Emotional closeness and professional distance – from Andreas Grabenstein

Employees are not part of organisations, but their environment. Systemic professionals, following Niklas Luhmann, say it pointedly: “Organisations have their own logic, their own dynamics, in which people participate, but which are controlled and developed beyond these people.
Humanities scholars like myself are irritated by this approach, but also fascinated. We intuitively give more weight to the creative power, intentions and motives of people – and at the same time we have to recognize how organizations align people, transform them, make them useful for their own dynamics. This is where a corporate ethic would come in that sees people not only as a means, but as an end in itself – but only in passing.
A striking example of the dynamics of organizations is (for me) the culture of large orchestras: Even though the founding line-up is long gone, and conductors have changed, these orchestras have retained a sound over generations through repertoire and rituals that shapes their character and makes them recognizable. The same applies to football clubs with their myths, player legends and their stories of relegation and promotion, and the same applies to companies. The culture, which shows and expresses itself in rituals and processes, in strategies and staffing, shapes far more than individual people ever could.
While supervising a consulting assignment, I have just encountered this again in my own practice. In a team of consultants I support the further development of a department in a medium-sized company: There are management meetings with the board of directors and the head of the division, workshops with managers and employees from the division, and also management coaching sessions with the – not undisputed – head of the division herself. I like her pragmatism, I see her development steps, suffer setbacks with her, try to strengthen her.
The supervisor confronts her: Who is your client? Sure: The board of directors, not the division manager. Who do you support? Clear: The development of the division in terms of the strategy – and in this context indirectly the division manager in her role. Here I can get into a conflict of loyalties: Bonds have developed between professionalism and human empathy. In a conflict, it must be clear where I stand, despite all the human closeness: we must see the tension in the consulting team between the organizational goal and the proximity to the people involved. If this is successful, we do a good job for the organisation – and for its environment, the people.