Executive Office Check-Up Reveals Fear
Think good design is all an executive office requires? Think again, and deeper: Depth psychologist puts the office on the couch and improves executives’ performance.
Dr. Katherine Grace Morris’s research demonstrated that an executive’s physical office space holds deep psychological information about him or her, information the executive is not even conscious of, but which is affecting his or her performance.
Dr. Morris uses a psychologically-based powerful protocol which analyzes and assesses the affects of an executive’s office on him or her. On a recent consultation with the executive director in the building profession, she and the client were wowed by what happened.
The executive was a likable highly verbal upbeat soul, popular with clients and staff. Her office featured a round table and chairs, a desk, file cabinets, bookcases, windows that opened out onto an interesting streetscape, artwork, mementos from trips and clients, desk top lighting, and a few healthy plants. There were a couple of baskets that had ‘stuff’ in them that probably needed to be tossed out, according to her. The executive seemed to have no more than the usual minor gripes - not having enough time to read, return calls, or catch up with her email. Dr. Morris almost thought her visit was for naught, given the breezy pleasant attitude of the executive and her office.
Then came the surprise: she was asked to stand in a part of the office and report her feelings. She began to tell a story. Dr. Morris stopped her and asked for a one word description of her feelings. “I feel fear,” uttered this very surprised executive director. “I had no idea I felt this way. It explains why the staff is so anxious.” She had suddenly seen what she wasn’t ‘seeing’ in her office. What she saw was continuously triggered her unconscious making her fearful. While she was not consciously aware of it, somehow she was communicating it to the staff. She now understood why the staff had been asking if their jobs were in jeopardy. All the pieces came together in that moment.
The executive’s recognition enabled her to revamp the organization’s strategic plan. In short order they acquired several new clients and the staff went from being worried to being enthusiastic.
Regardless of how well-designed the office is, when you analyze it using Dr. Morris’s protocol you always find unconscious forces at work. It’s inevitable: human beings are unconscious a fair bit of the time so there is a good chance that what they create will express unconscious material, and that includes their office space. The good news is this unconscious material, which has a powerful psychological influence, can be consciously identified using this process. And consciousness equals choices.
© 2007 Katherine Grace Morris, PhD