The Manager's Most Precious Skill: The Capacity to Be ‘Psychologically Present’†

In my experience as organisational consultant the manager's ability to be psychologically present has increasingly become a key ingredient to the functioning, development and stability of staff. In this paper, I explore the notion of psychological presence, its significance and how it applies to the managerial role. I make some links between the parental and management function and discuss the complexity of responding to external and internal pressures, without giving up the capacity to be fully connected with the needs of our children or staff. Through a number of examples, derived from my consultancy practice, and from interviews with senior managers, I discuss specific situations and organisational dynamics that limit the manager's ability to be fully engaged with his or her staff. I conclude by arguing that the current societal trend goes against a full engagement and psychological presence in the work environment and encourages an ambivalent attachment to organisations.

The following vignette invites the reader to start to engage with the notion of psychological presence as I see it.

I woke up at four this morning. I was concerned about the ward. There were only five staff to look after 14 patients. Two of the patients are potentially suicidal and require special attention. One of the staff on the night shift cancelled at the last minute and I made the decision not to call in an extra person. I felt the pressure of keeping the money down and I didn't want to call in agency staff, because usually they do very little. I don't want the staff to get into the habit

1. † Paper presented at the Opus conference: Organisational and social dynamics 22-23 November 2002.

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of using an agency and there were two students who could have helped in case of serious acting out.

Anne, an experienced manager of an acute psychiatric ward was worried because that day she had had to dash off at five. She had not had enough time to go through all the cases in depth and was concerned