It’s funny how corporate identity as a phrase is associated with just about the most rigid of branding questions: making sure a logo always looks the same.
Because identity in a psychotherapeutic sense is anything but rigid. In fact, current thinking views identity more as a fluid process rather than a rigid structure: we never stop changing.
The very idea itself runs contrary to most people’s idea of their own identity, me included … but it’s the relevance of psychotherapeutic insight to corporate identity that interests me.
There’s a generalised recognition in psychotherapy that our sense of identity is built on an ego ideal – the idealised image of ourselves we’d like others to share. And this is the classic domain of corporate identity: how we’d like our company to be seen.
Brand development practice tends to ensure this is based, at least in part, on reality, by polling inside and outside of the organisation to understand prevailing perceptions. But the concept of positioning of course hints at the superimposing of characteristics which are more influenced by ‘how we’d like to be seen’ than ‘how we actually are’.
Brand structures tend to render this into a (very) finite number of attributes – responsive, flexible, professional etc. which create rigid parameters for brand messaging.
And then, in terms of psychotherapy, there are the characteristics which we deny or try to hide (from ourselves as well as everyone else) – if we even acknowledge their existence, that is. Arrogance, selfishness, jealousy, vanity, greed, sins both carnal and venal. And subtler feelings to boot: fear of informality, closeness, loss of control, impatience, levity, playfulness. This is the territory of Carl Jung’s famous ‘shadow‘, the unspoken elements of identity, the elephant in the room of corporate design.
Most business brands fly in the face of the reality of brand perceptions: the process of agreeing on a corporate image is unconsciously supported by our human inclination to maintain self-image. Brands can be inflexible, aloof, superior, conservative, paranoid or intolerant, misogynist, boring, heirarchical, scared even…and widely seen as such inside and out – and live in complete denial.
One overarching goal of psychotherapy is to accept and integrate these different parts of ourselves into our identity – which sounds like an unwholesome task. Who wants to welcome laziness, greed, lust and anger?
But these characteristics are part and parcel of human nature, of what nearly all of us are born with. However much we deny them, they’re in us. That’s not to say we’re entirely greedy, just at some times, about some things.
So let’s say I can’t stand frivolity – after all, I take my work seriously, I’m accountable to shareholders, people depend on this business, for Pete’s sake. When I deny my own sense of play, two things happen: firstly, I disapprove of it in others and I reduce my ability to connect with playful people. Or angry people. Or arrogant people. Or… the list is long, and each disapproval is a two-way barrier to relationship.
Secondly, by pretending I’m immune to these characteristics, I cut myself off from many powerful qualities : the ability to play (in the case of frivolity) but equally (in the case of arrogance) the ability to hold authority.
Whilst the same processes apply to both individual and corporate identity, businesses tend to have a different set of intolerances from people. While human identity frequently shies away from arrogance, for example, business structures, and the inflated sense of self that business membership conveys, often encourage it.
Corporately, this impacts both relationships (internally and externally) and the resources I have to call on. So while I can easily summon up obedience or authority, I struggle with innovation or the ability to challenge.
There’s no easy answer of course. OD attempts to address these challenges, sponsorship can catalyse change – but the route to organisational self-awareness is slow.
But do just think next time you look at your corporate identity or brand hierarchy and consider the value of everything that’s been left out.