Invisible chains

-Since I decided not to ask others how to do things, I feel better about myself.

Of course, you encourage him:

-You are capable of doing whatever you set your mind to.

-Yeah.

His physical appearance changes, he smiles and stops studying the spoon he has just used to stir his coffee to look you straight in the eyes. There is something new in that look, a sparkle in his pupils that invites you to believe in him.

-Before, he continues, I felt like I couldn’t stick to my decisions without someone validating them in one way or another… It was like I couldn’t continue without the approval of others, and that made me feel small, dependent…

As you listen to him, you realise how little time he has been able to maintain the conviction in his eyes. The coffee spoon has returned to the forefront and his shoulders wither like a plant in a vase without water, while he revels in detailing everything that “before” made him feel insecure and ineffective, how much it made him suffer to always depend on other people’s judgement, etc.

You begin to realize that his “before” and his “now” are not as far from each other as he would like and you end up understanding that they are not at all when, after some justifications, he ends up asking you: Don’t you think I’m doing the right thing?

In the end, that past that he despises is still there, preventing him from moving forward in the direction he wants, making decisions for himself.

You come as an outsider to an organization and you hear from the marketing director:

– Our advertising strategy has always been based on frequency. Our products are sold that way. In our case, frequency is more effective than any other form of awareness.

He says this, while with a circular movement of the pen, he involuntarily points towards the sales director, seated at one end of the boardroom table. Only you observe this helical movement, but the sales director, as if moved by a secret spring, takes the floor to engage in a complex exposition on the suitability of his marketing strategy, from the point of view of accessibility to the target customer.

The first thing you notice from the way he speaks is that it is the sales director himself who validates the decisions of the marketing department. You find it strange, but that is not the only thing… He is speaking to you as if he has been in his position for forty years when he himself cannot be more than thirty. Before continuing, you ask him how many years he has been with the company and, indeed, you confirm that he has less than a year of seniority.

Both the friend who asks you to validate his decision to ignore the opinions of others, and the organization that continues to do things a certain way because “it’s the way it’s always been done,” are dragging the chains of a Phantom Role.

In your friend’s case, this Role could be the voice of the overprotected child; he himself, at another time in his life, who remains in charge. In the case of the organization, for example, it could be that of a Sales Manager who developed the department at a “historical” moment in the company, when the commercial area was not diversified, who, despite having retired years ago, continues to make decisions.

In both cases, a role is being imposed that should not be in charge but that has been predetermined in the culture of the system. A Phantom Role that is going unnoticed by the members that make it up. And it is precisely that, its invisibility or the refusal of said members to recognize its voice, that will keep it active. What you are avoiding seeing is what ends up dominating you.

The strength of the Phantom Role, therefore, lies in the fact that the nature of its voice remains hidden from its members. If the voice of that child that our friend is probably ashamed of is marginalized internally, the resulting resistance may end up supplanting him. If, on the contrary, it is heard, understood from its difference and assimilated, it will contribute to the development of his life project.

In the case of the company we used as an example, accepting that a Phantom Role is making decisions that should be made by the current management team could imply changes, not only to the commercial strategy, but perhaps also in the definition of the roles of the department itself.

To facilitate the understanding of the Phantom Role, I have used two examples in which its presence is very evident, but I would like to add that its influence transcends personal or business spheres, to reach horizons of authentic social relevance. We see Phantom Roles sustaining historical disagreements between peoples, conflicting loyalties or anachronistic belief systems established and maintained under their cloak of invisibility. Paying tribute to the principle of deep democracy, defined by Arnold Mindell, the training in Organizational and Relational Systems Coaching ORSC that we teach at Arise Culture&People, proposes an effective model to prevent the opacity or marginalization of many of the voices that are part of a system from finding unpredictable channels to be heard.