Summary
A short expert-led explanation of how unconscious experiences influence leadership behaviour, especially under stress, power and organisational pressure.
We like to think of leaders as rational, self-aware adults. In reality, much of what shapes behaviour at work is unconscious – and often rooted in the past.
In this short Forward Thinkers video, Steven D’Souza explores Carl Jung’s idea of the shadow and what it reveals about leadership, power and performance in modern organisations.
- Understand how stress and pressure can turn strengths into destructive behaviours.
- Learn why senior leaders are especially vulnerable to blind spots as power increases and feedback disappears.
- Explore how organisational culture – incentives, competition and reward – can amplify shadow behaviours, not just individual ones.
Through real-world examples from executive coaching, D’Souza shows why surface-level fixes rarely work – and why meaningful leadership development starts with understanding the whole human being, not just the role they occupy.
👉 Watch now to uncover the hidden forces shaping leadership behaviour – and why ignoring them comes at a cost. And listen to the full podcast Why Good Leaders Go Bad.
Transcript
What do we mean by the “shadow” at work?
Generally the term shadows as applied to psychology and the workplace is a term devised by the psychologist Carl Jung. And he used it as a metaphor, almost like an archetype that would describe all the things that are unconscious.
That may be feelings, maybe emotions, that are from the past, yet they're with us now in the present, similar to the way that our shadow is with us wherever we go. So his idea here was that the past is not dead. As William Faulkner, the American essayist said, it's not even past, it's present in how leaders act and how they operate in their lives, not just at work, but in their whole lives now.
How childhood experiences shape adult leadership
Let's say, as a child, you were told, don't be selfish. You must share everything you have. As an adult we might find ourselves being overly generous. We might find ourselves giving our time when we need to show actually a bit more boundary and bit more protection. And the implications of that is we didn't learn that in the present. We sort of learned that in the past, and yet it went into our unconscious, but it impacts us in the present.
So the idea of the shadow is, psychologically, how do we become aware of what it is that impacts us, not only negatively, but also maybe some gifts that we have that are positive, but also hidden in our shadow.
When strengths become shadow behaviours
So for example, it might be creativity, or it might be some other, maybe speaking, maybe communicating well. So often we might be told as a kid, don't be a show off and so we might shut down the part of us because we're afraid to stand out, for example.
Often a shadow can occur unconsciously as a strength overplayed. And this is the most common definition. So normally shadows occur under pressure and under stress. So when we're at our best selves and things are going well, it's unlikely that a shadow behaviour might emerge.
But when we're under stress, when we're under pressure, we don't actually act very rationally or very consciously, maybe more often than not that we're irrational according to some but we tend to be much more likely to display our shadow when we're under pressure.
So for example, under stress, my sense of decisiveness might become impulsivity or my sense of cautiousness might become like a paralytic inaction that can have harmful consequences. So it tends to be exasperated under stress. So that's one area in the workplace that the shadows definitely emerge.
Power, seniority and the loss of self-awareness
The second is this idea of shadows emerging as we climb in an organisation and as we gain more power in an organisation. So there's a lot of research that shows that as we gain more seniority we can become more entitled. So we sense that the rules don't apply to us and we think of ourselves as somehow immune to the boundaries or procedures that others are a part of, but also that we can become overconfident and we can take more risk and not really have an accurate self-perception. So the gap between how I see myself and how others see us and reality of that can be skewed.
The feedback gap at the top
The third reason, and related to that, is the idea that as we become more senior, we receive less feedback and people don't give us an accurate view of our own behaviour because of obviously the construction of fear. And that has a huge impact in terms of the shadow and that we're not even aware because or less aware because we're not getting that feedback mechanism from others, which is a critical aspect there.
How organisational culture creates shadow behaviour
And lastly, defining the shadow around culture. And so we need to go beyond individuals. How does, let's say, hyper competition between teams foster shadow behaviour? How do incentives like bonuses, for example, where credit can't be distributed evenly, how does that encourage behaviour that might be more risk-taking, that might be more selfish, that might be less looking at the good of the organisation and individuals as a whole.
A coaching story: When performance masks cultural damage
I was asked by a CEO of a large company to coach a managing director in the City. And this was a high performer. He was earning millions for the organisation. Yet at the same time he had severe anger outbursts where he would confront individuals, particularly those who are junior to him in the team, and that the turnover was extremely high. So even though he was a star performer, nobody wanted to work with him. And he wasn't able to build a team that was sustainable, that would get results for the organisation as a whole. And it was damaging the kind of culture within the organisation.
So one thing I did, I set about coaching him, looking at what is his story? So not focusing only on the present but thinking about his relationship to anger. And anger is often put into the shadow for many of us. We have what I call a foreign relationship to anger. You know, either we are fused and anger is identity or it's almost like treated like a foreign land. So for this particular person, anger was very much part of their identity.
And I did a lifeline where I asked them to trace what was their story. And as they were describing their early life to me, it was describing how in the worst organisation that they worked for nothing compared to how anger was at home. And I said, huh? And he said, yes, he had parents that would shout and scream at each other. And that was the way that they communicated and the way they got things done at home.
Now for this individual, obviously it's not about saying that was permissive in the workplace where he was now, but somehow he had taken that behaviour and almost imprinted on how he behaved with his colleagues. And that came out in his language, that came out in his demeanour, that came out in his inability to listen and just really lose it - lose himself. And he had tried, you know, the anger management techniques and he had tried pausing and breathing. Yet this wasn't having any impact on him because he wasn't seeing how his past was influencing the present and working out, identifying what were those things and what were the needs that were not getting met as a child and how could he act in a different way in the present.
So we did a lot of more deeper leadership work. And obviously, there's a fine line here between coaching and therapy, and it's not crossing into the line of therapy. But it's asking, how was it that what were you trying to achieve and that you couldn't as a child? How does the anger serve you? And is there a way that you can get the same outcome, but without the same behaviour? So it was a lot of deeper work.
Leadership starts with the whole human being
But the point I'm making is that working with the shadow was much more effective than, let's say, working on a more transactional basis that didn't solve the underlying issue in this particular person's case. So often, you know, we tend to think about ourselves as rational adults walking about the workplace. But for many of us, there's like an inner child that does get wounded, that does feel jealous, that does react, that does feel, you know, there's a whole range of gamut of emotions. But my argument is we need to start to pay attention to them because we're not walking as let's say neutral beings, we're walking as whole human beings. And by being cognizant, we're less likely to act out our shadow behaviours and shadow patterns.
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