How to avoid destroying your employees and organisations due to burnouts, braindrain and fading performance? Stop double bind-communication in your organisation!

Organisations are facing growing numbers of absenteeism and premature retirements due to psychological illnesses.

Employees are increasingly diagnosed with so-called “Burnout” (which still is only listed under Z73 as general difficulties in coping with life in the ICD-10) or depression thereby making them absent from work for a significant amount of time.

After returning to work it will take a reasonable amount of time until they can live up to their earlier performance status. Sometimes they appear to be completely broken and never attain to their old performance capacities or they may even leave the organisation for ever.

Organisations are thereby not only losing manpower as well as know-how, but also running the risk of abolishing themselfs because a double bind-organisation prevents itself from learning and, as a result, adapting to changing environments.

Due to the double bind-self-esteem-destruction-machinery, employees end up “burnt-out” and may suffer physical, psychosomatic and psychological illnesses while ceasing to be productive and valuable performers with all their know-how and experience. If they leave, the organisations suffer brain-drain and loss of valuable resources, potentially causing the organisations to miss their productivity and performance goals. If the employees remain, the double bind-organisations endanger themselves and their existence by causing fading performance, reduced quality and financial losses together with a waning employer branding.

Stop double bind-communication in your organisation and implement open, transparent and congruent communication patterns as well as an organisational culture of mutual trust, respect and authentic appreciation together with error-friendliness. Mark mistakes as a valuable learning source which helps both the employees and the organisation to improve and, thereby, enhance the learning ability of the organisation and the company’s results.

Major steps towards stopping double bind in organisations comprise of the following:

Double bind-communication has to be substituted by an authentic, clear, open and transparent communication culture that allows for metacommunication (the communication about the communication), especially to identify any double bind-orders. Additionally, a double bind-free organisation needs to promote attitudes valuing all resources of an organisation. This means that leaders have to know what their employees are best at, where their strengths lie and place them in working environments accordingly. This includes the managers’ knowledge whether an individual employee is content with routine work and receiving (clear) orders or whether another one looks for personal self-improvement and permanent (self-) education. Each of them needs the respective tasks in order to stay motivated and productive. To do all this courage is needed: on the leaders’ and the top-level-managements’ side as well as on the employees’ side. The top-level-management will have to have the courage and will to implement a truly transparent and authentic error-friendly culture embodied by all leaders and managers in the first place but also requested and demanded from all their staff members. The thorough scrutiny of processes and routines within the organisational system should be priority in order to reach constant improvements. On the employees’ side, courage is necessary to name unfeasible orders or dilemmas before they can do harm to people or the organisation. Here, again, the overall culture of the organisation will determine whether an employee fears to point out discrepancies or feels safe to do so. An organisation ready to change will have to stop the well-established double bind-power games which promote only personal goals and gains and will have to substitute them with a common understanding of the objectives required for the holistic prosperity of an organisation, including its goals and all its participants. Last but not least, the necessary adhesive for all this seems to be trust – again on all sides. In the first place on the leaders’ side in the abilities of their people. Where leaders trust in these abilities and know-how and see people’s individual talents as resources for the company’s prosperity, instead of threats to their own power-position, the employees get the leeway necessary for doing their job in the best way. The employees on their end will have to trust (and the daily experience due to a corresponding organisational culture) that their leaders and managers have the employees’ as well as the company’s best interest in mind when setting them goals.

The term and concept double bind was shaped by Bateson et al. (1956) who had observed this specific communication pattern to be present in many of their patients’ families where the patients were diagnosed with schizophrenia.

They described it as highly dysfunctional and “crazy-making” and named the following ingredients of a double bind-situation:

Bateson et al. (1956) maintained that the psychological effects of double bind were highly dysfuncional and “crazy-making”. First found as a communication pattern in dysfunctional families, double bind can be described as a specific dysfunctional communicational interaction in relationships where persons are dependent on each other. Similar to family systems, organisational systems cannot act without communication and interaction within their system; between its employees as well as external partners such as customers, clients and suppliers. Both contexts are therefore comparable and it is highly likely that the same mechanisms can be found in organisations and companies dealing with double bind-messages which results in the manipulation and control of their staff and so becoming genuine double bind-organisations with highly detrimental consequences.

According to Bateson et al. (1956) and Watzlawick et al. (1967) double bind-messages consist either of

which makes it impossible for the addressee to decipher a double bind-message correctly. The sender of double bind-messages always has the power to punish the addressee afterwards for any of his/her choices alleging to have meant exactly the other part of the message.

Hinting the discrepancy between the two messages or even just asking which one of the messages (e. g. the verbal or the non-verbal or which part of the paradox instruction) might be the valid one is strictly forbidden. Likewise prohibited is the indication that a simultaneous fulfilment of these two instructions is impossible.

If the addressee nevertheless tries to point out the impossibility of a simultaneous fulfilment of the two paradox messages, the sender will blame him/her according to Watzlawick et al. (1967) with at least one out of these three options:

So whatever the employee does, he or she is the one to be blamed afterwards as either stupid, insubordinate or insane or even all three. As a further vital double bind-ingredient, the person cannot leave the situation. A child depends on being supported by its family. An employee normally depends on the income of the double bind-organisation to sustain him-/herself and the family. Thus, in a double bind-system, they end up in a no-win situation.

Top-level-management has to take responsibility for:

To fight double bind in organisations and abolish the lack of transparency cultivated in double bind-organisations for the sake of reigning through a system of power and control, an ethos of openness as well as a culture of authentic, double-bind-free communication including encouragement of meta-communication (communication about the communication) is needed. This includes the chance for an employee to name and clarify the double bind-spoiled paradoxes and dilemmas without having to fear consequences. It is even better when the organisational ethos encourages employees to make suggestions for improvements, which are seen by the leaders as an asset to bring the organisation forward. A vital precondition to reach this should be a true and honest attitude of appreciating all staff members for their individual and specific talents and strengths (resource-orientated view with respect to a company’s people), as employees perform best when they can use their individual strengths and resources for their work. There is a need for concrete descriptions of the employees’ tasks, responsibilities and roles within the system, enabling them to have a clear concept of their own role within the organisational system and of their duties due to it. Organisational structures must also stop tolerating unethical behaviour on every company level, including bullying (Boddy, 2011) and toxic leaders that are machiavellistic, narcissistic and psychopathic (dark triad) (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), thereby stopping pathological leaders from doing their toxic work. A double bind-free organization would not confuse a psychopath’s manipulating activities and tactics (by which they make other people abide by their will for only their own prosperity and gain) with “leadership” qualities but would promote self-confident and authentic personalities who have the inner attitude of truly appreciating people and employees.

Another vital step would be the implementation of an ethos of mutual trust, respect and authentic appreciation within the firm which would also ease one of the core dilemmas in double bind-spoiled environments, i. e. the equilibration of the two different interests: autonomy sought by the employee and control preferred by the managers/leaders. One major step to reach this would be to stop ignoring or denying the employees’ know-how and objective opinion (even when it is explicitly requested). Ignoring the employee’s expertise – sometimes even openly and in front of other staff members or clients – leads to a similar self-esteem-destruction as described above.

Employees who are instead treated respectfully, whose individual strengths are seen as a resource and promoted and who are valued for their specific expertise and personal skills stay healthy, well-balanced, motivated and productive due to their higher job satisfaction which strengthens their immunesystem. They also tend to remain in their organisation, providing it with their best possible morale, productivity, performance and OCB (organisational citizenship behaviour) (Van Dick et al. 2006) and help advertise the qualities of their firm (employer branding).

A double bind-free communication would also include consistent orders in case of two or more levels of bosses whose messages have to be consistent in order to avoid being a double bind-paradox. If the order given by boss A is not simultaneously feasible together with the order given by boss B, it will not matter which order the employee chooses to fulfil, he/she will be reprimanded by either boss A or boss B for not having obeyed his/her order correctly.

Maybe the most important step would be to reach an organisational ethos of honest error-friendliness together with a common spirit to bring the organisation forward. This requires a consequent self-scrutiny on all levels of an organisation for which Argyris (1977, 1994) suggests the concept of double-loop-learning which includes questioning of the system itself and the scrutiny of processes, the reasons and motives behind them (Argyris 1994) as well as the staff members’ attitude and behaviour in order to truly improve, change or abolish long-established routines which hinder any cultural and inner organisational changes.

This requires consequent self-reflexion from all staff members of all levels and a culture in which outcomes of this scrutiny are really seen and accepted as an asset and a learning chance – whatever these results might be.

Individual employees should try to

The employee confronted with unrealistic double bind-orders would have to mention this impossibility to their managers in order to respectfully alert them to the dilemma caused by the double bind-messages, thereby asking for meta-communication to clarify the matter. The employee could ask politely which part of the messages should be made priority over the other. As naming the paradox in double bind-systems always carries the risk of being accused of being stupid, insubordinate or insane, the employee will need sound self-esteem and courage to do so. It is also vital that the attempt should be carried out with a true and honest respect and appreciation for all members of the organisation. To help the clarification process, face-to-face-communication would always be preferable over e-mails, webinars or other mere technical means and one of the main rules for a double bind-free organisation should be: Talk with each other instead of about each other!

However, any cultural change of a firm can only be reached if triggered and supported by the top-level-leaders in charge who implement the change. An individual employee has, therefore, only very limited chances to trigger a change, and only a few more possibilities to support an already triggered change, e. g. by the steps of clarification in due time or the individual attitude of neutral respect.

But even though the individual employee can, indeed, name the double bind in a message, it will always depend on the overall organisational structure and culture whether the employee will be heard or punished, as double bind-organisations carry the burden of asymmetric power due to double bind-communication.

This means that if upper levels of the organisation (intentionally, consciously or unconsciously) carry on with the double bind-system, it will always be the employee who will be demolished first and, presumably, leave the organisation. Although top-level-management may ignore the overall consequence of impeding their company from learning, potentially causing detrimental consequences for themselves as upper management as well as for the prosperity and existence of the company itself, they may only realise these consequences when it will be too late for the entire organisation.

Having internalised these double bind-mechanisms perfectly after a while under the double bind-regime, the employees become so intimidated that they will do whatever they are told without contradiction or question regardless of any hint of the real dangers for the organisation. They will have learned that anything else leads to punishment, exclusion or even to expulsion from the system so vital for them to survive (emotionally and financially).

This is one of the reasons why totalitarian systems prefer to dictate through double bind-communication. They first extinguish the intelligentsia living within, as they will be the first ones to question the system. Thus, subordinates are kept downtrodden, silent and willing: more or less for any kind of behaviour.

Those at work willing to keep their own value system are left with only the choice either to leave the system physically (quit) – only to end up presumably in just another double bind-system – or to become ill (physically, mentally, psychosomatically) – leaving the system indirectly and to their own detriment. The lamentably increasing numbers of sudden deaths or suicides in the course of work is “just” a further – but the worst and most radical – form of denying and leaving a system which is unwilling to accept different ideas, learning from mistakes and questioning the day-to-day course of the system.

Healthy employees in sound companies are motivated and more concentrated during their working time, which is why they perform better. Companies which perform better prosper, and, being known as good employers, helps them to keep their employees as well as enhances their ability to recruit and retain newcomers with a high potential due to a better employer reputation. It is time for a change in the thinking and behaviour patterns in organisations. A different way of thinking in the case of double bind would be the meta-communication (which is – of course – strictly prohibited in any double bind-system) as it would enable people to question the system.

And finally, to elaborate the view even further:

The mere economically driven double bind-society pushed by the forces of globalisation is increasingly producing double bind-organisations, as a double bind-system’s one and only goal is to sustain itself – irrespective of how much damage it does on the way to people, systems, states, environment, nature and the whole earth which is tiny, small and highly fragile within the vast universe.

If people, managers, leaders, systems, organisations and states do not start to finally (re)think and act differently, we all run the risk of losing everything – like a double bind-system which has demolished each of its inhabitants and abolished itself in the end.