pharmaceuticals, investment banking, NHS trusts, local government, higher education, prison governors and for senior civil servants. He is a leading thinker in the domain of psychoanalysis and organisations, bringing insights and sharing experiences that have inspired the wider field.   David is a distinguished member of ISPSO. David is author of Organization in the Mind: Psychoanalysis,Group Relations and Organizational Consultancy, edited by Robert French. 

Professor Kate Kenny is a leading expert in the field of Whistleblowing.  In this podcast Kate draws on psychosocial approaches to take a fresh look at Whistleblowing.   Whistle-blowers are consistently treated by the media and public as traitors or hero’s. Take Edward Snowden, for some he is a courageous hero who sacrificed his career and put himself in danger for ‘truth-telling’, for others he is a traitor for giving away secrets to enemies of the state.  Kate builds a broader case that situates whistle-blowers in their organisational and social context. In this fascinating conversation Kate discusses how whistleblowing is an organisational phenomenon and how group and social dynamics influence how whistle-blowers act, and how they are responded to.  Many organisations respond positively to whistle-blowers yet some continue to enact 'whistleblower retaliation'.   Kate also discusses the importance of organisations more generally, and how they impact on our psychic and emotional lives, individually and collectively.     Bio Kate Kenny is Professor of Business and Society at NUI Galway.  She has held research fellowships at the Edmond J. Safra Lab at Harvard University and Cambridge's Judge Business School.  Her research focuses on organization studies, specifically political and psychosocial approaches. She has researched whistleblowing in organisations since 2010. Along with numerous articles in peer review journals on this topic, she has published two books on whistleblowing: Whistleblowing: Toward a new theory (Harvard University Press, 2019) and The Whistleblowing Guide (Wiley Business, 2019, with Wim Vandekerckhove and Marianna Fotaki). She has written and contributed to articles in the Financial Times, the Irish Times, the Guardian among others.  Her work has been cited in the UK House of Commons, Ireland’s parliament and in policy documents at EU level.  Kate’s recent book ‘Whistleblowing: Toward a New Theory’ (Harvard University Press, 2019)  adopts a psychosocial framing to whistleblowing. Her book ‘The Whistleblowing Guide’ (Wiley, 2019) with Professors Wim Vandekerckhove and Professor Marianna Fotaki is aimed at practicing managers, coaches and others working in this space. The Psychosocial and Organization Studies (Palgrave, 2014 with Professor Marianna Fotaki) is an edited collection of contributions from experts in this field. Watch an interview with Kate and Chris Smalls, Amazon whistleblower mentioned in the discussion.  Short pieces on Covid-19, healthcare and whistleblowing (as mentioned), featured in the The Conversation and RTE Brainstorm  Reports, videos and research from Professor Kenny are all on www.whistleblowingimpact.org

In this episode Daniel shares his research and experience of credentialing and accreditation in coaching.  His findings ask many questions about the credibility of practices, often delivered by self-appointed regulation bodies, some that make a lot of money from the process.  Daniel identifies eight consumer types of coaches in relation to accreditation and credentialing:  The Enthusiast, Complier, Susceptible, Pragmatist, Procrastinator, Agnostic, Ideologue and Inquirer; each seeking or resisting accreditation and credential for different reasons.  Daniel and Simon discuss the importance of critical thinking to question these credentialing norms, and how the practice of attaining accreditation is often a process more aligned with audit culture and collecting a number of hours in training and practice with very little quality control on what happens in those hours.  An important podcast for coaches, trainers and HR and managers purchasing coaching.    Bio  After thirty years experience of coaching and business consulting that became increasingly  globalised in nature, Daniel returned to the UK from South Africa in 2005, to complete a PhD and to teach and research in a variety of Higher Education Institutions.  In 2006 Daniel founded the Critical Coaching Research Group, which he continues to lead to this day. His preferred research idiom is narrative practice; in the past two years he has authored two satirical novels set in the coaching world, and is in the process of writing a series of ‘plays for voices.’