A senior team of managers (MC – management committee) manages a company, association, or university and therefore has a great influence both on the organization they lead and on the environment. The efficiency of the work of the management team depends on the knowledge and abilities of its members, set roles and responsibilities, but also on the interpersonal dynamics of relationships in the team. Board members are equally responsible for developing their technical skills as well as being aware of developments in interpersonal relations. There are references in professional literature that state that 50% of success depends on interpersonal factors, but in current practice less importance is given to this.

Being in any group of people (even in the senior management team) carries with it a dimension of paradox. On one hand, an individual wants to be part of a group and to receive confirmation of his value from it, but on the other hand, he also has a desire for autonomy. People in a group are like hedgehogs – if they get too close, they will hurt each other with their spines, and if they are too far away, they will feel alienated. It is clear that functioning in an MC, as a group, carries a certain amount of tension in itself. This is followed by the everyday life of business with its own tension. Take as an example an organization facing a sudden loss of market share. High external pressure can lead to dysfunction of a MC. This external pressure is followed by an internal one – the fear of optimization and reduction of resources for work. The senior management team is more than a group of individuals who make it up – MC as a group of people has its own emotional life. The atmosphere at the meetings reflects that uniqueness. By entering a room where the meeting is held, we can feel the fear or increased competitiveness of the members. The uniqueness of the group as a whole is determined by rational and understandable reasons, but also by the unconscious dynamics of the group. Exactly this unknown, unconscious component of the MC as a group that can significantly affect the efficiency of the work of the management team.

In the first half of the last century, the British psychoanalyst Bion described several variants of group dysfunction, based on unconscious events. The first is the formation of dependent groups in which there is a leader on whom everyone “depends”. A charismatic leader will make a decision and lead the organization to a better place. The others will follow the leader. The responsibility for success rests with the leader. They idealize the leader as he fulfills the unwritten expectations of the group. When this is not the case, idealization turns into its opposite – satanization. Aggression towards the leader is generally not expressed in a constructive way, but is concealed, which leads to the formation of passive aggressiveness within the organization. An unspoken theme hovers in the air but cannot be articulated – because that would have consequences. It is clear that such MC teams are not efficient and that they can hardly respond to the great challenges of the instability of the business environment in which we live.

Another possibility of dysfunction is when the MC team reacts in a “run away” or “fight” manner. The MC team is fixed in one of those positions and sees no other possibilities. As an example of “escape” – the company’s MC does not deal with the P&L which indicates major problems with costs for months, but is therefore focused on adopting new procedures. Dealing with peripheral topics takes them away from the core topic of why they exist as MCs. The example of Enron is well-known, when the board of directors did not react to the whistleblower’s information that something was wrong with the company’s balance sheets. The result is known. The board chose not to “see” the problem. A well-known example from the industry is an organization that does not reach an unrealistically set sales plan at the end of the year. Fear overwhelms the organization, which in a panic allows distributors’ warehouses to be overloaded at the end of December. The result of this year is good, but MC “ran away” from the responsibility for the business for the next or upcoming years – when it is necessary to reduce the stocks. A culture of denial is born from this kind of company management. We believe in “A” and we don’t believe in “non-A” – like ostriches with their heads in the sand. MC is frozen on one side of the scale with inability to adequately react to changes in the environment.

The other type of MC team fixation is in constant “battle” with hostiles. Multinational companies have regional branches – sometimes the local branch perceives the “headquarters” as an enemy that only brings problems to the organization which actually “does the work”. Sometimes it’s the other way around – that the headquarters of the company has the same attitude towards local branches. The unconscious mechanism that then occurs in the organization is a projection – everything that is not acceptable in our company is projected onto another company. For example, lack of proactivity or laziness is not accepted but is attributed to someone else. “The headquarters does nothing, they just create tables” or “the local branch just spends money on promotion and we provide them with the whole campaign”. These examples do not reflect the reality of the complex context in which the organization operates. Instead of the infinite possibilities of various shades of gray, MC sees the world in black and white. The fight can also be internal – for example, a conflict between two people in the team. Then the MC team turns to mediation between members who are not able to work together. Instead of focusing on the task, the focus is on the relationship between two people.

It is clear that developments in the senior management team will affect the culture of the entire organization. It can be stimulating or “anesthetizing”, supportive or controlling, rigid or flexible. Culture has a long-term impact on organizational performance. That is why it is important that the MC faces his dysfunctionalities. This is sometimes not easy because of the automation that has been created – this is how we do it. External consultants are trained to make a “diagnosis” of the organizational culture from which presentations and workshops arise with the goal of achieving a change – to make the MC more effective in decision-making. The business itself bears the weight of sales, billing, regularity of deliveries, etc. The goal is to remove additional dysfunctionality, so that the MC can focus on the primary task. Sometimes the clear information about the root of the problem is not enough to bring about a change. Take for example a senior management team that believes that everything they do is perfect while everything their competitors do is inferior. This kind of culture can produce results during positive time, but with changes in the market, this kind of organization cannot react in the right way. Pushing their weaknesses under the carpet does not give a realistic image of the world around them or of themselves. Unconscious event is the projection of everything bad onto the rest of the world and keeping everything positive for yourself. In such cases, structured workshops that aim to raise awareness of the problem and initiate change are more difficult to function. An alternative is unstructured workshops that do not impose a ready-made solution, but guide the team through the process of understanding the current state. If the consultant has established a relationship of trust with the team, he can leave the initiative to the management team to present the topic of importance at that moment. Talking about what is important to them energizes the team. This approach requires time, patience and trust in the process. Experiential learning is based on the belief that every organization has the resources for change within itself. Over time, the organization itself becomes aware of the irrationality that leads them to inefficiency, and in the next step they themselves determine the direction of development that is best at that moment.

The senior management team consists of people with complex relationship dynamics. Anxiety, sleepless nights, tensions in the team, frustrations, loss of energy, largely affect the performance of the management team. That is why it’s important, in addition to the technical components of the team, to understand the interpersonal dynamics with the aim of making the MC aware of the events that are the root of the dysfunctionality. Then trust the resources of the MC team to find a solution that works best for them in a particular context.

Business Intelligence Review, January 2023.