Games leaders play: hide and rescue
a self-organization transformation anti-pattern
When companies introduce self-organization, it is tempting to use leadership, power, and hierarchies as scape-goats. I think this is a crucial mistake that will cause unnecessary uncertainty and frustration. Power and leadership are essential characteristics of self-organization — or any other way of organizing a group.
The following describes an anti-pattern that I have observed in this context. To do so, I am using a concept about interactions I learned from Eric Berne’s book Games people play. In the first part, I’ll give a brief overview of the actors in those games in order to use them to describe the disappear-then-rescue anti-pattern in the second part. In the third and last part, we’ll look at an alternative path to resolve or avoid the anti-pattern of part two.
Ready? Let’s go.
Games people play
Games allow people to interact without getting intimate. Most people are uncomfortable revealing their true selves to other people. By playing games, the players can slip into comfortable routines and hide behind different roles, instead of really getting close to each other.
- Games people play, Eric Berne
There are three ego states to be assumed in any game of two or more people. Each ego state is a coherent “system of feelings accompanied by a related set of behaviour patterns.”
- Parent: “You are now in the same state of mind as one of your parents (or a parental substitute) used to be, and you are responding as he would, with the same posture, gestures, vocabulary, feelings, etc.” For most of us, this means relating in a paternalistic way that restricts the freedom and responsibilities of subordinates or dependents in their supposed interest. These are internalized behaviors we borrow from care-givers, tradition, and society.
- Adult: “You have just made an autonomous, objective appraisal of the situation and are stating these thought processes, or the problems you perceive, or the conclusions you have come to, in a non-prejudicial manner.” These are conscious behaviors that are rational and deliberate in the current context.
- Child: “The manner and intent of your reaction is the same as it would have been when you were a very little boy or girl.” In its unhelpful form this is either compliant, withdrawing, and whining (aka the adapted child) or rebellious (aka the natural child). But the child ego state also harbors creativity, spontaneity, and intuition which we might make deliberate use of in workshops, etc.
Looking at which ego states people assume in any given situation is the field of transactional analysis.
In the following, I describe people as acting child-like or parent-like. Neither is in any way meant to be demeaning. My intention is to look at people’s way of interacting with each other using the lens of transactional analysis. This said, let’s dive in.
Act #1: The no-leadership trap
Leaders who have done their homework introduce self-organization in their companies with the intention of getting from parent-child to adult-adult interactions.
Let’s say it’s 2017 on our timeline. The starting point of this anti-pattern is a traditional command & control hierarchy. People on the top tell people on the bottom what to do. Some people feel unhappy in this setup, but most of us accept that this is just how work is and how companies operate. This is what we observed our parents do and what we were taught in school.
With the best intentions, leaders step back to get out of the way of self-organization. In fact, they step so far back that they aren’t noticed at all anymore. They disappear. Some people enjoy this new freedom and behave more adult-like. However, they don’t lead because leadership is the proclaimed enemy. After a brief period of excitement, most people feel uncertain and confused. They lack direction. Voices of rosier former times with more clarity start to arise. Performance declines.
Act #2: The reluctant rescue
Alarmed by the declining performance the former leaders step back in to rescue the struggling company. They conclude that this isn’t working — either because “self-organization doesn’t work” or because “we just don’t have the right people”. The people who rose to the occasion to now act from an adult ego state don’t like this new development at all. They feel betrayed. They don’t want to go back to the old days of being told what to do. Among the rest, some welcome the return of “order”, but others feel even more uncertain and confused by the leaders’ behavior that doesn’t match their proclaimed convictions. Performance declines further.
The “betrayed adults” leave the company — or rather they leave the leaders they feel betrayed by. To make matters worse, those adults who left were also the people who had the most leadership capability in the company. With them leaves a lot of knowledge and initiative. Now everyone is unhappy. We hit rock bottom. Performance plummets.
Act #3: Back to safety
If the company survives, the leaders are convinced that self-organization cannot work in the “real world”. They get to write an opinion piece on “how self-organization almost killed my company”. Sigh. Coercive power structures are re-instantiated and everyone is more convinced than ever that this is the only way a group of people can successfully be organized. The end.
Well, that sucked. Fortunately, there is an alternative path. One that doesn’t have to pass rock bottom. One that has a chance to lead to the promised destination. Let’s go back to act #2 in 2019 after we realized we fell into the no-leadership trap. (Alternatively, you could go back even further and avoid the trap altogether if you can.)
Act #2: The guided self-organized company
After realizing that leadership is not the enemy, the leaders return not to rescue from a parent ego state but instead step up to guide the company from an adult ego state. The adults feel respected and are willing to follow in contexts where it makes sense to them. They feel powerful and guided at the same time. Among the people with child ego state behavior, some feel certain enough to be OK, while others don’t. The organization is out of its comfort zone but not in a panic; the perfect ground for growth. It is still immature and can’t fully leverage the advantages of self-organized structures yet. Performance stabilizes.
After a while, more and more people feel safe enough to behave adult-like. They get used to leading with integrative power, making decentralized decisions, holding each other to account supportively, and aligning goals collaboratively. Most people feel powerful and guided and they use the freedom to reap the benefits of self-organization. There are some people who are not ready or don’t want to show adult-like behavior. But they have enough structure to feel happy and the organization is mature enough to provide the context where they can contribute in a valuable way. Performance increases.
Act #3: Happy-ish ever after
This way of working is by no means easy and fun at all times. In fact, it is bloody hard work to show up authentically and to relate with others in an adult-adult way. We even often ask ourselves if this is supposed to be this difficult. This difficulty is the reason why games, as described by Eric Berne, emerged in the first place. But whenever we get some distance and look at our adult-adult way of relating we feel fulfilled and there is no way we would want to go back to parent-child relationships. The end.
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