The Organizational Underground: Organizational Coaching and Organization Development Outside the Formal Organization

Edgar Schein offers a second important insight regarding careers. He proposes that employees enter a new job with specific expectations regarding what they will obtain from this organization (usually aligned with their major career anchor(s) and what they believe the organization expects of them in return. In most cases, this is a psychological contract rather than legal contract between the employee and organization. It is not explicit, but instead resides within the head and heart of the employee. As a result, employees are often disappointed when they discover what really can be gained from their employment in this organization and from engagement in a specific job. They grow resentful that their contract isn’t being fulfilled and as a result often abandon their commitment to the other half of the contract (their own commitment to the welfare of their organization). In the case of those who are underemployed, the organization usually fails either to meet the employee’s expectations or to demonstrate how this employee’s career anchors are aligned with their job. Since the psychological contract is implicit rather than explicit, there is usually no forum in which an employee can articulate the contract or renegotiate this contract with a specific person (boss, owner, etc.). An organizational coach who is knowledgeable about career anchors can provide valuable assistance in helping to make a psychological contract explicit, helping a client identify ways in which to enter constructive dialogues about this contact, and identifying ways in which it might be met or modified.

Just as a 21st century career anchor might best be modified and described as a sea anchor, we would suggest that the term “psychological contract” should be modified. We would offer a related term: “psychological covenant.” Unlike a contract, the covenant can’t be modified. It certainly can’t be broken. Marriages, for instance, are usually considered to be covenants rather than contracts, and divorce is usually filled with a sense of betrayal on the part of both parties. Violation of a covenant within an organizational setting can similarly lead to a sense of betrayal and resultant anger. Even when a person is unemployed, there is often a pervasive sense that a societal covenant has been betrayed: “I thought/felt that this society would provide me with a job – and perhaps even a meaningful job. I am now unemployed and see no prospect of getting a job. This society (government, community, family) is at fault, and I hate what it (they) has done to me!” An organizational coach can be of greater assistance helping someone address the challenges of a broken covenant than addressing the challenges of a broken contract. The coach can help a client understand that a deep need for control is at play. The shattered covenant creates a powerful and uncomfortable tension between the need to control and the evidence of lack of control. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the lower you go, the more important the need for control becomes. A coach can help her gain a sense of control, which is often greater than the actual act of controlling.