Page 9 - Here and Now – Apr 2024

Authority is in our minds: Played out in Groups and Organisations

Authority relationships in society seem to be changing. There is also an
intention to bring about this change to build more participative
groups and organizations. To support this desired change, have our

basic orientations and attitudes towards authority really
changed?

As a trainer in human process laboratories of ISABS, NTL,
USA, OEGGO, Austria as well as many Indian organisations
and other process work settings for the last over 35 years, I
have had a rich opportunity to be a part of as well as be a witness
to in-depth explorations about authority relationships in people’s lives.
These explorations have made me deeply reflect and learn about the authority
dynamics and how it plays out in action. I have come to believe that much of the

change in this regard has been at an intellectual, idea or intention level but the deep-rooted
expectations and emotional preferences in relation to authority are still not well understood,
often unconscious and hence have not gone through the transformation intended or imagined.

Based on some emerging hypotheses, I designed and conducted short seminars also for the last
two decades in India and abroad in which thousands of people have participated. My tentative
hypotheses were also shared in these short seminars after generating each group data about
images, expectations, relationship with authority and identifying the patterns in the group data.
Invariably, each group data and discussions validated the hypotheses as well as gave an

opportunity to refine them and build some new ones. In this paper, I present briefly some
hypotheses about how authority is still perceived, what is expected from authority figures, the
relationship patterns with authority figures, how they interact with each other, and their impact
for reflection:

Some Prevailing Assumptions/myths about Authority Figures

The images, expectations and feelings in relation to authority,
demonstrate the following assumptions repeatedly voiced in multiple ways:

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