The Unexpected Neighbor: Learning, Space, and the Unconscious in Organizations

Abstract

This chapter engages with the question of how to help managers and leaders understand the emotional and political dynamics that surround and permeate their roles. Connecting learning, space, and the unconscious in the management classroom can stimulate creativity in the approaches that are used to educate managers and to underpin awareness of organizational dynamics that continuously affect management and leadership roles. A conceptual framework is presented to assist reflection on unconscious dynamics created in the relational space of management learning. The framework combines the group-analytic concept of relatedness with the spatial concept of throwntogetherness in order to reveal how conscious and unconscious emotional dynamics connect to political tensions inherent in relational space. An improved awareness of spatial relations and unconscious dynamics can provide insights into the complexities of relations that both support and undermine management and leadership roles.