Postmortem interview with Carl Gustav Jung 

The Organizational Shadow, or the Unspoken in Organisations.

'What if the greatest threat to your company is not your competitor or your cash flow, but something invisible lurking in the boardroom? In this post-mortem interview, we sit down with Carl Gustav Jung to explore the hidden dimension of organizational life: the Shadow or the Unspoken 

Jung reveals how leaders unconsciously imprint their personal darkness onto their companies, how this shadow seeps into culture, and how it ultimately shapes and often sabotages the products and services delivered to customers. 

More importantly, he offers a path forward for those courageous enough to look into the mirror. Because as Jung reminds us: "An organization cannot give what it does not possess."

The Organisational Shadow

Erik: Professor Jung, thank you for speaking with me. I'd like to discuss a world that might seem far removed from your consulting room in Küsnacht : companies, organisations, and leadership.

Jung: (smiles) You are mistaken, Erik. In Zurich, I treated countless bankers, industrialists, and directors. Their problems were not different from those of the artist. Instead of struggling with their mother, they struggled with their board. The soul knows no hierarchy.

Erik: Does something like an "organisational shadow" exist? A collective unspoken of a company?

Jung: Absolutely. An organisation is a living system, not a machine. It develops a persona, the face it shows the world: mission, vision, core values on the website. That is the mask. But behind that mask, in the corridors and meeting rooms, lives the unspoken.

Erik: How does that unspoken come into being?

Jung: It is formed by everything the system does not want to see, feel, or acknowledge. The primary source is leadership. The founder, the CEO, the management team... they imprint an unspoken stamp on the entire organization.

Erik: A stamp? Can you explain?

Jung: Imagine a CEO, a man of control and measurable results. He hates what he calls "soft stuff": emotions, intuition, doubt. He has buried his own gentleness and doubt. Because he is the boss, his personal unspoken becomes the organisational unspoken.

Erik: What happens to the employees?

Jung: They learn which behaviour is rewarded and which is punished. They suppress emotions, doubts, and vulnerability. But those things do not disappear. They live in the hallways, in gossip, in cynicism during lunch. The organization develops an undercurrent of unspoken frustration and fear.

Erik: How does that affect products or services?

Jung: An organization cannot give what it does not possess. If a company has no room for doubt, how can it create products that address the doubts of customers? If management has banished gentleness, how can they deliver human service? The unspoken within becomes the experience without.

Erik: So a toxic culture leads to toxic products?

Jung: Precisely. An automaker that crushes deviation will build cars that tolerate no deviation, until something breaks. A healthcare institution that banishes emotions will treat patients as numbers. The inside becomes the outside.product.

A CEO cannot change the unspoken of their organisation if they refuse to face their own unspoken. 

Erik: You spoke about projection before. Does that happen at the organisational level? What would you call it with your new words?

Jung: Attribution. Constantly. An organisation attributes its own suppressed qualities onto others. A chaotic company will call customers "unreasonable." A fearful management team will call competitors "aggressive." A department avoiding its own laziness will blame IT for being "too slow." Same mechanism, larger scale.

Erik: What should a CEO do? How does one begin?

Jung: It always begins with themselves. A CEO cannot change the unspoken of their organisation if they refuse to face their own unspoken. They must ask: "What do I forbid in myself? Which emotions, which doubts have I buried? And how does that live on in my company?"

Erik: And after that?

Jung: Create a culture where it is safe to name the unspoken. Meetings where not only successes are celebrated but fears are voiced. Where employees can say "I don't know." Where mistakes are investigated, not punished. This is not soft management. This is the hardest form of leadership.

Erik: You spoke about entire industries. Are we seeing that now?

Jung: (sighs) Yes. Before the 2008 crisis, banking wore a persona of stability and expertise. Everything that did not fit, greed and recklessness, was repressed. The unspoken grew until it plunged the world into crisis. Or take tech. The mask was "we make the world better." The unspoken, exploitation and privacy violations, was ignored. Now it bursts forth in lawsuits and distrust.

Erik: Is there hope? Can organisations truly change?

Jung: Yes. But it begins with recognizing that an organisation is not a machine, but a living organism. Living organisms need darkness to grow. The best organisations are not those without an unspoken, that does not exist. The best organisations are those that have the courage to know their unspoken, to name it, and to work with it.

Erik: One final piece of advice for leaders?

Jung: (smiles) Yes. Do not look at what your employees say. Look at what they do not say. Listen to the silence in the meeting. Feel the atmosphere when you enter. That is the voice of the organisational unspoken. And if you are truly courageous, ask yourself: which part of that unspoken comes from you? The organization is a mirror of the leader. A wise leader looks into that mirror, no matter how uncomfortable the image may be.

Do not look at what your employees say. Look at what they don't say. Listen to the silence in the meeting.