Fire Your Boss (8 page)
Authors: Stephen M. Pollan,Mark Levine
Tags: #Psychology, #Self Help, #Business
Travel certainly was a pressing need for twenty-six-year-old Nicole Cohen, who told me she had specifically chosen trade-magazine journalism over public relations because it offered more of a chance to travel widely. In the five years she’d worked for a gaming-industry magazine she had, in fact, been all over the world. She’d attended industry events in London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Cologne, and she was a regular visitor to Las Vegas and to Native American casinos all around the United States. When I asked her to expand on her travel dreams she talked about how she loved experiencing different cultures firsthand and touring sites of natural beauty.
Historically, the drive to serve has been powerful, leading people to forgo material comforts, physical safety, even to renounce physical love. Because service is such an abstract, general concept, I think it’s particularly important to dig down and come up with more specifics. For example, whom do you want to serve? There are people who want to serve their nation. Others feel the need to be of service to the underprivileged. Some are called to serve God. How do you want to be of service? Do you feel called to provide direct service, say by actually handing out food to the hungry or defending the nation from terrorism? Or are you more attracted by indirect service, say by helping establish a school, or getting involved in local politics?
Dan Connors told me he had always felt driven to serve. After graduating from divinity school he decided to pursue work in nonprofit management. He began working for a small social service agency in a midwestern city. Realizing he needed an advanced degree to move up the organizational ladder, he went back to school and earned a degree in nonprofit management. Dan eventually became assistant director of that agency. Two years later the director left, and when it became clear Dan wouldn’t get the job, he moved to a larger nonprofit agency in New York City. When I asked Dan about the specifics underlying his need to serve, he talked a great deal of his experiences in divinity school, feeding the hungry in the decaying downtown of a New England city.
Many people develop personal relationships with coworkers. When you spend hours working together you develop a certain closeness. If the office is a pleasant place, the warm environment encourages friendliness. If the office is a nightmarish place, the shared misery creates strong bonds — sort of like sharing a foxhole. Working hard easily leads to after-hours socializing, whether it’s through the company softball team or just sharing a drink after work at the bar around the corner.
Ever since women became a larger presence in the workplace, romantic relationships among coworkers have been common. At a certain point, work replaced school as the best place to meet a mate. The increased awareness of sexual harassment issues may make things more complex and delicate, but many people still meet their life partners at work. If anything, because of all the hours people are spending on the job, the role the office plays in romance is growing.
If you’re working to meet people, you’ll need to be more specific in order to kill your career. What kind of people are you trying to meet, and what type of relationship do you want to form with them? Are you looking for a special someone who shares your love of theater or film? Or are you hunting for friends with whom you can share a day shopping or a round of golf?
Andrea Lewis told me she was looking for both love
and
friendship. A thirty-four-year-old, recently divorced woman, she was given a consultation with me as a gift by her sister. Andrea had been a stay-at-home mom when married to her husband, a dermatologist. But since the divorce she had taken a job as a clerk-receptionist at another doctor’s office, drawing on her experience working in her ex-husband’s office. It was, she said, a way for her to get out and meet people. Andrea explained she was looking for a man who shared her love of the outdoors and culture and friends who enjoyed going to classical concerts and readings by writers.
For a long time I couldn’t figure out why so many of my clients, when asked, told me they worked to express themselves. I don’t think New Yorkers are, by and large, any more artistic or creative than anyone else. Slowly I put the pieces together. I see so many people who work to express themselves because they represent an unusually large percentage of those who are the most unhappy at work, and as a result, seek out my help.
One reason those who work to express themselves are so unhappy is that they are often the least-paid workers. Everyone knows the stories of millionaire painters and novelists. But for every one of those millionaire painters there are millions of people earning very little doing some type of graphic art or design work. For every one of those millionaire novelists there are millions of people barely scraping by doing some type of journalism or communications work. Bosses seem to have realized that all they have to do is give people an opportunity for just a little bit of self-expression and they can get away with paying them next to nothing.
But I believe there’s another reason creative workers are so unhappy: they face the longest odds in achieving their work goal. Those who work for power, for respect, for security, to travel, to serve, or to meet people have decent odds of at least partly achieving their goal. Those who work to express themselves have, truth be told, little chance of even partly achieving their goal. That’s not because they’re untalented, necessarily. It’s because work simply isn’t cut out for self-expression. Work and self-expression go together like hot dogs and peanut butter.
This will be a vast oversimplification, but let me try to explain. Work is a mercantile process. You are paid to produce a good or a service that is of value to others. The more people value whatever it is you produce, the more you are paid. In effect, work rewards mass appeal. Self-expression, on the other hand, focuses on what’s valuable to the creator. You produce a good or service that is of value to you. The more it fits your own unique personal needs and wants, the more “value” it has. In effect, self-expression rewards individual appeal. It’s not impossible for them to coexist — it’s not like a comic book in which two alternate worlds can’t come together or else the universe explodes. Instead, it’s like putting peanut butter on hot dogs. They just don’t go together.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue your self-expression goals. To do that effectively, however, you’ll need to be more specific. How do you want to express yourself? Do you like to write? If so, what type of writing? Do you have a particular audience in mind, or is it simply for yourself? You should make the same kind of analysis of any other artistic endeavor.
When I told Sean Shanahan about my peanut butter and hot dog analogy he just shook his head. “I don’t eat either, I’m afraid,” he said with a chuckle. “But I understand what you’re getting at.” As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, Sean admitted to having always chosen art over commerce throughout his career. He and I discussed his drive for self-expression in a bit more depth. While he had worked in a number of mediums in his work life, Sean’s preferred method of personal expression in the past had been the mixed-media collage. He enjoyed shaping a unique piece of art using a variety of different, often unusual materials. Unlike at work, where he had a clear idea of the target market for all his graphics, his collages were made to please himself.
In all the years I’ve been giving career advice to clients, no one has ever started off by telling me he or she works for the money. A handful, when prompted by my own admission that I work for the money, will say, with some embarrassment, that they too are more focused on what they earn than on what they do.
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Most, however, seem shocked by such an attitude. At least at first.
Not only is there nothing wrong with working for the money, but it’s the approach I believe almost everyone should take. That’s what I mean by killing your career and getting a job instead. Rather than viewing your work as a career — something you do for power, for respect, for security, to travel, to serve, to meet people, or to express yourself — you should view your work as a job: something you do for the money. This doesn’t mean quitting your current position tomorrow. It’s an attitude adjustment that may or may not lead to a change in employment. That remains to be seen after we go through the remaining steps in this book. For now it means changing your orientation toward work from the aesthetic to the mercantile.
Far from asking you to reject your higher calling, I’m doing my best to help you achieve it. You haven’t achieved it yet, have you? Despite your stated goal of, say, working for others’ respect, you don’t feel like you’ve got it yet, do you? I didn’t think so. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this book. You picked this book up for the same reason people come to see me in my office: you’re unhappy with your work life. Well, by working for the money you’ll become much happier. Let me explain.
There are different ways other than work to achieve every one of the other goals we’ve discussed. It’s easier to satisfy your need for service by spending time feeding the hungry at a soup kitchen, for example, than by trying to find a job that somehow helps the hungry. The mercantile aspect of the job will, by its very nature, impinge on the spiritual element of feeding the hungry. Let’s say you’re working at a social service agency. You’ll need to deal with the politics inherent in any organization. Depending on your position you’ll need to negotiate pay raises for yourself from superiors, deal with the petty squabbles among coworkers, train and discipline subordinates, fight to get resources for your department, go out and solicit funds, and perhaps even deal with insurance companies or local governments. If, on the other hand, you volunteer at the soup kitchen run by the agency, all you need to do is feed the hungry. You’ll be able to experience firsthand the satisfaction of feeding the hungry, see the joy your work is bringing to poor children, and return home at the end of your time there feeling justifiably good about yourself and your contribution to society.
The same is true for every other reason you may have given for working. There is probably a more efficient way of achieving your goal, one that, in fact, guarantees you’ll achieve it. In some cases there might be many other ways of achieving your goal. You can express yourself by acting in community theater, for instance, rather than trying to make it as a professional actor. You can meet people by going to church, or joining organizations, rather than just at the office or plant.
Work, on the other hand, is the single best way to earn money. That is its designated purpose. Ask work to do more and you court disappointment. Sure, there are ways other than work to earn money: you can inherit it, or you can have so much money saved and invested that you can live off unearned income. But relying on inheritance isn’t a very good idea. Despite some predictions in the early 1990s, it’s unlikely we’ll see a huge transfer of wealth between generations. (See the box above: The Inheritance Myth.) And if you’re reading this book you’re almost certainly not independently wealthy.
THE INHERITANCE MYTH
Forget those fantasies about inheriting big bucks from your folks. In the early 1990s an academic study suggested that the baby-boom generation would receive the largest inheritance in history — almost $10 trillion — and that this money would impact a very broad segment of American society. The news spread like wildfire. I had clients come to me for help with inheritance planning…even though their parents were alive and well. However, the idea of widespread patrimony is a myth. The numbers were calculated in 1989 dollars, so decades’ worth of inflation weren’t taken into account. Gifts to charity and to grandchildren weren’t taken into account. Increases in the spending pattern of older Americans weren’t factored into the mix. Those “We’re spending our kids’ inheritance” bumper stickers are prophetic. Finally, the study didn’t take into account the increased longevity of older Americans and the rising costs of nursing homes, in-home care, and end-of-life health care. I tell almost all my clients they’ve a better chance of winning the lottery than of inheriting large amounts of money. Stop dreaming about tomorrow’s inheritance and instead start leading your life today.
My suggestion, then, is to work to earn money and spend the rest of your life pursuing your other goals. To paraphrase the Gospels, render unto work that which is work’s — earning money — and render unto life that which is life’s — everything else. I also believe in turning around a recently coined adage: Do it for the money and the love will follow.
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Whenever I preach working for the money to a client, I get the same response. It’s a variation of the following: “But I spend so much time at work, shouldn’t I do something that offers more than financial rewards?” My answer is simple: Stop spending so much time at work.
Most people who come to see me, and I’d wager most of you reading this book, have forgotten the reason for spending so much time on the job. The idea was that because you were doing something meaningful, something emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually rewarding, you’d
want
to spend more time at work. The additional time was supposed to be in response to the nonfinancial rewards you were receiving. But as time has gone on, the reason has morphed.
