• Fears about going to work or engaging in business travel
• Fears about being in tall buildings
• Difficulty concentrating on work.
• Irritability, startle responses or increased anger on the job
• Increased alcohol and drug abuse
• Absenteeism due to physical illnesses, as expressions of underlying stress
• Impulsive or inappropriate business decisions
• Inappropriate sexual behavior, including harassment at work
• Depressive reactions, including delayed survivor guilt

According to Dr. Sulkowicz, who worked closely with corporate leaders immediately following the attacks, business people tend to use denial and immersion in work to avoid unpleasant feelings, but these defenses may not hold up in the coming weeks. Corporations should expect a wide range of reactions – some obvious, some subtle – in individuals and in groups. This may also vary depending on such factors as proximity to Ground Zero, knowing someone who died on September 11, the type of business, and differences in corporate culture and individual personality.

What can be done? Business leaders need to be aware of possible symptoms of September 11 anniversary reactions, actively look for them in their employees, and allow everyone in their organizations an opportunity to talk and reflect on their experiences in personal ways. Dr. Sulkowicz, a Principal at Katzenbach Partners LLC in New York, warns that pathological reactions go underground and affect business productivity if emotional responses are ignored or discouraged. Experts in group dynamics and trauma can be helpful in working with senior management and human resources professionals to anticipate and coordinate organizational responses. And managers, while maintaining high performance expectations, need to be particularly tolerant of these reactions in the time surrounding September 11.

• All businesses and all employees, whether directly involved in the attack or not, will have psychological reactions. Wall Street firms and financial services companies may be most affected.
• Running a complex business organization may come intuitively to a CEO, but responding to a crisis of such magnitude and with such severe psychological consequences may not be a natural extension of the CEO’s leadership skills.
• The quality of leadership and the interaction between a particular company’s unique corporate culture and the effects of the disaster may be the crucial determinants in how the company weathers the disaster.
• CEO’s, precisely because of their position, may be the least likely to receive emotional support and guidance from within the firm, and need to be particularly attuned to their own emotional states in order to better care for their employees.
• Senior management is no less vulnerable to post-traumatic reactions than other employees, and may actually be more susceptible to using various forms of denial as a maladaptive way of coping. Managers may become particularly stressed because of their need to take care of others.
• Employees at all levels of the organization need to be able to speak openly about their personal experiences of the tragedy; failure to do so will result in much greater psychological morbidity over time.
• Employees should be offered liberal and easy access to mental health services upon request. Managed care restrictions on care should be lifted.
• Long-term consequences of the crisis need to be monitored in terms of potentially damaging effects on morale, corporate culture, capacity for risk-taking and innovation, hiring, relations with foreign companies, leadership succession, etc.

Dr. Sulkowicz writes and speaks frequently on the psychology of management and leadership. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Industry Standard and other publications.

He can be reached directly at 212 737-1542, or by email at kjs@boswellgroup.com.

• Psychological effects on society of the Internet, including the pros and cons of the loss of inhibition that comes with email and web-based communication.
• Unbridled narcissism of many current business leaders, and the relationship between childhood trauma and unusual success.
• Impact of the New Economy on corporate and childhood creativity.
• The Internet’s darker side, including how it can foster widespread paranoia.
• Fantasies that “anything is possible,” even in the wake of the Internet stock crash.
• Why we idealize New Economy moguls like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.

“The Internet, at the heart of the New Economy, is everywhere,” says Dr. Sulkowicz, “and my aim is to try to understand what it means to us and how it is changing us.” His lecture, at Grand Rounds, will also introduce the audience to a new application of psychoanalytic science to management consulting. He will describe how executive coaching using a deeper, psychoanalytic approach can provide business leaders with unrivaled psychological skills to enhance their effectiveness as CEO’s and managers. His consulting has also been highly effective in working with Internet entrepreneurs, family businesses, traditional management consultants and executive search firms.

Dr. Sulkowicz is the founder of The Boswell Group, LLC, a consulting firm that focuses on the psychology of management and leadership (www.boswellgroup.com). He is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, and on the Faculty of the NYU Psychoanalytic Institute. In addition to his consulting work, Dr. Sulkowicz is in private practice in Manhattan. He was a Chief Resident in Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital Center and NYU Medical Center. A graduate of Harvard College, he received his M.D. from the University of Texas.

For a copy of Dr. Sulkowicz’s lecture, please contact Dottie Jeffries at 202.628.6544 (djeffries@djeffries.com).

For further information on psychoanalytic management consultation, or to make a confidential inquiry about obtaining a consultation, Dr. Sulkowicz can be contacted directly by telephone at 212 737-1542 or by email at kjs@boswellgroup.com.