Thoughts on Work
Let’s Define Work
What is “Work” for you? There are infinite examples one could come to but take a moment to answer this question, deeply and honestly for yourself. As you think about it and explore all of the different contexts of work in your life, what is coming up? For many, I am sure there are feelings of stress or anxiety (think about our common way of looking at Mondays) and for others it can be more excitement and desire (yes, this is possible). There are naturally many more feelings that likely come up when thinking about work, but the objective here is to simply become aware of yours.
Apart from the emotions that come up while thinking about work, I also want to recognize that work, itself, likely has multiple contexts for each of us. To name a few of these contexts, we could be talking about our 9–5 job, fixing up our house or yard, school, raising kids, or the business we are starting, growing, and pouring our life into. All of these things, among other definitions I am sure you’re thinking about, make up the work we do each day. We wake up and we go to work, in some way or another, to do, accomplish, or get better at something.
For the purpose of this article, I will be focusing on the work in the context of vocation. This may be the job we go to every day at the most basic form, or the calling of our life’s work as an ongoing pursuit at the more complex level. Either way, the “work” I refer to is the thing we give our energy to each day that provides us a living wage.
What Works for Me
To bring you into my journey a bit more as I write, I am currently a sales employee for a multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation. When I closed my eyes a moment ago, of course listening to my own instruction to explore what feelings work brought up for me, I felt sadness, regret and gratitude. It is important for me to recognize that I am grateful for my job and the lifestyle it affords me. Unfortunately, however, my sadness and regret comes from a belief that I jeopardize my integrity by working for a company that I believe fails in meeting the following objectives:
Makes the world or its people better
Makes me a better person
Creates an environment for its employees to grow up in to mature adults, living through integrity
Building on my own situation, I also believe that the majority of companies and corporations have employees that feel the way I do. Consciously or unconsciously.
On one side, we are grateful for a job and for a paycheck. As a result of the system we are all forced to live in, we need a paying job to do each day that helps us eat, pay off our debt, and do the things we want or have to do (the need for insurance is a whole different part of this sad attachment that I won’t get into much here, but worth a parenthetical acknowledgement).
On the other side, we sacrifice our integrity and a deliberate maturation process to make sure we keep this job and subsequently, the food on our table and the roof over our heads. Our employers don’t often care about this lack of integrity because the primary purpose of most companies and corporations is to make a profit. As long as employees are doing the job they are supposed to do and the organization is profitable and growing, everyone is perfectly fine sacrificing integrity and individual growth. That’s the way it is.
My underlying argument here is that the current value of image in a corporate or organizational environment forces people to sacrifice their integrity to remain employed, thus killing their spirit to grow and find true meaning as working adults.
Where We Are With Work Today
Since they will be primary points of my discussion further, I feel it necessary to clearly define “image” and “integrity,” as I see them. Image would be the outward facing appearance we hope to project through our actions, looks, and words. This is what we want others to see and think when they refer to us. Think about how most job interviews go, suit and tie, embellished resume, and a vehement attempt to look as good as possible in an hour.
Integrity, on the other end of the spectrum, is our whole self. This is the alignment between our inner feelings and thoughts with our outward beliefs and actions. Given that “integral” actually means “whole” think of integrity as something we pursue over time that brings our ways of thinking and being together. This would be more of when you decide to call out your boss in a meeting because their profitable business decision is clearly marginalizing customers.
As I write this, work is undergoing a radical change here in the US and across the globe. Some of the obvious changes we can all see would be the adoption of remote working and the development of virtual versions of work. We also can gather that there is a natural fear growing in people, who recognize the impact of external forces on their job security.
A bit further underneath that surface, we may also see an interesting increase in individual growth at work. With people unsure of their companies’ ability to survive along with the struggles to meet new virtual demands, of course there will be people terrified of not making the cut, as mentioned. However, there may also be individual development or organizational growth through “nothing to lose” innovative strategies and learnings that come from adversity. Antifragility is a wonderful thing, when consciously pursued.
What is happening, along with forced changes in the system of corporate and organizational work, is that leaving the physical workplace has forced the actual work being done to become more important than the image presented in doing it.
Additionally, social reforms and social justice movements are forcing corporations and companies to address diversity and inclusion within the organization amidst this remote environment. In that address, employees of color and other minority groups are getting a real look into the role diversity and inclusion plays into their lived work experience.
We joke about not wearing pants while on a video conference call, but if we didn’t wear a jacket and tie on that same call, would it really matter? Think about what that projects for a moment, before you continue. Simply because you are on a call with people from work, it’s ok to not have pants on, as long as you show them through your shirt, jacket, and tie that you are professional. Seems a bit like lying to me.
Moreover, ask one of your minority coworkers how they feel about a performative, image-based approach to diversity and inclusion in the work place. Do you think that all of a sudden, after a few Black Lives Matter protests, that a company’s value of image will be replaced by one of integrity, which would be the core of true acceptance and inclusivity of all people? Diversity and inclusion is meant to drive change in thought and innovation, not satiate public pressure.
The role image plays in this new work environment is wonderfully ironic, but also quite revealing. Will this new approach to business finally reframe how we see the people with work with, for, and with whom we manage? Is it possible that we may finally decide to value character and quality of work more than we do extroversion and late nights at the office? Will we finally move beyond being satisfied with a veneer of supporting equity and inclusion of all people instead of actually valuing what difference and diversity can create in the workplace?
Can you envision a world where the way we dress, and socialize will finally be exposed for the purposeless place they hold in our judgement of others? Perhaps where the comfort of hiring and working with people who look and speak like you defers to the courage it takes to grow through discomfort and difference? And in all seriousness, when will we finally realize that wearing a tie is the one of the most pointless things in the world?
Deliberately Developmental Work
This project, Deliberate Self, began as a result of a drastic shift in my work life. I am not a self development expert by any stretch of my imagination. I am just a guy who’s been working hard to find his way toward helping myself and others grow up. It’s taken some tough times but I am finally able to work on myself and express myself in a way that is in service of my own integrity.
Like many, this pandemic has had a significant impact on the work I do, the company I work for, and the industry of which I am a part. Yet, it hasn’t explicitly shifted the value of image versus integrity in either, despite the blatant reasons and once-in-a-generation space to do so.
One of my draws to coaching was from reading An Everyone Culture by Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan, where they describe the Deliberately Developmental Organization (the inspiration for the name of my company). Kegan and Lahey, known for their Adult Development Theory as Harvard psychologists, make a very clear distinction of organizations who are fine having socially minded employees and leaders (less mature), instead of more self-authored employees and self-transforming leaders.
Very quickly, I realized I was working in a place that simply did not match my values for deliberate growth. The book hones in on reaching integrity, through the stages of development. It displays companies that build an organizational culture to thrive off of people who push each other to be self aware in a radically honest, but in a self-developmental context. Ultimately making the organization better through, you guessed it, better, more mature adult employees.
According to Kegan and Lahey, in most organizations, employees spend too much time and expend too much energy “covering up their weakness, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations.”
Why? Because in most organizations, the focus isn’t on individual integrity, it’s on individual performance. Again, the irony is worth pointing out. As a result of a performance-driven culture, employees believe they have to present a successful image, or else be fired. We then spend copious amounts of energy on keeping that image alive each day so our bosses and teammates think we’re awesome enough to want to keep working with. All the while, that energy is not actually going into doing quality work.
It is such a messed up, flawed system. We come to work and spend energy pretending because we believe other people believe that we wouldn’t be enough if we didn’t pretend. Wrap your head around that.
What Works for The Company May Not Work for You
It’s a tough spot that I believe a lot of people find themselves in, including myself. Working for a company that isn’t necessarily “bad”, but the culture or system values performance and image over true self and true integrity. Even if you’re not fully aware of the “mis-valued” situation you’re in, something just never seems right.
The way you talk at work versus at home or with friends. The egg shells you’re walking on any time you’re with co-workers outside of the office. The judgmental, passive aggressive communication styles that you experience or even adopt. It all feels icky, but that’s how it’s always been, so that’s how it’s supposed to be.
The issue, however, at least for me, is that my career path was a pretty direct route to where I am now. Undoubtedly it would have likely been a direct path to any other similar corporate culture that valued image and performance. I went to a four year university, worked an entry level job and then got a Masters. Once I graduated, I began working in sales and customer service, corporate and start up, zig zagging my way up for 10 years to a company that is, well, corporate..
And look, by most accounts it’s a great company. I am sure most of them are. They treat their people well. They value innovation and quality, which shows up clearly in their superior products. Many of my co-workers have been happily employed for over 15 years, traveling the world and climbing the ladder. Cool for us!
No. It’s not cool. Regardless of how nice and generous it all is on the surface, deeper down it’s a prison of false values driven by self interest, conformity, and image preservation. By working in this prison, we all subject our souls to the splitting nature of living outside our integrity.
Here’s the thing. The company I work for, like many others out there, serves one primary purpose: Profit. And I get it. That’s how capitalism works. There are shareholders who need to be satisfied and a fundamental belief that financial performance is the most important performance. The system is clear and the people within it buy in. In turn they can buy nice things and maintain an earned status after years of “success,” climbing in that system.
Integrity Versus Image At Work
One of the most prominent and problematic qualities of a profit-focused system is the emphasis on self interest to make sure those profits keep coming in. To protect that self-interest, it brings me right back to that culture of image and performance. From the top down, each part of the system has to look and act a certain way to represent the overall corporate image of success.
The CEO and President have to make sure the company holds the right image in the eyes of the community, investors, and customers. Marketing strategy will target the ideal customers with a very enticing value proposition, displaying the image that analytics say is most attractive. Leaders within the organization will work long hours, making sure their teams do the same. An image of commitment to performing at a high level.
The company as a whole maintains an image of responsibility and benevolence by supporting the trendy social justice causes and ensuring the public promotion of environmental initiatives. This of course leads to the employees posting everywhere about how proud they are to work for such a great company because, of course, their image is tied to their employer and it makes them feel good to ancillary be affiliated with its “greater good” agenda.
Despite the amount of potential influence, unfortunately, driving actual social or environmental change can never come at the expense of the bottom line. True benevolence comes with sacrifice and you very rarely see profit-focused organizations sacrificing those profits. Do we post about that? Of course not. That would be honest and likely get us fired.
Taking it back to the individual employee, this culture is toxic for our growth as mature human beings. Here’s a quick example to help visualize the extent of this toxicity.
Imagine looking up to your business man father as a child. He works hard, dresses well, and tells you how important your reputation is. He brings you places and congratulates you when you present yourself well to strangers. He travels a lot and you only see him on the weekends but thats ok because you live in a nice home and occasionally get to travel with him.
On his lead, you graduate college and pursue a masters. You got hired by a global corporation as a business development specialist. Now your career is in your hands. You have a nice salary with bonus opportunities, benefits, perks, travel, and a team of young go-getters like you. You know you need to stand out in order to make sure you’re noticed and give yourself an opportunity at a promotion. You play it safe so as to make little to no mistakes.
You go out of your way to make sure your boss sees the work you’re doing and has a very positive picture in their mind of who you are. You point out the areas you are doing well as often as possible and unconsciously omit sharing the successes of your teammates. Your accounts love you because you’re always available to them and are very often overeager to give them everything they ask for. You post pictures of your work trips and share news of your company’s successes.
You think your reputation is on point. Everyone loves you and you are busting your ass to keep it that way.
On the surface, that sounds pretty ok, right? Even if all of your energy goes into this, it has to be worth it to get to that manager/boss level. Who cares if you gossip or cover up mistakes? What does it matter if you have no time to read or learn? If you want to go home each night, get high, and watch Game of Thrones reruns, that is totally cool. You earned the time to relax. You are on the grind and you put in 14 hour work days to show everyone how much you care.
So what if you can’t seem to keep or even find a meaningful and committed relationship? Tinder is pretty fun, right? It’s also a rush when you get matched and get that hit of dopamine. You don’t need a relationship right now anyway. You are young, wild, and “free” despite the long work days and availability on the weekend. Plus you seem to get a nice little boost from the freedom to flirt at work.
And if you are lucky enough to have a partner, all of the work will be for them one day anyway so they should appreciate your focus being on the job. Don’t worry about that nagging feeling of emptiness. Life’s a bitch and then you die. They should be focused on themselves. You’ll put in your time now and once you’re raking in the big bucks, it will all have been for the right reasons.
In a nutshell, this is my story.
If it doesn’t quite match up to yours, that’s fine. Try a little exercise though and honestly look at the amount of energy you put into your professional climb rather than becoming a better human being. Once you realize it’s too much, forgive yourself. This is the standard. Your education and schooling set you up for this. Your company hasn’t yet figured out that better people make better employees, not better performers.
Sadly, however, this could be the life-long professional pattern you find yourself in. Perpetually sacrificing a deliberate effort to become emotionally mature for the sake of your image at work. Seriously, this should be a diagnosable disease. Corporatedoucheitis.
The Cure
What is crazy is how fickle our focus on image ultimately is. How we look physically when we are young is not how we will look when we are old. How someone perceives us is totally dependent on any number of uncontrollable forces, such as their own biases or how breakfast is currently sitting in their stomach.
The way we dress, the style of our hair, the amount of tattoos on our skin, all have 0.0% impact on the work we do, our ability to do CPR, or any other productive, serving, benevolent, life-saving, love-filled action of which we are capable. If you aren’t seeing how ridiculous this system is at this point, I really don’t know why you are still reading.
Fortunately, I believe there is a way to cure this treacherous affliction. This cure will take time and patience, along with deliberate effort, courage and honesty. It begins with awareness. Awareness is the mechanism that will drive change. As awareness spreads, we must then hold each other accountable for growing up.
Maturation is the pursuit of true integrity and any time that mark is missed, we can hold each other accountable with loving firmness. Not judgement. Not ridicule. Not harshness. Those are image-based responses. Integrity recognizes the challenging journey someone is on to find the same and honors that journey with honesty, gratitude, and kindness.
Awareness is a simultaneous effort and need for business leaders, employees, and those just beginning their careers. They need to be made aware that integrity is more important than image. Our young adults need to be educated in this way. Our business leaders need to understand this way and make it a part of their organizational culture. Everyone in between needs to then be focused on learning more and holding those around them accountable to do the same.
Let’s begin with awareness and see how many people turn their back on integrity once they understand where the futility of image will get them.
Get to Work
For a long time, work has made me feel a little empty inside. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, but I knew something was either wrong or missing. This was incredibly confusing because I had done everything I was supposed to do. I went to school, got my degrees, dressed the right way, said the right things, and knew the right people. My reputation was everything and as far as I could tell, it was a good one. Nonetheless, something was still not quite right.
It took a strong partner, a global pandemic and the space to slow down to radically inquire within myself to figure out what was going on. For my work to be meaningful, it needed to help me grow as a human, not just as an employee. For me to grow, I needed to be doing work that is in service of others, that created an environment that held me accountable, and that focused on my integrity as an understanding, honest, and maturing adult.
Next time you hear the phrase “Work/Life Balance” think a bit deeper on it. Why should there be a difference? Why would you bring anything other than your life to your work? What is causing you to split yourself in that way?
If you take one thing away from this article, it should be this:
Your integrity as a growing, maturing adult is far more valuable and sustainable than the image you try to project.
Now let’s get to work.
