careers
Tragedians in the Workplace
Three Flaws Fatal to Career Survival
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Mark Andresen |
In ancient Greek tragedy, the seeds of one’s destruction are revealed through personality. Aristotle believed that every tragic hero had a fatal flaw that ultimately led to his or her downfall. This flaw was as irreversible as the will of the gods. Sophocles also explored the “fatal flaw” theory in the majority of his seven surviving plays.
For many in the financial services sector, today’s credit crisis, stock market travails, and weakness in the job market constitute a modern American tragedy in three acts.
However, if you possess some self-knowledge, the current disarray needn’t be your undoing. Unlike the tragic heroes of yesteryear, you do have free will. Here are three personality flaws identified by Sophocles that, unchecked, can wreak havoc on your career. While you may not be able to alter the caprices of the credit market, the Dow, or the gods of employment, you can certainly conduct a personality audit to make certain that you aren’t contributing to your own demise.
Oedipus’s Fatal Flaw—Blindness
Around 430 BC, Sophocles warned that ignorance is not bliss. His tragic hero Oedipus is in the dark about his own origins and the murder of his father, Laius. Oedipus searches high and low for Laius’s killer, only to realize that he himself was responsible for his father’s grisly murder. Once the truth is revealed, Oedipus feels that he can no longer face his family and literally blinds himself.
In the theater of today’s American workplace, being blind to the facts can be a devastating form of self-sabotage. You can’t be effective at your job without current information, and in this market, that information is changing at warp speed.
Make it your mission to stay up to the minute. Read three newspapers a day and consume the trades for breakfast. Forbes, the Economist, NYTimes.com, Economy.com, and AAII.com can help keep your finger on the pulse, but don’t stop there. Log onto Bloomberg.com and tune into Bloomberg TV and CNBC.
Then force yourself to get information via real bites—not just sound bites—over lunch. Take the advice offered in the aptly named book Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi with Tahl Raz. Use your lunchtime to meet with your colleagues from other firms. Talk to your customers, competitors, and suppliers. Join a mentoring program that meets for lunch.
Slip into the role of your favorite TV detective and start sleuthing. Get out there and do your own research. Your first-hand research will bolster, fine-tune, or disprove your second-hand research, making you that much more informed.
Above all, stay open to new ideas. Today, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are bank holding companies while the venerable investment bank Lehman Brothers is extinct. A recent BusinessWeek headline advised, “Forget Adam Smith, Whatever Works.” Financial bailouts and investment banks morphing into bank holding companies are two ideas that would have been unthinkable merely a year ago.
The Moral of the Story—
Take off your blinders and see things as they are, not how you wish they were.
Antigone’s Fatal Flaw—Defiance
The fate of Sophocles’ tragic heroine Antigone should give pause to all rebels—with or without a cause. Living as a ward of the usurping King Creon, Antigone is expected to bow unquestioningly to Creon’s law. When her brother leads a rebellion against Creon and is killed in battle, Creon decrees that the body be left to vultures and dogs. Throwing caution to the wind, Antigone chooses to honor her defiled brother in open defiance of Creon, and ends up losing her life in the process.
Defiance in today’s highly charged workplace can completely annihilate any chance you have for success. Do you find yourself seething with resentment as, somehow, those less intelligent or competent than you end up with the titles, window offices, and far-reaching powers, while you— brilliant, quiet, and courteous—work under them? You secretly contemplate disobeying their orders, even though, like Antigone, you know that doing so could be fatal to your future prospects.
Recognize that thoughts like these lead to irreversible, regrettable actions, and train your mind to think differently about your own circumstances. The management shakeouts sweeping this country should be viewed as earthquakes with aftershocks that may persist for years to come. This is not the time to express what you really think about your boss’s long-term forecasts. In today’s shaky economic climate, everyone is expendable, and pluck that may have been appreciated in years past will be frowned upon. In an economic meltdown, there is little tolerance for pushback. These days, personality is out and loyalty is in.
If you’re lucky enough to still have your job, realize that time is probably on your side. Rather than acting defiant, resolve to be grateful. You may never be able to respect your boss’s “keen intelligence,” but you can at least respect his authority. Sit tight and stay humble. The very person who’s driving you berserk could easily lose his job in the next few months, and his demise might even mean a promotion for you down the line.
The Moral of the Story—
Defiance can only derail your career. Put away your disdain and focus on what you have to be grateful for.
Electra’s Fatal Flaw—Vengefulness
Sophocles’ character Electra is a psychological portrait in despair. Friendless, hopeless, husbandless, childless, and driven witless by grief, Electra has put her own life on hold as she pines for the return of her brother Orestes. Anxiously, she waits for him to avenge the death of her father Agamemnon at the hands of her mother and her mother’s lover. Counseled by the all-knowing Greek chorus to avoid “adding misery to miseries,” Electra ignores reason and continues to itch for revenge. When a rumor circulates that her brother has died, Electra turns to her sister Chrysothemis for help. Chrysothemis wisely refuses, beseeching Electra, “Restrain thy rage!” But her pleas are to no avail—revenge has poisoned Electra’s very existence.
In today’s workplace, revenge is perceived as a desperate tactic, and it leads to dire consequences. Often it rears its ugly head over something inane: say, getting credit where credit is due. Do you think of your boss as a vulture, thriving on the spoils of your labor? When your boss is the one who’s stealing all your glory, do you crave to set the record straight? Do you stay up at night, conjuring new ways to embarrass the credit snatcher in front of large groups of people—for example, by announcing that the idea was yours in a large meeting or in a group e-mail?
Suppress your revenge impulse, lest it stir up more trouble for you. Claiming credit publicly will only create distrust between you and your boss. And because she is more entrenched, she will find a way to punish you for your rebelliousness.
Instead, recognize that in business, credit tends to drift to the boss, regardless of who does the work. It may seem unjust. It may seem as if your boss is a credit thief, determined to rob you of the accolades you deserve. But this is how the business world operates.
The Moral of the Story—
Revenge will unravel your career. Make peace with the fact that bosses always get the credit, no matter who is truly responsible.
Exodos
Catharsis refers to the release of the pentup emotion that an audience feels while watching a tragedy unfold onstage. In his Poetics, Aristotle claims that catharsis is “the human soul that is purged of its passions.” Tragedy, then, is a corrective. By watching a tragedy, the audience feels the hero or heroine’s pain in order to eventually be freed from both their suffering and its own.
The next time you are tempted to turn a blind eye to the facts, defy your boss, or wreak your revenge at the workplace, simply recall the fates suffered by Sophocles’ three tragic protagonists. Doing so may help to release your rage and just might prevent your career from meeting a tragic end.
Vicky Oliver (vicky@vickyoliver.com) is the author of Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers, and Other Office Idiots (Sourcebooks 2008); 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions (Sourcebooks 2005); and Power Sales Words: How to Write It, Say It, and Sell It with Sizzle (Sourcebooks 2006).
