þÿ<!-- * Author: Dr. Lynn Friedman * Copyright. 2006-8 Dr. Lynn Friedman. 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By examining workplace dynamics -- hirings, firings, narcissistic bosses and passive aggressive employees, the office scapegoat and the bosses pet, corporate dysfunction and corporate health, happy employees and miserable ones -- Friedman puts "Corporations on the Couch" in her widely popular column by that name. The psychoanalyst, psychologist, Johns Hopkins faculty member, organizational consultant and executive coach explains, in frank and often funny terms, how corporate cultures and corporate leaders support and sustain (albeit inadvertently) the surprising, strange and truly bizarre array of workplace behaviors. And, like any good therapist, Friedman helps readers to get off the couch, build healthy relationships and end bad ones."> <meta name="keywords" content="Dr. Lynn Friedman, Lynn V. Friedman, corporations on the couch - organizational dynamics - organizational dynamic - corporate - corporations -coach -career -couch - what is the meaning of psychoanalysis - applied psychoanalysis - The Washington Psychoanalyst -Dr. Lynn Friedman - psychoanalyst - clinical psychologist - psychologist - psychoanalytic - psychoanalysis - psychoanalyst - washington - d.c. - dc - maryland - bethesda - chevy chase - silver spring - rockville - northern virginia - arlington - virginia - fairfax - baltimore - johns hopkins - psychotherapy - work-life - johns hopkins - lynne - lynn - friedman -freedman -friedman - washington psychoanalyst - apsa - american psychoanalytic-friendship heights- washington post,"> <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-us"> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta http-equiv="expires" content="0" /> <meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache"> </head> <!-- The first four attributes of the body tag are specific to IE and the last two are specific to Netscape. --> <body topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" rightmargin="0" bottommargin="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%"> <tr bgcolor="003366"> <td rowspan="2" class="barBG">&nbsp;</td> <td rowspan="2" class="barBG" width="158px" align="left"><img src="../../graphic/navigationBar/logo.gif" width="166px" height="58px" alt="Logo" border="0" /></td> <td width="582px" height="30px" align="right">&nbsp;</td> <td rowspan="2" class="barBG">&nbsp;</td> </tr> <tr bgcolor="003366" valign="bottom"> <td class="barBG" align="right"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="90%"> <tr> </tr> </table> </td> <tr> <td colspan="4" bgcolor="666699">&nbsp;</td> </tr> </table> </body> </html> <ul><p><h1><a href="http://www.corporationsonthecouch.com" target="_blank">Corporations on the Couch</a></h1></p></ul> <ul><p><h3><a href="http://www.drlynnfriedman.com/about.html" target="_blank">Lynn Friedman, Ph.D., Psychoanalyst, Clinical Psychologist and Executive Coach</a></h3></p></ul> <ul><p><h3>A monthly column published in the Washington Business Journal</h3></p></ul> <!-- Body of Text Begins Here --> <p align=center> <table cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 border=1 width=700> <tr><td valign=top bgcolor="#dddddd"><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="verdana, arial, helvetica"> <b>Employee Misconduct can be used as a learning tool</b></font> </td></tr> <tr><td valign=top><FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="verdana, arial, helvetica"> <ul><p>It's ugly -- and, you wish you hadn't discovered it. But you did. You're a senior vice president, and you've uncovered a "borrowing" incident among the rank and file. Melinda, a clerk, has been misappropriating small amounts of petty cash.</p> <p>You suspect that her intention was to pay it back. But you find the behavior unacceptable. Your first impulse is to terminate her employment and set an example for everyone. You even consider calling the police. However, your indignation turns to shame when you recall, as a junior employee, stocking your home office with company supplies. You realize, regretfully, that there is a little bit of Melinda in you. You become less sanguine about your plan.</p> <p>To begin with, you know Melinda to be an extremely hardworking, dedicated employee who goes the extra mile. During a crisis on a federal holiday, you became aware of her efforts. You sent out an SOS call. While your senior staffers abandoned ship, Melinda cancelled family plans and helped you avert disaster. You wonder why she took money from the till and, too, what her behavior might reflect about your organization's dynamics.</p> <p>You consult your close colleagues. Some favor a, "zero tolerance" policy, asserting that Melinda should be banished. They can't understand her behavior and find it hard to identify with her.</p> <p>Before considering the consequences -- whether harsh or lenient -- it is important to consider the genesis of the borrowing, your own underlying motivations for applying a particular set of consequences and the impact that the course you choose will have on your corporate culture. Savvy about corporate dynamics, you know Melinda's behavior did not occur in a vacuum.</p> <p>Complex individual, corporate and societal dynamics precipitate rule breaking. An even more complex set of dynamics governs our reactions to it. The painful fact is that none of us is beyond reproach. If we dare to allow ourselves, each of us can remember a time when we broke the rules.</p> <p>Thinking about it may be painful, making us feel guilty and uncomfortable. It flies in the face of our self-image. So getting the rule breaker out of the way may be a method, albeit not a realistic one, of ridding an unwanted part of ourselves. It can assuage our own (albeit unconscious) guilt -- or, at least, ensure that we are not reminded of it.</p> <p>This lamentable strategy scapegoats the rule breaker. It exploits her so we can avoid learning more about an unwanted aspect of ourselves. But firing the rule breaker and acting as if we are squeaky clean sends a not entirely honest message to staffers. It implies that we live in a world of black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, a world without grey or ambiguity.</p> <p>Intolerance of ambiguity is not helpful in encouraging managers to think about and manage imperfections in themselves or their subordinates (or for that matter their superiors). It's not the lens through which we want to understand cultures that are different from our own. Similarly, this sort of scaffolding does not lead to perspective-taking, empathy, communication and team building.</p> <p>There is another concern as well. If employees see corporate leaders as rigid people who react to difficulties in all-or-none terms, subordinates may be reluctant to turn to them when confronted with the more nuanced challenges that occur in the workplace, such as situations like Melinda's.</p> <p>Managers sometimes justify harsh consequences by saying they send a message to other employees: "You better not break the rules." Or perhaps too often: "You better not get caught." For the worker who has not broken the rules, banishing the rule breaker can lead to a host of consequences -- both intended and unintended. Some feel superior for upholding the rules. They may view their co-worker with a sort of derision that allows them deny their own desire -- a desire to which they have perhaps yielded at times.</p> <p>But, this is hardly the case of virtue as its own reward. The non-rule breaking staffers learn: "We are superior people because we did not break the rules. Management approves of us, prizes us, because we are rule-bound," not because we are creative, innovative or do good work.</p> <p>The specter of unquestioning obedience is not inspirational, nor is it likely to lead to increased corporate profits.</p> <p>Assuming a stance of superiority denies everyone the opportunity to learn more about the kinds of circumstances that make them vulnerable to bending the rules. Moreover, it makes them more vulnerable to breaking the rules themselves.</p> <p>On the systemic level, the same holds true. An individual fix allows the organization to continue operating as it has been. One rule breaker is handled at a time, but larger problems may continue unaddressed.</p> <p>It can be difficult to think about rule breaking. For that reason, corporate leaders will have a myriad of reactions to Melinda's misstep. Some will simply assert that she is dishonest. However, there are dynamics, both individual and systemic, that underlie "dishonest" behaviors, and the clarification of these dynamics can lead to individual and corporate growth.</p> <p>Melinda may have borrowed for many reasons, including family or financial pressure, psychological difficulties or ignorance about appropriate workplace behavior. She may be angry at the organization, feeling under-recognized or mistreated. A more disconcerting possibility: She may be breaking the rules because everyone else is. Or she may have some other motivation. The only way to know is to ask her.</p> <p>Lynn Friedman, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst and executive coach in Chevy Chase. She is on the associate faculty in the Organizational Development/Human Resource Management Program at Johns Hopkins University. <a href="http://www.drlynnfriedman.com/corporationsonthecouch.html" target="new window">Website: Corporations on the Couch</a></p> <p><b>This article, <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2007/08/13/smallb2.html" target="new window">Employee misconduct can be used as a Learning Tool, by Dr. Lynn Friedman, clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst and work-life consultant,</a> is reprinted with permission from the Washington Business Journal. This column is nationally-syndicated by the American City Business Journal.(Find the original article here.)</p> </font> </td></tr> </table> </p> </font> <!-- End of text page --> <!-- Body of Text Begins Here --> <p align=center> <table cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 border=1 width=700> <tr><td valign=top bgcolor="#dddddd"><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="verdana, arial, helvetica"> <b><a href="http://www.drlynnfriedman.com/about.html"target="_blank">Connect with Dr. Lynn Friedman, psychoanalyst, psychologist, work-life coach</b></font> </td></tr> <tr><td valign=top><FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="verdana, arial, helvetica"> <i>Dr. Lynn Friedman provides organizational consultation and works with professionals and professionals-in-the-making to help them to achieve their work-life goals. </i> <br><br> <li>Is your career off-track? Are you unhappy at work? Do you find it impossible to follow through on the suggestions of career books and coaches? <a href="http://www.drlynnfriedman.com/careerassessment.pdf" target="_blank">Download Dr. Lynn Friedman's pdf file </a> examining the kinds of help that might be useful.</p> <li><a href="http://www.drlynnfriedman.com/about.html" target="_blank">If you'd like to schedule an appointment</a> with Dr. Lynn Friedman, feel free to give her a call at: 301-656-9650 <li><a href="feed://drlynnfriedman.typepad.com/dr_lynn_friedmans_blog_al/index.rdf">Subscribe to Dr. Lynn Friedman's blog feed, "All Things Psychoanalytic"</a></font> <li><a href="http://www.corporationsonthecouch.com" target="_blank">Corporations on the Couch</a> Read Dr. Lynn Friedman's monthly, Washington Business Journal, column on understanding workplace dynamics. <li>For your questions about relationships, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, check out Dr. Lynn Friedman's new website, <a href="http://www.washingtonpsychoanalyst.com" target="_blank"> The Washington Psychoanalyst.</a></li> </font> </td></tr> </table> </p> </font> <!-- End of text page --> <!-- Body of Text Begins Here --> <p align=center> <table cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 border=1 width=700> <tr><td valign=top bgcolor="#dddddd"><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="verdana, arial, helvetica"> <b>Would you like to read, "Corporations on the Couch" in your home town? <a href="http://www.corporationsonthecouch.com"target_blank></td></tr> <tr><td valign=top><FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="verdana, arial, helvetica"> <li><a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/subscription/index.html?market=washington" target="_blank">Working in Washington, D.C.? Subscribe here.</a> <li>Would you like to read, Corporations on the Couch, in your locale? It's nationally syndicated. Contact your local editor and request it. <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/" target="_blank"> Find your market here.</a> </ul> </font> </td></tr> </table> <!-- Body of Text Begins Here --> <p align=center> <table cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 border=1 width=700> <tr><td valign=top bgcolor="#dddddd"><FONT SIZE="3" FACE="verdana, arial, helvetica"> <b>People who read this article also enjoyed these columns by <a href="http://www.drlynnfriedman.com/about.html"target="_blank">Dr. Lynn Friedman, psychoanalyst, psychologist and work-life coach.</a></b></font> </td></tr> <tr><td valign=top><FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="verdana, arial, helvetica"> <li><a href="http://www.corporationsonthecouch.com/reversedelegation.html" target="_blank">Don't let your subordinates delegate work to you</a> <li><a href="http://www.corporationsonthecouch.com/retiringinplace.html"target="_blank">Retiring in Place may point to management issues</a> </ul> </font> </td></tr> </table> <br><br> <!-- Main heading bar --> <table COLS=1 WIDTH="100%" cellspacing="1" border="0"> <td BGCOLOR="navy"><font face="Arial,Helvetica" color=purple size=+2></font></td> </tr> </table> <br><br> <a name="1"> <hr noshade size=1> <center> &copy; &nbsp; <i> Copyright © 2006 Lynn Friedman, Ph.D. All rights reserved. </i></center> <font size="-3"> <p>This material is copyrighted. This blog is offered as a community service. You may transmit them free-of-charge. Feel free to forward these columns to anyone who you think might be interested, so long as not a single word is changed, added or deleted, inlcuding contact information. However, I ask that you adhere to copyright laws by providing, along with any column, all attached copyright information. It is a violation of copyright law to copy this column for commercial use and/or financial gain, to cut-and-paste this column or to use it without appropriate citation. I'll be glad to send these columns to anyone else who sends me email asking to be added to the dlist. While I invite you to link to this site, you may NOT reprint the material on a web site without my express written permission. Reprint permission will be freely granted, upon request, to student newspapers, universities and other non-profit educational organizations. Beyond this, advance written permission must be obtained prior to reprinting any of this material in modified or altered form. Thank you for your consideration.</p> <p>A final word, nothing published in this blog should be construed as a substitute for clinical, consultative or supervisory advice. If you have a mental health concern, or require consultation or supervision, please seek a consultation from a knowledgeable, well-trained, clinician. If it is an emergency seek treatment at your local emergency room.</p> <p><font face="times" size=-3><font size="-3"> </font></p> </center></font> <br><br></p> <c>Copyright Lynn Friedman, Ph.D. (2005)</c> </td> </tr> <!-- Below enter recommended readings. --> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr> <tr> <td> <span class="text_2"> </span> </td> </tr> </span> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>