Are people merely steps you use to climb up the workplace ladder?

Photo: © Thomas Schmid — Fotolia.com

There’s a phenomenon I’ve been following for years, one that takes place largely at work, whether ‘work’ takes place in a corporation, a sports arena, the arts or politics, or anywhere else. The phenomenon is this: there seems to be an ever-increasing number of people who use their social skills to create workplace relationships purely to climb the rank-related workplace ladder. They possess all the aplomb and niceties that go along with creating and maintaining relationships, but use them almost solely in the workplace.

Such people are great at relating to their peers, their bosses, clients and followers — all the typical business stakeholders. But when it comes to their relationships outside the workplace — spouses, partners, friends, children — there’s nothing there. They’re everyone’s friends in the office, but fail deeply when it comes to creating and maintaining healthy, conscious and intimate relationships anywhere else.

Many of them — I have observed or coached quite a number over the years — appear to have all the ‘right stuff’. They came from good backgrounds; growing up, they went to the right schools, played all the requisite sports and engaged in revered extracurricular activities; they pledged the right sororities and fraternities, and received the ‘degree-du-jour’ and the post-graduate accolades that now line their walls.

When the mask slips

Yet, on the way, they also learned how to be egotistical and arrogant and wear their successes as coats of arms on their sleeves. Later, once in their professional field of choice, they paid their dues, moved up the ranks, and climbed the ladder of success — all the time creating and cultivating the relationships necessary to achieve whatever their ego-driven desires required: rank, status, recognition, wealth. They knew their stuff and they knew the craft of corporate politics.

Being adept at relationships, they used all the tools with consummate skill: false modesty, false intimacy, false trust, cloudy transparency, fake vulnerability, fake charisma, insincere charm, forced gracefulness and the rest.

They also revealed their narcissism: their consistent need to be “on”; to be always in the limelight; to wield power; to be in control and the center of their universe — and, for that matter, of The Universe itself.

Then, it hits — sometimes in a subtle way; more often, violently. One day, they wake up and notice they’re alone. Maybe they lose their position. Maybe they lose their taste for striving and playing ‘winner-takes-all’ politics. Whatever the reason, they finally register the loneliness and deficiency that accompanies the stark realization that it’s all over. The game is up. Their mask disintegrates and their costume covers nothing but a skeleton — no meat.

They discover they don’t know who they are. And they suddenly begin to experience sadness, depression, self-hate, self-loathing and self-pity.

Facing up to being only half a person — or none at all

At home with their partners and children, at play with their friends, in their life outside of work, they have never shown the sure touch they reserved for work relationships. Now they stumble even more. It seems too late to begin again with what they once valued so little. Recognizing what they have lost, they feel disoriented, disconnected and ungrounded.

Amongst people outside of their working lives, they feel like a stranger — emotionally distant and incapable of forging deeper relationships. They experience estrangement. They often end up engaging in superficial affairs, one-night stands, uncomfortable and clunky liaisons — all in an effort to find and feel a deeper self that has now eluded them.

They’re searching for — longing for — their soul; long lost, covered over and forgotten. Focused for so long on workplace success, they jettisoned their need for true and real friendship and relationships. That was jettisoned for the sake of ego-driven needs for control, recognition and security. They created and lived fictional lives that shored up their egos. They created stories that focused on the superficial ‘me’ and the hyper-successful ‘me’, and ignored the need to find the real ‘me’ through true friendships and authentic relationships.

Lost, lonely and unhappy, they don’t know where to turn.

If you recognize anything of yourself here, turn inside. That’s where you can find your true self — the self of honest, conscious, sincere and healthy relationships. That’s where the real you can be found. The good news is that it’s never too late.

Our $10 food for thought questions this week are:

• Have you ever ‘used’ people and relationships at work to get ahead? How does that make you feel? How do you justify your behavior?
• Do you sometimes view people as expendable? If so, why?
• What do you invest in your relationships and friendships outside of work — the ones that cannot help you climb the hierarchical ladder? Do you take them for granted?
• Are non-work friends important to you? How engaged are you with them? Are your ‘friendships’ more about you than the other person?
• Look objectively at your non-work relationships — with your partner, spouse, children, parents, siblings, friends. What do you see? Is there a gap between the ease with which you enter and maintain workplace relationships and the ones you have outside of work? Is that OK? What story do you tell yourself (and others, perhaps) to rationalize the gap?
• Are you starting to find yourself feeling sad and lonely? Are you unhappy about the way you experience intimacy in relationships? Are you perhaps contributing to that sadness, loneliness and unhappiness?
• Where can you make a start in redressing the balance between your work-based skills in relationships and the way you experience people outside of work?

Technorati Tags: workplace relationships, climbing the ladder, cultivating people for advancement, using people to get ahead, narcissistic bosses, playing corporate politics, gaining the world and losing your soul

Related articles by Zemanta

• Life pressures can easily trump passion