Brian is the MD and everything about his office has been arranged to reflect somebody's sense of what the top dog personality should encompass. An appreciation of order, acceptance of the norms of social propriety, adherence to hierarchy, a nod to the natural environment and, of course, another world outside which leaks into the working one, that of domestic bliss, of course, smiling and laughing and awaiting patiently the return of the work-life balanced parent at the end of the hard day's toil.

Its tidiness is more a reflection of the tidy lump sum Brian takes home than it is of his penchant for cleaning up and putting things in their proper place, though. You should see him at home.

If only operating a successful business merely required displaying smiley photographs and big plants.

We'd all be MDs if the offices of the powerful were really telling, and if the eponymous photograph of self importance and ceremony . . . with media or minor political characters bestowing vacuous congratulatory smiles . . . really meant anything about the skills the captains of industry bring to the table.

But of course, they don't.

The spaces inhabited by senior management are just window dressing, and the plethora of status-affirming paraphernalia merely a reflection of the socially and psychologically constructed distance that an elevated sense of power creates between leaders and those around them.

If it's true that great leaders focus on the forest when in charge of the trees, maybe there's a rationale to the bigger plants and massive plant pots that bedeck the bigger offices in which Higher Ups are housed. Or maybe it's all just a reflection of enduring patterns people at work are forcefed to reflect differentiation and delete the notion that work is different from the rest of the activities we engage in.

Whether at home or at work, though, most of us want our space at some level to reflect ourselves. We can't always carry it off though, especially when very senior and very junior, and we don't always do it consciously.

Many high achievers leave it to the in-house 'systems', corporate design team or their PAs to make sure the office looks right. It's not the way they'd have it themselves, but they didn't get where they are today by being themselves. That's how, ironically, the personality-free zones many such men and women inhabit actually do, in effect, reflect their work personas.

It's not that they all share the same genetic preference for big plants, it's just that this is 'the look' that somebody, somewhere decided was fitting. For those busily engaged with increasing market share, upping profit margins and improving quality systems, there's little time left for arranging furniture and straightening pictures and watering plants. But there's someone else to do that, so the image remains intact.

There are countless ways to impress others with our style and sophistication, but plastering our photographs all over the walls might just have had its day. Novel affectations of superiority have arrived in the guise of technology-driven toys, touchsensitive tape dispensers and toned-down, highly designed reminders of home.

Still, despite the attempts of the system to overestimate and emphasise the stronger personal influence of those higher up the hierarchical chain, the sentiments which really link leaders and the followers are more enduring and binding than those that separate us.

No matter how much the pay scale differs, and regardless of the carpet pile depth or the size of that plant, most people at work try to fill some space with reminders of home and symbols of domestic bliss, even if that bliss if illusory and the last time the youngest really smiled like that was when she gloated as she saw her older brother chastised for kicking you.

Still, most desks are decorated with activity-driven little boys and smiling little girls, loving spouses and even purring pets. They bring memories of familiar scenes which serve as a reminder of the world outside so that we can imagine our confinement in real home life terms; if love, work and play make up our existence, then we need an attachment to each as we pursue any one.

And the pervasive sense of uncertainty that modern workplaces bring about means that our attachments to the stabilities and souvenirs of the outside world is increasing exponentially . . .

more photos, bigger photos, bigger smiles.

Personal photographs were banned from the desks of employees of the Welsh Revenue and Customs Department last year as they were said to add clutter and chaos to the work environment.

Nobody thought of banning fax machines, which seem to give forth paper with gay abandon, but the smiling children and loved ones of employees were to be removed.

So great was the outrage about this inhumane edict that industrial action was threatened and the ban was speedily lifted.

People at work fill their space with items and memories to preserve their selfesteem and their identity.

They don't leave these human attributes at reception on their way in. Allowing such expression of the whole self when at work is key to engaging people's minds properly and gaining their commitment, a crucial element in organisational dynamics.

According to research published in the Journal of Occupational and Organisational psychology (2005) our identities and sense of self derive from expression of our own tastes and needs, holding a membership of a social group (or work groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership.

Being an employee in an organisation that devalues our personal identity can result in higher levels of conflict, more group to group dysfunction and less overall organisational fit, according to the theory.

Social identity theory assumes three basic fundamentals to preserving esteem, at home and at work, and these are denied us at the peril of our masters.

Some of us express ourselves at work just as we do on our way to work: just as we wouldn't be seen dead in a red polyester shirt and cowboy boots, we make sure our desks are not the shrine to aesthetic suicide we see about us.

We strive for a sense of decorum so that, while the items on the desk must be functional, their arrangement can be, at least, easy on the eye. While appearances cannot be confused with deeper truths about our lives outside work, the cultural props we all rely on and the need to develop and validate our chosen allotments of pleasure and recreation mean that we need that golf trophy, we rely on that smiling child or that shocking purple cuddly toy as much as we do the real tools we work with daily. The laptops and memory sticks and photocopiers provide the means but the jumble we add to it all provides the real motivator for maximising satisfaction at work.