Good advice

PSYCHOTHERAPY: Call it couples therapy for companies. A growing number of firms are turning to psychologists for help in dealing with conflicts among their staff or with business partners.

Gillian Lock of Rock the Boat Consulting in London is an integrative psychotherapist. “My role is to hold a mirror up to people so they can see what kind of an impact they are having on others in an organization,” Lock told the Financial Times. “I have experience of running a company. I know what it’s like,” she adds.

Lock, who has an architecture degree from Princeton University in the US, worked in design and construction before retraining as a psychotherapist. “Psychotherapy, like architecture, is an art and a science,” she says. “You have to not be precious about your ideas. You have to be prepared to rethink it and pull it apart.”

"Psychotherapy is an art and a science." Gillian Lock

Simon [a pseudonym] was sent to group and individual therapy by his company. The firm’s senior partners had gone for counselling after having had serious disagreements about the way the company should be run. They were so enthusiastic about the process that they wanted other executives to have the same experience.

Initially, Simon had doubts about the counselling sessions. “In the short term there were more tensions and insecurities because things came out. People felt vulnerable and it was a bit confusing,” he explains. In the end, however, he found the experience useful. “For me, it was a good chance to say things with the help of a mediator in front of my bosses.”

Conventional businesses are not the only ones to take advantage of counselling. A documentary called Some Kind of Monster shows how members of the heavy metal band Metallica dealt with a counsellor who had been hired by their management. And not everyone within a company benefits from counselling. Simon reports that one of his colleagues resisted the therapist’s efforts. “She thought it was a complete waste of time.”

Still, although counselling may not work for everyone, Lock is optimistic about its future. “We can help a company get its energy back, which is important in times of recession.”