ABSTRACT
The systems psychodynamics approach to leadership focuses on the dynamics of human behaviour within systems. Leadership facilitates the process of gaining insight, identifying needs and patterns of emotional reactions. Leaders are more effective when they have insight into their own psychological makeup and use that information to be better leaders and followers. Leadership heightens awareness of the covert meaning of organisational behaviour. The unconscious is a source of destructiveness, and it is also a source of creativity. By allowing the unconscious to emerge, acknowledging it and linking it to conscious aims creates a generative organisational environment. Systems psychodynamics leadership involves managing what is inside a boundary in relation to what is outside the boundary, and requires a simultaneous inward and outward focus.
