Our professional relationships draw on two sets of relationship
blueprints. The Authority Blueprint governs our relationships
to authority figures, as well as our relationships to our
subordinates when we are in a position of authority. The Sibling
Blueprint governs our relationships to our co-workers.
Many companies today try to foster a sense of community (and
employee loyalty) by claiming to be one big happy family. The
irony is that even without the company's efforts to create a
sense of family in the workplace, we do experience our
professional environment as a family. Of course, the family our
company resembles is our family, complete with the same
dysfunctional dynamics we experienced growing up.
Our Authority Blueprints are based on our relationships with our
parents. The Male Authority Blueprint is based on our
relationship to our father and applies to our interactions with
men in authority. Our Female Authority Blueprint is based on our
relationship to our mother, and applies to our interactions with
women in authority. When we are in a position of authority,
we're the most influenced by the blueprint of our same-gender
parent. The thing is, when we relate to our superiors at work,
we are not only influenced by our relationship to our parentswe
actually experience it. On an unconscious level, we project our
unresolved issues with our parents onto our supervisors. We
expect our supervisors to provide us with the kind of love and
support that we didn't receive from our parents.
If we have specific issues with either one of our parents, we
will get to work through these issues in our professional
relationships to authority figures. If we never felt able to
disagree with our father, for example, we may also have trouble
disagreeing with our male supervisors. We may not feel entitled
to voice our opinions, which means that we rarely get
acknowledged for our contributions. This, of course, can have
adverse effects on our ability to advance, be recognized, have
our validation needs met, and feel safe. If we were able to
ignore our mother's rules and requests as children, we may not
completely respect the authority of our female supervisors. We
may unconsciously test their authority and see how much we can
get away with, because we need them to provide us with the safe
and strong boundaries that our mothers didn't. Of course, this
can also have a negative impact on our prospects for career
advancement and job security.
When we're in positions of authority, we unconsciously become
our parents. Most often, we identify with our same-gender
parent, but we can take on the management styles of both. If we
experienced our father as being an irrational, authoritarian
jackass, it's a safe bet that the people we supervise feel the
same way about us. If we never had to respect our mother's
requests, then we may find that our employees don't respect
ours.
Now, the good news is that simply becoming aware that we're
projecting our issues with our parents onto our supervisors is
often enough to change our behavior and our experiences. On a
conscious level we understand how inappropriate it is to expect
our supervisors to meet the needs of our parents. It's obvious
that we're not working for our fathers, for example, and so we
can freely express our own opinions with no fear of punishment.
When we hear our mothers' voices coming our of our heads, it's
often enough of a wake-up call to let us alter our management
style, and make more effective and elegant choices. The
interesting thing is that when we stop relating to our
supervisors as our parents and create healthy and supportive
relationships to authority, we often find that our relationships
to our parents also improve.
If our supervisors are our parents, then our co-workers are our
siblings. This means that we experience sibling rivalry in the
workplace. We compete against our co-workers for the love and
attention of our parents (supervisors). This is the reason that
office politics can be so emotionally charged. We're playing for
much higher stakes than we realize. It's not just about getting
ahead in our careersit's about winning the approval and
attention of our parents. And since we believe that there's not
enough love to go around, we will do anything we can do to stay
ahead of the game. If we grew up with siblings, we will
unconsciously resort to the strategies we used as children to
compete for our parents' attention. If we didn't grow up with
siblings, we're at a significant disadvantage in our
professional relationships. We've never had to fight for our
parents' attention before, while many of our competitors have
years of experience.
When we choose to stop relating to our supervisors as our
parents, our relationships with our co-workers also improve. We
may still compete with our co-workers, of course, but at least
now we're no longer competing for the love of our parents. We're
no longer competing in a high-stakes game. This relieves much of
the pressure, and allows us to have more fun playing the game.
The competition we experience with our co-workers is now far
more healthy.
About the Author
Kevin B. Burk is the author of The Relationship Handbook: How to
Understand and Improve Every Relationship in Your Life. Visit
http://www.everyrelationship.com for a FREE report on creating
AMAZING Relationships.