Another key psychological concept relevant to leadership is the term “shadow”. Like all the psychological concepts we are examining in this handbook, the “shadow” is very real, relevant and impactful on personal and organisational behaviour. But, just what is this “shadow”?
Definition
In terms of the individual, the shadow is the side of us we don’t want to accept about ourselves, the part we don’t like. It is sometimes referred to as the “dark” side of ourselves because we generally have difficulty acknowledging, accepting and/or understanding the negative traits of our behaviour. The term “shadow” was first used by famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung early this century. He was interested in the way that behaviour was influenced by both conscious and unconscious beliefs held by individuals and how they determined past, present and future interactions.
The shadow’s effect on behaviour
So, is the shadow a conscious or unconscious influence on behaviour? It can be both. There are things that we know we don’t like about ourselves and we try very hard to hide them. We do this consciously if we are aware of them and unconsciously if not. In both cases, we are attempting to protect ourselves from being emotionally hurt. But there are other things that we don’t know about ourselves consciously and they are hidden or they come out when we least expect them.
Examples of the “shadow” effect
Giving a presentation
What are some common examples of the shadow in ordinary people? Many of us don’t like to get up and talk in front of people. For example, when making a presentation, most people are very nervous. However, some people, as part of their shadow, will avoid at all costs standing up and giving any form of presentation. This is a very difficult concept to get across because most people would say that it’s simply a case of nerves. Anyone would be apprehensive about putting themselves on display in front of a large audience, so in what sense are things like that related to what we call the shadow? They are related in the sense that the person will avoid, or do almost anything to seek to avoid, the issue. He or she might get sick on the day of the presentation; they might not even come to work. They might find another reason or they might try to put somebody else in their place. They will try almost anything to avoid being in that presentation and, if their shadow is strong enough, they will definitely not be there.
Another example might draw a clearer distinction between the shadow and nervous behaviour. The shadow is something that the person doesn’t accept about themselves. When they are nervous, they will say “I am nervous, and that’s why I couldn’t give the presentation”; they will talk about being nervous. The shadow has to do with a person not wanting to show themselves in a presentation, for fear that they might make a mistake, be ridiculed or do something silly in terms of their own perception. So they don’t want to be exposed at all to any possibility of being hurt or ridiculed in any way, so it’s more than just nerves.
Wanting to be liked
Moving away from the presentation example, what are some other areas in which the shadow can manifest itself? Take the example of a manager who really likes people and gets on well with people but who also has difficulty being firm with them, say when a decision has to be made that is not going to be popular. Now, what that manager will often do is somehow find a way to make the decision appear as if it’s not really their decision. So, what they might do is say the decision has come from higher up. The shadow here is that the person doesn’t want to be disliked or hated, and they would prefer that somebody else be seen to have made the unpopular decision. They want to be liked all the time as a result of their self-esteem being very low.
Avoiding hard decisions
Another example is that of the senior executive who has a number of staff but doesn’t like some of them. Where the executive particularly dislikes a certain staff member, they will find some way, usually through some work performance issue (often contrived or manufactured), to actually dismiss the person. Part of the problem is that the executive doesn’t want to sit down and say to that staff member: “Look, I don’t want you in this organisation, I don’t think I can work with you, I think you should go”, and so some other person is often appointed to handle the “unpleasantness”. The shadow effect means that the executive can’t confront the reality that they don’t get on with the staff member, don’t like him or her, but they can’t tell this person what they think or feel.
But in what sense is this example related to the shadow? Surely, you may not like someone simply because you don’t like them. So why is there necessarily some deeper psychological cause? There is because this example shows that the executive doesn’t have the self-esteem to confront someone directly or to confront the issue directly. What happens in such situations in an organisation is that it becomes quite apparent to other people in the organisation what has transpired, and the incident then becomes part of the shadow of the organisation, not just of the individual concerned. What I mean here is that there is common discussion in the organisation, “in the corridors” of course, about how, if the boss doesn’t like you, he will sack you but won’t tell you directly, and instead will have somebody else to do it for them.
The “shadow” as giving only good news
I will come to the organisational shadow shortly, but perhaps an example of the shadow at work outside of an organisational context might help your understanding of this concept. You often come across someone talking about all the good things about, or happening to, other people, all the wonderful things happening in their own lives, how wonderful life is, how wonderful this is and how wonderful that is and so on. Don’t you get sick of it, listening to someone tell you how wonderful everything is? They never tell you about anything not so wonderful or even plain bad. If you suggest to them that there must be something bad, they say: “No, it’s all wonderful”.
So, when you have someone giving you only good news all the time, the shadow is very strong there. There are undoubtedly things in that person’s life that are not so wonderful, but this individual is basically trying to keep their shadow under wraps – they do not wish to expose it at all.
This example is often encountered in a social environment where someone is saying only ‘nice’ things all the time and doesn’t want to talk about anything else.
Does the shadow come into play in relationships, for example with partners or with children? Yes it does. It comes in to play with relationships in the sense that there are things we don’t like about our partner, but we are too nervous to tell them, or we are too scared to tell them. Eventually, if these things add up over the years, what happens is that they actually become barriers. So the shadow is a shadow because you can’t touch it, but eventually it is real enough to destroy a marriage or a relationship, where there has been no discussion or resolution about these negative aspects or shadow issues.
Exposing the ‘shadow” through discussion
When these negative aspects of the relationship are exposed by discussion, the shadow is no longer a shadow, it becomes real and part of the relationship.
In the same way in an organisation, when the shadow is exposed, it can no longer do harm because it is exposed for what it is; it’s just behaviour. The shadow can be present in relations with children too. Say you get angry with your child, who might only be five. You become controlled; you don’t want to show anger towards the child. What you are doing is suppressing the shadow – the fact that you do have negative feelings towards this child and that you feel guilty about your anger because you do love the child. Far better to say to the child: “I am very angry with you for doing this, because…” and to then discuss it, since that immediately eliminates the shadow.
The “shadow” as “dirty linen”
The term “shadow”, on the one hand, implies something real, something tangible, something that can be seen or touched or understood. On the other hand, it seems to represent some general passing conscious or subconscious feeling that cannot be seized and directly grappled with. How can this dilemma be clarified? It can only be clarified by looking at what sometimes is called in organisations “the dirty linen” as well. One way of understanding this is to ask yourself if you have ever seen an annual report that has had negative things in it. All annual reports present the organisation in a very positive light, and make it look fantastic, look beautiful, look great. The negative aspects of an organisation are never presented in an annual report. The reality is that that’s what annual reports are really all about – presenting the organisation in a positive light.
However, there is one significant side of the organisation, the shadow of the organisation, which is not mentioned in the annual report. It’s the “dirty linen” – the “real stuff” that is going on, that is negative or unflattering and not necessarily seen by the public.
However, the members of the organisation know that it’s there and how harmful it can be.
The concept of the shadow can be difficult to absorb. It may help your understanding if we consider how shadows (plainly there is more than one shadow for each individual) come about. Do they, for example, have their origins in childhood experiences, as we discussed in Chapter 4? They often do. For example, a father might talk to his son and be very abusive towards him, such that the son has no choice but to do what the father says. There has been no discussion and no listening on the part of the father, and the son basically has to do what he is told. In this very simple example, the son later becomes a CEO and actually does the same thing to his staff.
A shadow might even originate in a new relationship, say where an individual has their first sexual experience with a member of the opposite sex, and that sexual experience has been one of almost total domination, perhaps even close to rape, where enormous power has been exercised. It could be that when the person who was the victim of that power joins an organisation, they begin to behave as if they are going to be a victim of any power relationship. The realities are that this person is, and will continue be, the “victim”. Their shadow is that they always need to be a victim, because if they are not, they become uncomfortable becoming empowered, perhaps because they do not know how. In other words, their shadow is a fear of being powerful, and yet, they also fear the powerful person. Logic would say that the individual should “fight it”, but, in reality, the person doesn’t. They actually become the victim, and remain the victim, in most relationships in (and beyond) the organisation.
Shadows often originate when there are significant events that have occurred in childhood, but these significant events are the perception of that individual. They may not be significant to us, but they will be to that individual, perhaps only to that individual.
An example that might assist here could be an individual whose parents have died while that person was quite young. That person may well, indeed generally does, suffer a feeling of rejection or abandonment, because they have been denied close, loving relationships. In turn, as they grow older, they exhibit the same kind of behaviour by not becoming close with other people, lest they too reject or abandon him or her. The shadow for this person, therefore, has a number of parts – the fear of rejection, the fear of abandonment and the fear that if close relationships develop, they will die, they simply won’t work.
Dealing with personal “shadows”
The importance (again) of discussion
At this stage it would be appropriate to consider how one can effectively deal with personal shadows, which might at first seem a daunting challenge, particularly given we have been attempting to point out they can cover such a wide multitude of types and causes. Here are some general tips for recognising and dealing with shadow issues in your personal situation:
- In your personal relationship with your partner, do you feel you can say all the negative things that you feel toward your partner? Now, if the answer is yes, there is no shadow there. If the answer is no, then there is a shadow issue which needs to be discussed.
- Do you feel happy within yourself? What are the things that you are not happy with? Is it a fear of being alone? Is it a fear of not having close friends? If you answer “yes” to any of these questions (and they are simply some suggestions – there are many others), then the shadow is part of you and you need to confront these issues. You do this by discussing, perhaps with yourself, or with a close friend or anyone else you trust, your fear of being on your own, and what that means, or whatever your fear may be.
But surely such a discussion is not some simple “aspirin-type” cure? No, but the problem will be rectified by continual discussion – by continual discussion with another person, by being aware that, in any relationship, such issues need to be discussed – not “beating them to death”, but certainly discussed. By recognising that your behaviour will be guided and determined by this part of your shadow, and understanding why you tend to avoid intimate relationships and why you might prefer superficial type relationships.
Getting help
Recognising your shadows is one thing; dealing with them may be something entirely different. On occasions, you may need to recognise that the issue is something beyond your own capacity to deal with. Sometimes, simply talking to friends may not adequately deal with the underlying issue. In situations where you feel “bogged down” and not able to move forward, you may need to consider engaging professional assistance, e.g. try a suitably qualified psychologist who specialises in long term psychotherapy and with whom you can develop a relationship so that your self esteem increases. You will need to feel comfortable with the psychologist when you first meet them. Trust your instincts.
Self esteem and the “shadow”
I mentioned self esteem again above, a topic covered in more depth in previous posts. What is the connection between self-esteem and the shadow? The connection (which most people and most books neglect to talk about) is that the more shadow we have in us, the lower our self-esteem is – in other words, there is a direct connection. When we deal with the negative aspects of our makeup, personality or whatever you like to call it, we deal with our shadow by exposing it and we actually grow from the experience. By growing, we mean we learn to deal with and cope with the negative aspects of ourselves. Learning to deal with the negative aspects of ourselves and exposing the shadow so that it cannot harm us any more, actually develops and increases our self-esteem. As the shadow is minimised, our self-esteem is increased. Or conversely, as we work on boosting our self- esteem, shadow issues should subside.
More on organisational shadows in the next post…
