WORKING WITH BUSINESS LEADERS AND THEIR TEAMS

Two topics are addressed in this article. Firstly, the author explores some of the connections between Isabel Menzies Lyth's work on organizations and her own practice as a psychodynamically-oriented consultant and coach working with business leaders and their teams. In particular, the author explores the relevance of Isabel's ideas about anxiety in the context of the 2008-09 economic crisis. Almost all the companies with which the author was working were impacted by the recession. This brought to the fore the challenges faced by leaders as they navigate their organizations through a period of great uncertainty. A vignette is provided about a client company at which the author helped the CEO and Board to contain and manage their own anxiety and that of their staff in order to optimize performance during the downturn. Secondly, the author shares some reflections on her experience of Isabel as an analyst. She highlights Isabel's 'fairly unanxious' personality as a powerful therapeutic element in the analysis, describing how Isabel's calm, selfpossessed and undemonstrative manner could help others, including the author, to contain their own anxiety and move forward.