The great majority of emotionally healthy people do not have high-flying or all-consuming careers; they are not workaholics. In most cases they just have jobs, not careers at all, working in order to live rather than living in order to work. They earn in order to have enough money to meet their real needs – food or housing. They may find their work challenging and absorbing, socially entertaining and enriching; enjoyable and fulfilling. But there is no great hankering to rise up a hierarchy and get paid more or have more power; they are happy with their job as, say, a checkout assistant or librarian or primary-school teacher.
Before that, at school, these individuals did not learn in order to earn praise and, in the longer-term, a high income. They regarded education as a means for acquiring skills and knowledge, which interested and benefited them. It was not a way of beating others, proving their superiority and enabling them to obtain enviable wealth, power or status. It enabled them to remain authentic in their education and their career. Since these domains – education and career – take up so much of our lives, how we approach them is a vital part of being authentic.
When it comes to achievement in the workplace, the emotionally healthy have a well-developed concept of enough.
Many people constantly yearn for better grades during their education, however well they do. Subsequently, in the workplace, they cannot have too much pay or too much status. This is not so for the emotionally healthy. When it comes to achievement, they have a well-developed concept of enough. Professionally, they are satiable. They do not constantly compare themselves to others, or feel the need to keep up with the Joneses.
Authenticity in our careers
The kind of careers these ‘authentic’ people have, such as those examples given above, may seem dull at first. Although they are statistically unusual as people, their measurable achievements are often unexceptional. Some do have great talents but are reluctant to commit their whole lives to them. Geraldine, now aged twenty-eight, is a splendid example of this kind. She is one of the most emotionally healthy people I have ever met. Her story brightly illuminates the causes of healthy attitudes to careers.
At school she did well, although feeling no urge to work very hard. She describes her grades as ‘decent’, sufficient to get her to the good university she had in mind. Whilst she says she could have got ‘fantastic grades’ if she had worked ‘extremely hard’, she was ‘happy going along as I was’. Her younger sister was more academic because she had a ‘bigger brain’ and now has a successful computer-software company. Geraldine shows no signs of having been competitive with her sister. This was partly because Geraldine was the athletic one, an extremely gifted ballet dancer. Each daughter carved out a niche for herself, avoiding rivalry.
She took her dancing seriously and went on to become one of the best in her country. She loved it from as early as anyone could remember. Aged eleven onwards, she was up at 5.30 a.m. every morning to cross town to attend a special two-hour coaching programme before school. She cannot recall ever having had to give herself ‘a kick up the backside’ to go and practice, it was just something she adored. She enjoyed being good at it and succeeding in competitions. This is very different from most prodigies, the vast majority of whom have been put under tremendous pressure from parents at a young age.
As Geraldine got older, she moved from winning plaudits at local level, to succeeding at county level, eventually being accepted as one of the best female dancers of her age, nationally. At the main event, aged seventeen, she was rated thirteenth in the country for her particular skills. She knew there were always girls better than her but says, ‘I was quite happy with that, there was no chance of my being the very best. Getting there was my claim to fame.’ Although she could have gone to a major ballet school and on from there to become a member of the corps de ballet, rather than pursuing this any further, she chose to go to university, where she discovered boys and drink. Not that she went wild, just that having devoted herself to dancing in her teens, she felt she needed to relax more, aware that she was a bit shy and lacking in social confidence. University soon put an end to that.
Academically, she limited herself to studying what interested her and to getting good enough grades to keep future options open. Afterwards, realizing she would like a career in dancing, she trained as a teacher and has since set up a studio. To this day she loves the sensation of movement and losing herself in the music, and still dances alone for pleasure. Her studio is thriving, but she does not have grandiose commercial ambitions for it. People often ask if she is going to set up a chain of studios. She explains that all she wants to do is pay off her mortgage and perhaps, ultimately, buy her own professional premises, rather than renting as she does now. Now pregnant by her husband of three years, she expects to go back to work a couple of days a week when the baby is a year old, while an assistant she can rely on runs the studio.
She is unassuming and friendly. That she has a slim figure and a captivatingly pretty face is made incidental by her manner. By being modestly beautiful, rather than overtly, provocatively sexual, she discourages men from relating to her purely as an object of desire, and does not arouse the envy of other women. Her beauty derives partly from the calm, self-confident and considerate impression she creates. She favours tasteful, understated clothing, yet there are some quirky elements to her wardrobe, like her silver cowboy boots and bright orange boiler suits. You feel unthreatened by her, yet she is clearly a determined and capable person. She is lively, chuckling as she recalls her childhood; someone who is not much used to pondering about the past.
She has a wide circle of friends, some from her childhood (she has moved back to the area where she was brought up, close to her parents). However, there are five intimates of whom she says, ‘I could call them up and tell them anything at all. If I needed a big favour they would do everything in their power to help me.’ Intimacy with such friends is a bedrock of emotional health.
Her father worked his way up to the top of the small company. He was a ‘gentle’ parent. She has a fond memory of the smell of his hair as she held onto it when he would put her on his shoulders to play pretend horsey games. Her mother, a nurse, was also very affectionate. She gave up her career during the period of her daughters’ early years and would cuddle them a lot – ‘very physical’. Her cousins’ mother was less warm, and when they came to play they would get more hugs and cuddles from Geraldine’s mum than from their own.
Geraldine’s devotion to dancing came from enjoyment.
Hers were self-sacrificing parents. During a period when money was short, they became vegetarian so that they could afford to give their daughters meat. They did argue sometimes – Geraldine can remember sitting at the top of the stairs hearing a row – but mostly the relationship was harmonious. Geraldine’s husband has commented on how unusually close she is to her father; she is very involved in both parents’ lives to this day, and they in hers. Along with her husband’s mother, they will help with the childcare when she returns to work.
Asked what ambition her father had for her, she says it was ‘to be happy’. Most parents say that, but hers really put it into practice. At school she was never pushed, though she would be restricted to her room if she skived off doing her homework. There was no huge pressure to do well, partly because she always did reasonably well anyway, having no urge to kick against authority. Being a secure, relaxed child, she engaged with the world, and was receptive and able to learn, if she applied herself. She can remember being hit twice by her mother for being naughty, occasions that stand out because they were isolated events. She was not a disobedient or troublesome child, but in any case her parents were not keen on corporal punishment.
Most notable of all, in terms of emotional health, was the fact that she was that very rare thing, an exceptional achiever who had not been driven into it by her parents. Her devotion to dancing came from enjoyment. Her mother did encourage her to go to the studio, but when it was suggested she go every day before school, both parents were a bit doubtful. Although she danced seriously, to a very high level, the fact that it was not a compulsion is shown by the ease with which she gave it up when she went to university. Geraldine is that exceptional person, someone who has remained authentic during both her education and her career.
Geraldine’s high-quality early care provided the foundation for her authenticity and aspirations when she went to school and subsequently. As we have seen in the last two chapters, feeling responsively loved as an infant and toddler nurtures identity and fluid, two-way relating. Geraldine did not chase glittering prizes to motivate herself. Rather, she had clear ideas of what she enjoyed and what would be enough success. At school, she could have got top grades if she wanted; she chose not to. She could have been a top ballerina. Today she could expand her business and make much more money, but she prefers to put her family life first. Her early years were the basis for this satiability, but her current emotional health also results from the values her parents passed on to her, and even more important than that, the way in which those values were transmitted.
Identified values
Values are the rules we use to decide what is right and wrong, good and bad, real and true. They get passed down the generations, not by genes, but by patterns of care. For example, parents who steal tend to have offspring who do so too, or who believe stealing is acceptable or even admirable. However, not all children of thieving parents also thieve, and siblings differ in the extent to which they imitate their parents in this and all other respects. It is also the case that plenty of offspring of honest parents are dishonest. So the passing of values from parent to child is not simply a question of imitation or learning, a downloading of moral software – it is also heavily affected by the manner in which parents communicate the values as part of the relationship with the child.
Although conscience has its foundations in identity and emotional security, the way that parents reward and punish their children, from around the age of three, is also tremendously important. By that age children can speak and understand language, with ever-increasing sophistication. Parents’ words, as well as the example they set, offer clear indications of what they regard as desirable. If the explicit message is ‘it’s good to steal’, that is going to have an impact. But the key is the response to the child’s behaviour. A child whose parent advocates stealing but becomes furious when the child is caught will not be a successful thief. If it’s a wily thief you want, much more effective will be to display sympathy and offer tips when the child is caught: ‘Bad luck, darling, the next time you go shoplifting it’s really important to make sure that there are no security cameras focused on you when you hide the product under your coat.’ Of course, most parents are not trying to nurture thieves; my point is that, at its simplest, nothing is more effective in getting a child to adopt your values than the mixture of consistent, pragmatic advice with authentic warmth.
Usually parents encourage offspring to be law-abiding, civil and sociable, and to do well at school. All these goals are infinitely more likely to be achieved if the child actually chooses them for themselves. This is known as ‘identification’. The child listens to and watches the parent, and if they are well nurtured, adopts the desired characteristic as an act of will. This volition, deciding to adopt a parental conviction, starts with the parent seeing things from the child’s point of view. It is natural for little children to be assertive, demanding even, in their dealings with the world. For instance, to return to stealing, we are not born with a knowledge of property ownership. When placed with other children, the average 18-month-old will try and take a toy from another child eight times per hour. A year later, a toddler will still try to take toys from others three times in the same period. The evolution from this behaviour to a law-abiding citizen depends on how the adults caring for the child react at different ages.
If, early on, the response is angry or forceful, the toddler learns no lessons. It can barely talk or understand what is said to it; explaining a principle like ‘it’s wrong to take toys from other children’ is a waste of breath. However, from around age three, words can be used to help the child see the consequences of grabbing others’ toys. For example, the child can be encouraged to think about how it feels when his or her own toys are taken. Then you can ask them how the other child feels when he or she takes their toys, fostering a mindfulness of another’s experience based on one’s own. For much of the time before age five, whilst this kind of reasoning will help, the child will need close watching by a responsive adult, and when it looks as if it is about to do something undesirable, the adult can quickly intervene to forestall atrocities, perhaps gently drawing attention to the principle behind the situation. By around age five, the child should have a pretty good grasp of what is desired, and if the care has been calm and explanatory, and affectionate, it will voluntarily adopt the desired behaviour: identification.
This was clearly the case with Geraldine. Her parents did not impose their values on her, they encouraged her to decide for herself what she did. Whilst they certainly liked the fact that she enjoyed dancing, they were not pulling the strings. A clear sign that identification has occurred is when someone does things throughout life because they enjoy them, like hobbies. At its best, they manage to build a career or find a job based on these interests.
Introjected values
Unfortunately, the kind of care which results in identification is very much the exception. Far commoner is for harassed and exhausted parents to simply bark out more or less angry orders. Of course, all parents are guilty of this sometimes, but in some cases it is continual.
This usually happens from an age when the child is far too young to grasp a principle, and therefore unable to decide voluntarily to do as the parent wishes. The child continues to be ‘disobedient’, though in reality, before age three, it is merely doing what comes naturally, rather than actually being defiant. Misinterpreting the child’s response as wilful and the act of a ‘little devil’, many parents resort to physical coercion – grabbing toys from the child, for instance – and to actual violence, verbal and physical. Often this is done erratically, the parent becoming furious – letting off steam by shouting and hitting, expressing their emotions rather than trying to teach a lesson.
Too often, the parent is simply unhappy themselves and using the ‘disciplining’ of the child as a way of expressing their own misery, a dustbin for unwanted emotion. If the parent is angry or sad, creating those emotions in the child can make the parent feel better. The parent’s unhappiness might also make them inconsistent in their discipline, so behaviour that was punished last time is liable to be ignored this time, or even worse, rewarded. Frequently the parent engages in ‘nattering’, keeping up a continual commentary of negative injunctions: ‘Don’t take that toy, put that toy down, I said put it down, I already told you, put that down.’ A vicious circle can arise: the child’s behaviour gets ever worse, and this in turn provokes increasingly punitive parental responses.
By age five, the typical child is being more or less coerced into obedience with strict punishments. At one extreme this might mean being made to sit on a ‘naughty step’ or being sent to their room; at the other, regular beatings. As school rears into sight, middle-class children are particularly likely to find that parental love is conditional on performance. Only if he or she does what the parent wants will he or she be praised and loved. It is true that the combination of coercive early care and this pressure to perform may ‘work’, in the sense that it results in the child displaying the desired traits. But if so, the child has not chosen to be civil or studious, he or she is doing so out of fear of either painful punishment or having love withdrawn. Yes, the child does do his or her homework and says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ on cue. But this is done with a robotic, empty emotion, and not very far beneath the surface, there is usually a sullen, angry sense of menace, while at others a flat, depressed hopelessness. Covert rebellion may ensue. In the teens there is liable to be secret cigarette-smoking, sex and shoplifting.
When parents pass their values on to children in these ways it is known as ‘introjection’: the child exhibits the principles and desired behaviour but without owning them, instead experiencing them as imposed and meaningless. By contrast, the child who has identified with the values understands why they are doing what they are doing; the introjected child is just going through the motions.
High achievers
A large proportion of exceptional achievers have introjected, rather than identified with, their parents’ aspirations. People who identify with values are not compulsive in their quest for success, whereas those who introject are. Plenty of emotionally healthy people could be among the best in their field, like twinkle-toed Geraldine, but they choose not to be. As a rule of thumb, it is safe to say that if you are a high achiever, being emotional healthy is hard, albeit not impossible. Compulsion, resulting from coercive parenting, seems almost essential to get to the top. This is the case with Gloria, the founder and chief executive of a $1-billion company in a Far Eastern country. Ostensibly a glowing tale of rags to riches, hers is really one of sad solitude and emotional ill-health.
Born in a small village in India, as well as having to apply herself to reading and writing, from the age of eight Gloria had to earn money.
When we met I was struck immediately by her demureness. She slunk into the room like a cat, shy and rather British in her desire not to impose on me. In her mid-forties, she had remarkably clear skin and few lines on her face. She reminded me of a bookish 10-year-old, the kind who passes their spare time flitting between Harry Potter and their science homework – sealed off, the sort of girl who is unconcerned about having no friends and has even less interest in boys. Although her clothes looked expensive, I had an impression that she could not care less about them, as if someone had chosen them for her (this turned out to be true – she employs someone to do it). There was a curious feeling of emptiness and invisibility about her, a hologram-like quality.
She was born in a small village in India. Her father died when she was only seven, and because her mother was unable to have any other children, all her mother’s aspirations were poured into her. Where she lived there was no running water or electricity; poverty had passed down the generations for millennia. However, her mother was determined that Gloria would be different. Self-improvement was drummed into her from the beginning. She described with a rare display of emotion the fear she felt at failing her mother. A strap would be used to slap the back of her legs if she did less than perfectly at school, or if she showed any sign of independence. Even worse was the coldness. An icy expression on her mother’s face accompanied the words, ‘So what happened to the other 7 per cent?’ when Gloria reported having scored 93 per cent on a maths test.
At the same time, she was constantly required to look after herself and not allowed to depend on her mother. As well as having to apply herself to reading and writing, from the age of eight she had to earn money. She worked in factories and on farms, but she quickly realized she could make more money selling bread and fruit from the market. She found this easy; it was simply a matter of persuading people to make deals with her. She called this ‘business’, in her mind, and decided early on that it was how she would escape poverty when she was older. One of her teachers told her that ‘knowledge is power’, and she instantly recognized that education would be the way to succeed in business and became a star student. Aged fifteen, spurred on by her mother, she borrowed the money to go to a big city and slept on the floor of a building where some construction workers from her village were living. She pitched up unannounced at all the best schools to offer herself as a pupil, and finally, after being sent away by most of them, a headmaster allowed her to take a test. She excelled to such a degree that she was immediately accepted. She found a job to pay for the fees and worked eighteen-hour days, mixing schooling with earning. At university she studied biology and afterwards, having spent a few years in a large multinational corporation, identified the product which has subsequently made her a billionaire.
There are a number of textbook features that Gloria shares with others who have introjected values. Losing a parent before the age of fourteen is remarkably common among high achievers. This has been true of 1 in 3 members of every professional domain that has been studied, from British prime ministers to American presidents to British entrepreneurs to French poets. Almost any famous dictator you can think of had this experience. While most people suffering this loss merely find themselves rendered depressed or antisocial by the misfortune, in the case of a small minority, if the prior relationship with the dead parent and the care received after that parent’s death are right, the loss seems to inspire a ruthless determination to snatch destiny from fate. In Gloria’s case, she had been close to her father and decided at that young age that she must use success to make herself as invulnerable as possible to random chance. Of course it was also vital that her mother coerced her to be a perfect student.
But Gloria has paid a heavy price in her emotional life for this introjection. She has never married or had any sexual relationships. Her mother died when she was in her early twenties and she seems to have suffered a temporary nervous breakdown at that time. Wandering forlorn and confused, she came upon a church and ‘took Jesus into my heart’. When I asked if she was happy she said this was not an issue for her. Her face remained impassive; she would not say if she ever felt really down or lonely. She explained that she had Jesus. In fact, as I happened to discover from people who know her well (although they are not close to her, she has occasionally opened up to a few), she lives an isolated, workaholic life, revolving around her employees. She has no truly intimate relationships. Whilst she is enthusiastic about the idea of building her business ever larger, she is someone with no other interests apart from her weekly visits to church.
She is famous for the coldness with which she hires and fires. Despite her anodyne appearance, she is a ruthless businesswoman who has thought nothing of buying and selling companies without heed for the social consequences. The small wages she pays to her compatriots working in the Indian factories where she outsources some of her industrial processes seems not to worry her. She expressed no concern when I raised this.
Success
The coercive methods used by Gloria’s mother meant she (Gloria) introjected values, becoming a ‘success machine’. When asked, she has no idea why it is important to continually seek to make her company bigger; she has no concept of enough. Although her life might seem like a triumph of the will over adversity, it is nothing of the kind. Gloria was programmed by her mother, and has made very few choices in her life. The death of her father is doubtless a major factor in the scale of her success, making her that much more determined to win in a dog-eat-dog commercial world. But this is not something into which she has any insight; her wish to be successful is a compulsion, driven by the fear of being the victim of fate and another tragic loss.
A great many children of the middle and upper classes in the developed world are subject to similarly coercive care, resulting in introjected values. This is part of the reason why many adults from these classes have been shown to be less aware of the feelings of others, less emotionally intelligent, than adults from less-privileged backgrounds. They are like robots, and often speak of themselves in these terms when they are being really honest. They feel they cannot afford to be concerned with others, they must put themselves first. Having felt neglected and unloved, they have little sympathy for anyone else. At its most extreme this takes the form of subclinical psychopathy, creating a ruthless, cold person, who is manipulative and interested only in advancing their own interests. The vast majority of high achievers come from the higher social classes. That may help to explain why top executives are four times more likely to be subclinical psychopaths.
Of course, how this is expressed must be adapted to the corporation you are working for and the country you live in. There is good evidence that in America disagreeable people end up being paid more than friendly, likeable ones. This finding might seem surprising – you would have thought that popular people would do best – but in America shoving others out of your way or climbing on their backs is almost essential for success. There is also good evidence that narcissism is rampant among American high achievers. Full-blown narcissism is a state of ‘me-me-me’ attention-seeking grandiosity. The individual compensates for feelings of worthlessness and invisibility by exhibiting their opposite. One American study measured narcissism in 200 celebrities and in 200 young adults with MBAs. These results were compared with a nationally representative sample using the same questionnaire. Sure enough, the celebs were significantly more narcissistic than both the MBAs and the general population. There were four kinds of celeb included in the sample. The most narcissistic were those who had become famous through a reality-TV show (these individuals also demonstrated high levels of ‘exploitativeness’ and ‘vanity’); next came the comedians (highest on ‘exhibitionism’ and ‘superiority’), then the actors and finally the musicians. Interestingly, the narcissism did not correlate to how long the celeb had been famous, strongly suggesting that fame itself did not make them narcissistic – they were already narcissists beforehand. Young adults with MBAs were chosen for comparison because they were known already to be inclined to narcissism. Sure enough, the MBAs – the business leaders of the future – were significantly more narcissistic than the general population.
The truth is that people who get to the top or into the public eye in America tend to be narcissists. But this is only the tip of their cultural iceberg. The majority of Americans hold unrealistically positive views of themselves, believing they are much better than average in a variety of ways. Indeed, ‘bigging yourself up’ (known technically as self-enhancement) may be necessary in America. Americans who do so are actually less likely to be mentally ill than those who don’t. It may simply be a matter of adaptation to put others down and exaggerate your wonderfulness in such a competitive society. Somewhat bizarrely, researchers characterize those who have realistic appraisals of themselves as suffering from ‘depressive realism’.
But this version of social reality is not universal. If you live in Japan and East Asia, far from living in a rose-tinted bubble of positive illusions, if anything you downplay your achievements. In Scandinavia, you cross the road to avoid seeming superior, aiming to level yourself with others. For instance, three times fewer Swedes than Americans (15 per cent versus 46 per cent) estimate themselves to be among the most skillful drivers in their country. This is not to say that citizens of these less self-enhancing nations are cringing pushovers. They do partake in self-enhancement when competing with others from beyond their social networks – business adversaries, for example. Nor do they have diminished individuality. Denmark is ranked the seventh most individualistic country in the world, above most other Western European countries. Yet it also has the strongest tradition of modesty. Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia, has Jante law, which is a system of cultural mores that says ‘don’t think you are better than anybody else’. Although widely derided by Danes as a joke, in practice they adhere to Jante law strictly. It is a cultural prototype on a par with its opposite, the American Dream.
A study of Danish and American undergraduates and adults demonstrated that Danes Big It Up considerably less than Americans; in fact, they go to great lengths to play down differences in ability. Yet they are also more independent-minded. For example, the Danish undergraduates are more likely to think autonomously from their parents’ preferences. This reflects parenting and an education system which fosters identification rather than introjection of values.
It is likely that the least emotionally healthy populations are to be found in English-speaking countries like America and Britain – certainly, the prevalence of mental illness among the populations of these countries is twice that of mainland Western Europe, at 23 per cent versus 11.5 per cent. Carving out an emotionally healthy career in such places may be harder. But wherever you live, the key to greater emotional health in your career is to understand the motives and goals you have in the workplace.
Intrinsic and extrinsic goals and motives
Those who, from childhood, identified with their parents’ values have what are called ‘intrinsic’ goals and motives. They do things because they enjoy them. The state of mind during intrinsically motivated activity is a flow, a strong connection and oneness with the activity. You become so involved that you forget yourself, and afterwards it seems as if more time has passed than expected. There is a heightened sense of reality and a special freedom.
By contrast, those who have introjected values have what are called ‘extrinsic’ goals and motives. In choosing a career, and whilst at work, they seek praise and material rewards in order to feel they are fulfilling the aims of parents, and subsequently teachers and employers. Flow is fractured by an overriding concern to meet external demands. Focused on the reward, they become disconnected from the pleasures of the activity that produces it. This has been proven many times in experimental studies. When a reward is offered for performing an activity that was initially intrinsically satisfying, there is not only a measurable drop in interest and enjoyment in the individual carrying it out, but also in their motivation to do it at all. For example, in one experiment, two groups of students were given puzzle cubes to play with. One group was paid for doing so, the other was not. The paid ones lost interest sooner and were more likely to stop and read magazines that had been left lying about. Money changed the focus. The unpaid volunteers reported playing with the cube because it was fun or because they chose to; for the paid students, the interesting, enjoyable, challenging aspect of the activity got lost. In the context of work, people with intrinsic motives and goals have been shown to seek intellectual fulfilment, creative self-expression and a sense of mastery in completing tasks. The extrinsic look for evermore money and professional prestige.
Of course, there is an important caveat that must be made about these findings. They do not apply in situations where the person is chasing money or status for reasons of survival. No one has ever been made emotionally or mentally unhealthy by trying to earn enough money to pay for antibiotics that will save their sick child’s life, or to buy food for a starving family. Survival materialism is the norm for a large slice of the population of the world, who live in absolute poverty, and it does no harm. What is corrosive is relative materialism, which only arises in comparatively rich people, like Gloria, who have enough money for food, shelter and medical care, but are trapped on a hedonic treadmill, intent on making more money to fund more luxuries, unable to understand the idea of ‘enough’, and whose introjected values make them chase evermore success, money and so on.
Exercise
In practical terms, if you are one of these people, there are a number of things you can do to increase your emotional health in terms of your career. Just because you are an employee whose mind and body have been purchased to perform certain tasks by an employer does not preclude intrinsic motivation.
If you write down all the tasks you perform in your job, you will find some promote greater flow than others. Aim to spend more time doing them, if you can. Of course, you may be in a job where there are no opportunities to experience flow whatsoever. If so, you need a new career. However, this is rarely necessary. Once you start going with the flow, it’s surprising how much more effectively you start doing your work, as well as how much more enjoyable it becomes. This can give you more power and ultimately lead to better pay and greater options.
Office politics
A key part of being emotionally hea lthy at work is to become adept at office politics (I write about this at greater length in my book Office Politics). This skill has been given a bad name. Most people regard it as a nasty device that corporate Machiavellis use to shaft other people – taking credit for others’ work, or passing the blame onto others for their mistakes. In fact, office politics is a normal and unavoidable part of everyday working life. It is inevitable that your interests do not always coincide with those of colleagues or business adversaries, and that in order for you to get what you want, someone else will have to do without. Office politics are what enable this. It requires an awareness of what others are thinking and feeling in the present moment, and of what is in your own mind – both key requirements of emotional health. With this awareness, you can make plans to get your own way, whether that means ensuring a particular job is done well or contributing to the greater good of your organization. (It can, of course, also help you get a raise or the corner office you want.) You also need to learn to ‘network’, another dirty word. But there is nothing unhealthy about forming alliances with other like-minded people or those whose interests coincide with yours, and cooperating with them. Finally, you need to at least seem to be sincere; people must feel you are to be trusted. All of these things are emotionally healthy traits.
It is true that some of the skills required in office politics come more naturally to people who have introjected their values, since who they are has been defined externally from early childhood. ‘Chameleonism’ is easier if you look outwards for self-definition, for example, and it is true that people who know how and when to be a chameleon are more successful professionally. But that does not mean that those who identified with their parents cannot acquire these skills if they decide to do so, nor does it mean that authenticity need suffer.
To succeed at office politics you need to have certain practical social skills, which does not mean being like this with everyone all of the time. To be a chameleon you have to work out who the other person wants you to be, and then be that person for them.
A manager was having a lot of trouble with one of his bosses. Rather than challenging the boss, he realized that she was someone who spoke in a certain assertive manner and was obsessed by timekeeping. When he adopted a similar manner and – mirroring her – subtly indicated that he was also very concerned to ensure that employees arrived on time, she stopped giving him grief.
To be really good at office politics you need to be able to define precisely what your goal is, devise a plan whereby you can persuade the relevant people to your way of thinking, then choose exactly the right moment to use exactly the right words and manner to express yourself. Elaborate chicanery is almost never required; it is simply a case of understanding how to get what you want, in terms of your self-presentation, your performance. Yes, it helps to be competent at the tasks that the job requires, and to be a hard worker, but without office political skills you will be lucky to thrive. Since the vast majority of jobs in developed nations are in service industries or based in offices, an emotionally healthy person will naturally grasp that knowing how to handle other people – which is not the same as manipulating them in order to exploit them – is essential in order to be effective.
You have to develop authentic personae to survive in the workplace, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. We all develop a variety of personae to deal with others, in all situations, including in family life. At the office, an emotionally healthy person will consciously develop different masks to be put on when dealing with different people. Perhaps you hate one of your bosses. The emotionally healthy person will realize that it’s necessary to smile at this boss, sometimes even laugh at their jokes, concealing his or her real feelings.
Of course, in the end, all of us have to spend some of our working hours doing tasks that are not enjoyable. The emotionally healthy person finds ways to spend less time doing such tasks. Using a combination of insight into our motives and greater office political skills, all of us have it in our power to meet the challenge of being more emotionally healthy in our careers. Behind our authentic personae, we can keep our core values intact.