Summary: All That We Are: Uncovering the Hidden Truths Behind Our Behaviour at Work by Gabriella Braun

• Unveil the hidden truths of workplace behavior with Gabriella Braun’s “All That We Are,” a journey into the depths of our professional psyche.
• Explore the unseen forces shaping our work lives and learn how to foster a more understanding and effective workplace—continue reading for a transformative perspective.

Recommendation

Psychoanalytic consultant Gabriella Braun personally experienced many of the painful dynamics she describes in her illuminating collection of stories about the unconscious motives that drive workplace behavior. Her exceptional writing and deep insights are best digested slowly, while relating her experiences to your own. Braun hopes the book will show the importance of taking human nature seriously at work, increase our understanding of our constructive and destructive behavior and shed light on our own and others’ behavior, thus helping workplaces become more humane and compassionate. She writes for anyone interested in what happens beneath the surface of organizations, and how to bring unconscious drivers to light to improve workplace dynamics.

Take-Aways

• Make workplaces healthier by acknowledging the unconscious drivers of human behavior.
• Apply psychoanalytic thinking to better understand people’s behavior at work.
• Understand how childhood attachment styles manifest in work relationships.
• Harness healthy aggression to move projects forward and create boundaries.
• Don’t let assumptions, paranoia and envy sabotage organizational success.
• Address issues of difference and discrimination.
• Uncover unconscious defenses to break down barriers to connection.
• Create true psychological safety to transform toxic work cultures.

Summary

Make workplaces healthier by acknowledging the unconscious drivers of human behavior.

The relentless push to increase productivity and profits dehumanizes work and the people who do it. Uncaring, exploitative atmospheres and overwork impede healthy conversations and can cause stress and distress.

“Remove the desks and chairs…and you have people…Our thoughts and feelings, attitudes and beliefs, our understandable and unfathomable behaviors. We bring all that we are.”

Much to the detriment of their bottom line, management often overlooks employees’ emotional reactions to toxic work environments. Mental health challenges drive more than half of workers’ annual sick days. Beyond the stress they create, unhealthy workplaces breed bullying, harassment and toxicity. The current rise in mental health challenges and burnout should provide a wake-up call to organizations. Stressful workplaces that discourage emotional displays can drive employees to find unhealthy outlets for their feelings. Management who acknowledges human nature – and the unconscious drivers of behavior – can make workplaces healthier.

Apply psychoanalytic thinking to better understand people’s behavior at work.

Despite long efforts to rid the workplace of emotions, people inevitably bring their history, complexities, hopes and fears to the job. To better understand people at work, go beyond personality assessments and apply psychoanalytic and systems thinking. Structure and processes matter, but other less visible factors influence the success of employees and teams. Indeed, employers won’t fix unhealthy workplaces by implementing more procedures, standards or rules. A firm’s culture and its past shape workers – just as workers’ pasts shape them. As in any system, people influence each other.

“Much as we may want to, we cannot leave aspects of ourselves outside the building or virtual space when we go to work.”

Consider the author’s experience consulting with an addiction facility’s staff. In this dysfunctional organization, rules were made and broken, and decisions were agreed to and then forgotten. The manager, Brian, led by title only. One member of staff, Damian, was openly contemptuous of him.

Braun examined the unconscious reasons for the team’s behavior. She focused on Damian first, helping him confront and reflect on why he remained with an organization he hated. This led to Damian’s resignation, but that improved matters only temporarily. When Braun learned that many of the counselors were themselves recovering addicts, she realized they had swapped their addiction to drugs and alcohol for an addiction to the organization. This governed how they behaved with each other and toward their clients. It reshaped the purpose of the organization, prioritizing employees over clients.

This story offers an example of how people’s unconscious can cause them to act without awareness of what’s driving their behavior, which can have a massive influence on their workplace. When Britain’s National Health Service unit suspended a vicious bully, the team unconsciously generated other bullies to take his place. The team realized the pattern it had perpetuated in attracting and tolerating bullying behavior.

“Agency is knowing that our control is limited and yet, within those limits, taking charge of our lives.”

The team at a university careers service fell into dysfunction when university leaders spoke openly about outsourcing the service but offered no compassion or information. They kept changing the timeline – robbing the employees of their agency and leaving them feeling helpless. The team fell into apathy about helping their clients because management was indifferent to assisting its employees. The process dragged on until the university finally gave up on finding an affordable alternative service provider. Subsequently, the team’s trust in the university would take years to repair.

Understand how childhood attachment styles manifest in work relationships.

Braun’s coaching client, Rachel, had gone to boarding school, where she had a few friends but was excluded by the in-group. She spent much time worrying about her increasingly depressed mother back home. Her parents favored her sister, and Rachel felt unloved and invisible. These experiences bred insecurity and feelings of rejection. As an adult at work, Rachel had a poor relationship with her boss, whom she felt favored her co-worker and mistreated her – just like her parents had with her and her sister. She struggled to manage her team, some of whom she thought were too needy.

“Our pattern of attaching to people in our lives – whether securely or insecurely – is set in childhood and continues throughout life.”

Rachel saw that the insecure attachment pattern she developed as a child affected her relationships and management style at work. She understood the connection between her feelings about her sister and co-worker and her parents and boss. Braun helped Rachel examine how feeling responsible for her mother as a child might underlay her assumption of accountability for her team members’ non-work-related problems. Although Rachel’s relationship with her boss and co-worker remained difficult, she became a better manager.

“Belonging, like our defenses, shields us. It provides a degree of both psychological and physical immunity against the struggle of being human.”

Braun experienced the pain of not belonging throughout her childhood, as her family were immigrants, and she was aware of being different. In addition to this, her father’s job meant they moved from place to place. At university and her first jobs, Braun enjoyed the security a sense of belonging gives. But when she worked in toxic organizations, this evaporated. When she was self-employed, Braun found alternative ways to belong. Her experience showed the significance of belonging in our state of mind and our ability to be at our best in and out of work.

Harness healthy aggression to move projects forward and create boundaries.

An HR leader, Bilal, was stressed and depressed when he met with Braun to discuss his role in leading a company-wide project. He worried about its slow progress. He thought of resigning. Bilal was angry with the project team for not following his lead, yet he was too timid to assert his authority. The company also diminished Bilal’s authority by calling him “co-ordinator” instead of “leader,” not giving him a dedicated team that he line managed or adequate resources for the project.

“A leader who’s scared of aggression – either their own or other people’s – is in trouble.”

Bilal thought aggression was only negative but came to see that we need it to live. Teenagers, for instance, need aggression to win independence from their parents. People need aggression at work to apply for promotions. When Bilal became less fearful of his aggression and used it constructively, he took his authority and stood up to his boss and the project steering group. He created boundaries around his job, and his stress and depression were reduced.

Don’t let assumptions, paranoia and envy sabotage organizational success.

The story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland offers a valuable metaphor for refusing to see a part of yourself or for misinterpreting things about others. In the story, Alice says she’s seen several people since waking up that morning. Braun suggests that Alice was looking at the world through different lenses. These lenses are affected by your unconscious. They blur how you see yourself and others and create assumptions you perceive as facts. To see clearly, stop questioning your assumptions, and try to correct them when they prove wrong.

Another of Braun’s clients, David, had been laid off from his previous job. David was going through a difficult house move and stress in his new job. Under stress, most people get more paranoid. He assumed ill intent on behalf of a peer in his new law firm. Convinced his colleague wanted to shut down his part of the firm, David was sure he would soon lose his job again. David had not even spoken to his colleague or the firm’s leader. He based his conclusions on false assumptions, which almost caused him to quit.

“Envious bosses, like envious parents, feel more provoked than proud when their staff or children outshine them.”

When a small coaching company had to start bidding for work, Steve, its only experienced proposal writer, crafted a significant new bid – a contract that would vastly elevate the firm. The proposal was excellent, but it finished second in the competition for the contract. Derek, the CEO, was livid and accusatory; he blamed Steve and refused to acknowledge his hard work. Steve pointed out that no team member had helped; they even failed to provide him with the vital information he requested. The situation worsened until Braun’s intervention helped team members realize their inexperience and anxiety underlay their envy of Steve. Ultimately, the team and CEO, to an extent, realized how their envy of Steve’s expertise had sabotaged the bid.

Address issues of difference and discrimination.

Being different links to being excluded, something everyone experiences, whether in the family, at school or work. It’s painful. Braun’s difference as an immigrant gave her insights into how we easily scapegoat those different from us. With discomfort, she gained insight into her racism.

“However good our intentions and benign our beliefs, humans do not find difference easy.”

People feel threatened by those who are different. Unconsciously, people tend to project onto others the qualities we cannot tolerate in ourselves. Being part of a tribe gives people security and a sense of belonging. In their minds, those outside the tribe can quickly become “bad” people, while those within are “good.” For example, the belief in white superiority pounded into the collective psyche over hundreds of years has led to unconscious biases against people of color and minority groups. The injustice of racism contaminates organizations and communities. To change this and create more equitable workplaces and a more equal world, people must face their prejudice and embrace justice and the loss of privilege.

Uncover unconscious defenses to break down barriers to connection.

Everyone erects unconscious defenses, such as denial, omnipotence and idealization, as “emotional armor” to deal with life’s challenges. Braun’s work with a team of surgeons made her realize that they must “harm” their patients – by cutting them open – to help them heal. Even with the best intentions, intentionally “hurting” people requires considerable psychological defenses. Braun learned she had to respect the defenses that helped them perform their work, while assisting them to lower them enough to address their difficulties as a team.

“Encourage new staff to speak about what they see before they become part of the organization’s defense system.”

While the psychological barrier of defenses helps us, they can act as “barricades” when they become rigid. Braun cites NASA as an example; the organization idealized itself and could not learn from the 1986 Challenger tragedy. This led to the Columbia tragedy of 2003. Both catastrophes were preventable. Leaders must prevent the healthy barrier of defenses from becoming barricades; otherwise, learning and growth stops, dooming organizations to serious harm.

Create true psychological safety to transform toxic work cultures.

Negative and unaddressed emotions at work often turn insidious. Assumptions about people’s behavior, actions and intent may grow increasingly hostile. In this atmosphere, trust goes, and people do not feel safe enough to talk to each other openly or share their personal needs, leaving them without support or reassurance. This lack of psychological safety at work can cause people to withdraw, give up or quit. These patterns of negative behavior can become deeply ingrained in organizations. Kindness plays an essential role in creating humane and healthy work cultures.

“Acts of kindness demonstrate, in the clearest possible way, that we are vulnerable and dependent animals who have no better resource than each other.” (Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness)

Leaders and managers must make it safe to demonstrate vulnerability, rediscover kindness and discuss feelings, fears and challenges. Leading authentically and encouraging humane workplaces requires honesty, openness and offering kindness, compassion and support.

About the Author

Gabriella Braun leads Working Well, a London consultancy that applies psychoanalytic and systems thinking to help leaders and workers understand the real causes of workplace dynamics and the hidden truths of their actions at work.

Genres

Psychology, Nonfiction, Business, Industrial Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Leadership, Human Resources, Management, Self-Help, Sociology

Review

“All That We Are: Uncovering the Hidden Truths Behind Our Behaviour at Work” by Gabriella Braun is a profound exploration of the psychological underpinnings of workplace behavior. Drawing from over two decades of experience in psychoanalysis, Braun takes readers beyond the therapy room and into the staff room, offering a collection of stories that reveal the emotional and unconscious forces at play in professional environments.

The book examines a variety of workplace scenarios, from a board that nearly collapses its company to a headteacher grappling with professional and personal loss. Braun delves into the reasons behind seemingly irrational behaviors, such as why an individual might allow their organization to dominate them, why a lawyer becomes paranoid, or why a team might create scapegoats. Through these narratives, Braun demonstrates the importance of acknowledging human nature in building more humane and thriving organizations.

Critics have praised the book for its insightful understanding of the emotional life of individuals and teams, often overlooked in discussions about leadership and organizational health. The book has been recognized as a powerful and timely contribution to rethinking the workplace, especially in light of the shifting dynamics of modern work life.