The Unseen Hand
How Unconscious Dynamics Shape Leadership
Every leader knows the experience of leaving a meeting thinking, “Why did I react like that?” Or, “Why does this person get under my skin?” Often the answer has little to do with the content of the discussion. It lies in the unseen hand of unconscious dynamics.
These forces are rarely named, yet they drive so much of what unfolds in team meetings and as echoes in the halls.
This article takes you below the surface of these experiences. When you look through the lens of each of these sections, you can start to put together a view of what is happening here.
We will begin with the iceberg, the image of what lies beneath that polished exterior of logic and competence. From there, we step into the inner theatre, where old dramas resurface through colleagues and authority figures. We then introduce projection, transference, and defenses which are the psychological mechanics that shape everyday exchanges.
Next, we turn to the idea of role contamination, showing how we step into positions already charged with history and emotion. We expand from the individual to the collective, looking at the organizational unconscious and the fantasies that run through groups.
Finally, we return to the leader’s task: awareness, as strategic capital that allows leaders to act with clarity in the face of forces they cannot fully control.
The Iceberg of Leadership
One senior executive shared how she prided herself on her composure in management team meetings. Yet, when a particular colleague challenged her, she found herself defensive, almost adolescent in tone. She was baffled. As our conversation went on, the colleague reminded her of a competitive older brother. While her reaction started with the content of the meeting, the more we explored, we saw the connections to the unseen hand of unconscious dynamics.
“When this happens, the traditional, more logical, systematic thinking tools are insufficient. The solution or the obstacle is invisible, even in broad daylight, and therefore requires different approach.” (Lehman, van de Loo, 2016)
Leaders often like to think of themselves as rational actors. Strategy, logic, execution. Yet leadership is more like standing on an iceberg. What is visible above the waterline is only a fraction of what guides you. Beneath lie emotions, defenses, and old relational patterns. These do not disappear with a title. They become more powerful.
To understand the iceberg more fully, we need to see how personal history takes the stage in professional life. This brings us to the leader’s inner theatre.
The Inner Theatre
A team lead once asked why he always felt personally attacked when his team questioned him. As the exploration continued, it became clear that he was transferring an old wound of constant criticism from his father. Any question from the team felt like a replay of that parental voice. Awareness gave him the distance to hear the questions for the legitimate inquiries as intended, not personal attacks as translated.
“The “inner theatre” is a concept within the psychodynamic approach that explains how the people encountered in childhood influence emotions and experiences in the leader’s later life; these emotions and experiences, in turn, influence behavioral patterns.” (Tcholakian et al, 2019)
Each of us carries an inner theatre: a cast of characters drawn from our past of early authority figures and formative experiences. They appear when least expected. A boss suddenly feels like a critical parent. A team member evokes a rival sibling. We are pulled into old scripts we never consciously chose.
This is ordinary life playing itself out in professional form. In leadership, the stage is larger and the projections stronger. When that feeling that something’s not quite right, professionals may not relate to others as they are but are more likely interacting with ghosts from the past.
These performances are shaped by certain psychological mechanisms. Old scripts are replayed not by accident but through predictable processes. To grasp this, we need to look at projection, transference, and the defenses that hold anxiety at bay.
Projection, Transference, Defenses
A manager once described how his team “tested” him relentlessly in his first months. Later, he realized that they were not testing him. They were replaying years of neglect under previous leaders, suspicious of any authority figure who claimed to care. He had stepped into an old drama that had been waiting for its next actor. And he was playing right into these tensions inserting his own anxieties back into this system, creating more friction.
“Despite the use of such defences, unconscious material often returns in disguised ways to affect current relationships.” (Book, 2004, p. 17)
The language of psychoanalysis can sound abstract, but the experience is very real. Some examples of this are:
Projection: where disowned parts of ourselves are in others. The “difficult colleague” may be carrying the aggression we do not wish to see in ourselves.
Transference: emotional patterns from earlier life repeat in current relationships. A new CEO may be cast as savior or scapegoat long before they act.
Defenses: we protect ourselves from anxiety through denial, rationalization, or over-intellectualization. These can be useful, but over time they limit range and flexibility.
These dynamics do not remain at the level of the individual. They accumulate in roles themselves. A manager does not just bring their own history; they inherit the projections of others and the unresolved stories of the system. This is what Chapman and Long call “role contamination”.
The Contaminated Role
One newly appointed manager walked into the organization still raw following a painful downsizing. Long before he had set his agenda, he was already cast as a villain. He became the embodiment of loss and betrayal. His real challenge was surviving the ghosts projected onto him by a grieving system.
“All roles have a capacity for potency because they exist, not independently, but in intimate association with all other roles in the system. A role may be said to be contaminated when its influence on succeeding incumbents and their systemic colleagues (roles and people) impacts negatively and persistently on the organisation’s ability to carry out its real work.” (Chapman & Long, 2009, p. 55)
No leader enters a role as a blank slate. By accepting the position, they step into a symbolic space already filled with expectations, hopes, and fears owned by others. She or he who steps into that role becomes a container for collective emotion.
I have seen teams cling to a leader as if to a benevolent parent, expecting protection and certainty. I have also seen leaders treated as embodiments of everything that went wrong before they arrived. In both cases the role is contaminated by projections.
When roles are charged with emotion, they reflect not only personal histories but collective ones. Entire organizations carry unconscious life. To see this clearly, we turn from the leader’s role to the organization as a whole.
The Organization’s Unconscious
Individuals are not the only ones with unconscious lives. Organizations develop shared fantasies and anxieties of their own.
“There is no Work Group without some kind of Basic Assumption Group running concurrently’ (Gosling, 1994)
Wilfred Bion showed how groups often operate in two states. The work group stays focused on tasks and reality. The basic assumption group is driven by unconscious needs such as dependency, fight-flight, or pairing.
If you have ever seen a team act as if their leader were omnipotent, or rally against an imagined enemy, you have seen the organizational unconscious at work.
If groups are animated by fantasies and defenses, leaders cannot eliminate them. But they can cultivate awareness. That awareness becomes a form of leadership capital, separating those who are at the mercy of hidden forces from those who can work with them.
Awareness as Leadership Capital
The unconscious cannot be commanded into submission. The task for leaders is awareness.
“Self-awareness and empathy, have been shown to be critical to leadership effectiveness, differentiating highly effective executives from their less successful colleagues.” (Stein and Book 2000)
Leadership coaching at its best surfaces these hidden patterns. Why do certain conflicts repeat? What part of a leader’s history is being re-enacted in the present? What systemic anxieties are flowing through the role?
Awareness is strategic capital. Leaders who can recognize projections, name collective fantasies, and reflect on their own triggers are less likely to be hijacked by them. They widen their repertoire of response. They create choice where previously there was compulsion.
And this is the essence of leadership in practice: to acknowledge the unseen hand without being gripped by it.
The Unseen Hand
Leadership is never a solo performance. It is always co-authored by history, relationship, and system. The unseen hand is always present. It shapes perceptions, guides reactions, and distorts roles.
The question is not whether you are influenced by it. You are. The real work is to recognize it in time, and to hold it with enough awareness to lead with clarity rather than be led by forces you cannot see.
If what you’ve read here struck a chord, there are a few ways we could take this conversation further:
Talks & Offsites – If you’re shaping a leadership retreat or planning a gathering where you want people to think differently, I can help spark that dialogue.
Executive Coaching – For new and experienced leaders navigating complexity, change, or the unspoken dynamics in their roles, I offer one-to-one coaching as a partner in the work.
You can reach me directly if one of these feels like the right next step.
References
Book, H. E. (2004). The CCRT approach to working with patient narratives in psychodynamic psychotherapy. In L. E. Angus & J. McLeod (Eds.), The handbook of narrative and psychotherapy: Practice, theory, and research (pp. 71–86). Sage.
Chapman, J., & Long, S. (2009). Role contamination: Is the poison in the person or the bottle? Socio-Analysis, 11(1), 53–66.
Gosling R (1994) The everyday work group. In: Sievers B, Armstrong D (eds) Discovering Social Meaning: A Festschrift for W. Gordon Lawrence. Unpublished.
Lehmn, R., & Van de Loo, E. (2016). The Value Lurking in Your Leadership Unconscious. INSEAD Knowledge. Link
Stein, S. J. and H. E. Book (2000). The EQ Edge. Toronto, Stoddart.
Tcholakian, L. A., Khapova, S. N., van de Loo, E., & Lehman, R. (2019). Collective traumas and the development of leader values: A currently omitted, but increasingly urgent, research area. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 1009. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01009