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. Read the full story