By Sarah Schafer

Washington Post Staff Writer

February 24, 2000

Page V05

Psychologist Michael Ceo has spent 17 years counseling people, especially couples, on how to air their grievances, deal with tragedy and coexist--more peacefully if not happily.

Increasingly, Ceo (pronounced Chay-o) has applied his family fixes to dysfunctional companies and hopes to begin focusing on rapidly growing firms, particularly those in Loudoun County. To Ceo, the transition is a natural next step.

"The undercurrent in a company is referred to as corporate culture, which is similar to a family's 'private reality,' " he said, describing the invisible family baggage that profoundly affects relationships.

"Helping families bring the reality to the surface and then change it is similar to [helping] a company," he said.

In addition to running a private practice, Ceo, 52, is vice president of psychological education for Paradigm Alliance Group, a human resource and management consulting firm based in Columbia, Md. Working from his office in Leesburg, he has researched workplace aggression for Paradigm and is developing seminars to teach managers and employees how to manage anger, deal with the death of an employee, prevent violence at work and, in general, create a harmonious work environment.

The first seminar will be held in Columbia, and Ceo has planned a Loudoun seminar in the spring.

Ceo's timing is good, said Kristin Accipiter, spokeswoman for the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria. Executives have begun to realize the toll that workplace tension and aggression can take on a company's performance and have increased training in areas such as conflict resolution. "I think that employers are becoming increasingly aware," Accipter said.

Accipiter cites a study conducted last year by her association showing that 57 percent of human resource managers surveyed reported experiencing some form of workplace aggression. About half of the survey respondents said the acts of verbal and physical aggression occurred between employees. And 44 percent said employees had expressed fear that a co-worker could commit a violent act.

Only 2 percent of aggressive incidents in the workplace involve shootings and stabbings, according to the association study, although those incidents receive the most attention.

But even less overt hostility can freeze a company's productivity, Ceo said. With their frenetic pace and long workdays, young technology companies can be particularly tense work environments.

"Any time you find a culture in which employees are really, really pushed . . . you're getting away from the things that calm them down," Accipiter said.

Ceo is counting on the start-up boom in Northern Virginia, and particularly in Loudoun, to expand his business.

"The growth of [information technology] companies has been near instantaneous, and the focus has been on the product," Ceo said. Because of that, he said, "the focus on people problems hasn't been properly attended to."

So far, Ceo has worked with several companies--high tech and low-- primarily focusing on emotional issues rather than violence.

He has been a regular consultant for the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control center in Leesburg. He once helped facilitate a group discussion there with employees and managers after several experienced the death of close family members. Many had trouble focusing at work.

"There were a lot of emotions expressed [during the group session] that resulted in some real hugging and connecting," Ceo said. "People had felt like they were going through this by themselves."

Ceo also helped workers at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight cope with a co-worker with terminal cancer.

The ill woman had decided she wanted to continue working until it was absolutely impossible, Ceo said. His job was to help her co- workers work out their discomfort, confusion and desire to help the woman. His coaching also was aimed at helping managers prevent a slowdown in productivity.

"There was such a preoccupation" with the woman, whose failing health was clearly visible, he said. He urged the co-workers to talk with her about her feelings and the "end-of-life issues," rather than avoiding those topics, he said.

In their effort to make small talk, "most people really blunder around and make some really stupid comments," Ceo said.

He also suggested that the office designate one person to be the liaison between the woman and her family, so that when she was too sick to come to work, her family would not be inundated with telephone calls from concerned colleagues.

After the woman's death, Ceo helped her colleagues arrange a memorial service to give them a sense of closure. "These losses can have an enormous impact on the functioning of a company," he said.

Soon, Ceo said, he hopes to shift virtually all of his focus to corporate counseling. He has made a special point to wear suits vs. his normally funky-casual attire to fit in with his desired clientele.

In addition, he tends to play down his interest in feng shui--the placement of furniture and other objects to ensure optimum spiritual and physical well-being. But his office--which he shares with his wife of 23 years, Niki, also a psychologist--is set up for the optimum flow of chi, or life force.

At least two crystals hang from the ceiling to help reflect energy. The office plants are strategically placed so that visitors walking up the stairs see peaceful images of nature. Even the bird feeder outside Ceo's window is strategically placed to surround the office with the birds' positive energy, he said.

Ceo said he worries he might "scare corporations away" with such notions, but he is quick to point out that in marriage counseling, as in corporate counseling, it's all about yin and yang--balancing the emotional forces at work in a relationship or group.

"My role is to change the energy," he said.