num_pages: 371
description: How can leaders (and their followers) make sense of their constantly changing roles in the workplace of the 21st century? This climate of change and displacement is causing enormous anxiety amongst today's workers at every level, and we must expect that this state will increase as the predictability and stability of the work environment continues to decrease. The chapters in this book mirror the complexity and open-endedness of the challenges we face in the workplace in the 21st century. The psychodynamic, open systems perspective on leadership that informs this book supports risk and change. Present and future leaders, regardless of race, gender, class, or nationality, will encounter an environment that demands openness, connection, insight, and psychological maturity -- in other words a much greater degree of flexibility than the traditional top-down management system has demanded. Chapters discuss such issues as the ways in which leaders can promote psychological presence in workers by fostering autonomy; an analysis of followership and its significance in the workplace; psychoanalytic theory as a tool for cultural enquiry; the role of anxiety in the new order; the need for leaders and workers to become more partnerlike; a systems theory of leadership that addresses complex issues in the workplace; the personal and administrative costs of directing a community mental health facility; visibility-vulnerability of women in leader ship roles; women's exercise of authority in the legal profession; self-authorization dilemmas.
language: English
title: The Psychodynamics of Leadership
titlecomplete: The Psychodynamics of Leadership
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Psychosocial Press