- Every person carries an accepted side shaped by family, educators, and society, and also a hidden self that psychology calls the personal shadow.
- Organizational culture shapes and forms the shadow by determining what can and cannot be expressed, so behaviors leaders reject accumulate in the shadow of the individual and of the collective.
- The shadow holds not only undesirable character traits but also unrecognized gifts and talents, along with creativity, motivation, strength, and meaning.
- An organization incapable of exploring the knowledge held in its shadow and bringing it into consciousness is destined to drift slowly from its objectives.
But those same individuals also carry a hidden self, what psychology calls the personal shadow: everything that has been repressed into the unconscious, suppressed, considered unacceptable, concealed out of fear of rejection, of losing affection, of causing discomfort, of being judged, often by the very people who played or still play a defining role in that person's life.
Organizations work no differently. The permissions and prohibitions around certain behaviors gradually give way to a more contextually appropriate self. Behaviors approved and valued by leaders are easily found and reinforced, while everything those leaders disapprove of, suppress, and reject in the work group gets buried in the shadow of the individual and of the collective they form. The same happens to qualities, gifts, and talents that go unrecognized and unrewarded in that particular organizational culture.
What lies in the shadow?
As Benjamin Teixeira de Aguiar writes through the spirit Eugenia-Aspasia: "The shadow is part of the human soul, comprising the unknown elements of self, and therefore contains all the potential for divinity that was denied to the individual or that cannot yet unfold at a conscious level. Thus, the shadow holds not only undesirable character traits and personality flaws, but also numinous aspects, transcendent ways of being, acting, and feeling. And so, as Jung wisely announced, creativity and motivation, life and joy, strength and meaning reside in the shadow. This is why Jesus urged us to love our enemy, and the greatest enemy, the axial adversary, is the shadow itself, the dark side of the self, and not to judge, because we would be measured with the same measure with which we measure others."
Many shadow aspects can only be discovered when conflicts and uncomfortable confrontations arise between people, typically in a hostile, ironic, or disharmonious form, because they carry an intense emotional charge born from the unpreparedness of those individuals and of the culture to handle issues that have until then been suppressed and concealed.
What does an unexamined organizational shadow cost?
Organizational culture shapes and forms the shadow, determining what can and cannot be expressed. Feelings, behaviors, and attitudes rejected by the organization accumulate in the shadow, feeding the hidden power of its dark side. In general, this shadowy content can be considered unknown, untamed, and unexplored territory at the personal, group, and organizational levels.
When the process of uncovering that side begins, it may not be easy or comfortable, but there is real potential for improvement across many organizational dimensions, especially in awakening dormant talents that can serve as channels for problem-solving.
An organization that is incapable of exploring the knowledge held in its shadow, and bringing it into the light of consciousness, is destined to slowly drift from its objectives. Over the medium and long term, if it remains inattentive, it will increasingly become and promote precisely what it most wishes to avoid.
Toward a New Level of Consciousness
An informal study cited by Ziemer found that "in times of crisis, 80 percent of managers' time and energy is consumed by dealing with the irrationality of companies, which originates largely in the organizational shadow, in what cannot be discussed or changed. In normal times, that percentage drops to 50 percent."
Studying the organizational shadow can be enormously valuable in recovering unexplored potential, unknown gifts and talents, impulses toward good, and creative inspiration, both personal and organizational. It contributes to communication, to conflict resolution, to management broadly, and to people's lives, ultimately carrying its impact into the wider fabric of society, moving it toward a new pattern and plane of consciousness.
The short answer
An organization inherits the shadow of the people in it, and then adds its own: whatever its leaders disapprove of, suppress, or simply fail to recognize gets buried in the shadow of the individual and of the collective they form. The cost is not only the undesirable traits that accumulate there but the dormant talents, creativity, and impulses toward good that stay buried with them. Bringing that content into the light of consciousness is uncomfortable, yet it is what keeps an organization from slowly becoming precisely what it most wishes to avoid.