The concept of, what I call “organizational codependency” is at the root of layoff survivor sickness. Based on some recent questions, I’ll go through it one more time. It starts with your sense of identity. If who you are is where you work, there is a lot more at stake than a paycheck when you are threatened by a layoff. It’s not just your job that’s vulnerable; it’s your self-esteem, identity, sense of relevance, and purpose. The human resource strategies of tying employees in for the long term that evolved during times of stability and predictability have very bad unintended consequences in today’s epidemic of downsizing. We were seduced into a codependent relationship with our employers. Organizations provided trinkets – key chains, bracelets, watches – to celebrate tenure. Benefits, services, office size, parking spaces, all rewarded longevity. Recreational activities, group travel discounts, and employee clubs and associations served to channel employees’ social patterns into organizationally sanctioned outlets. The result is that many employees have put all of their social and emotional eggs in the organizational basket, and as the new short-term psychological employment contract between employer and employee unfolds, the basket has been dropped causing the classic survivor symptoms – anger, guilt, fear, anxiety – and triggering codependent behavior – control and manipulation.
Strategies for Breaking Free. Here are some things you can do to break free of codependency and bring joy and creativity into your work.
Develop Personal Autonomy and a Task Focus. To break the organizational codependency chain, you must maintain internal control, keep your personal power, and love yourself without making that love conditional on organizational approval. The organizational payoff is empowered employees working with minimal control. They work because they are invested in the task and interested in a quality product, not because they need to control or please others to maintain their self-esteem.
Detach Your Self-Esteem from Your Place of Work. If who you are is where you work, you will do almost anything to hang on. If you derive their sense of identity, self-esteem, and uniqueness from pleasing the boss and remaining in an organizational system, you are in an organizationally codependent relationship. You have given up your uniqueness; your focus and energy are external, artificial, and bent on pleasing. It is a bad bargain at the best of times; a fools bargain in today’s new reality. The person you need to please is yourself and you need to let go of an organizationally imposed identity.
Ground Your Self-Definition in Good Work. Discovering our core purpose and grounding our self-esteem in work that is congruent with that purpose is the foundation to an organizational detachment strategy because we index our self-esteem on our tasks and our work, not the organization where we happen to perform those tasks. Pleasing the boss or impressing the system may happen as a consequence of good work, but these consequences are not good work’s primary intent. Good work is all about finding work that is nutritious to our human spirit.
Cultivate a Diffuse Root Strategy. Breaking organizational codependency begins with a conscious decision not to rely on our employer to nurture all aspects of our lives. The fundamental change that must occur can be most easily illustrated by comparing two types of plants. One plant gets all its nourishment from a single taproot, just as an employee’s self-esteem, identity, and social worth can all be nourished by a single organization When we have a social and emotional taproot into an organization we will manipulate, cajole, control, and scheme simply to hang on. Considering the option, manipulating and controlling make sense. What happens if that single taproot gets cut?
Another plant variety has a diffuse root system, reaching out to different areas of soil. Emotionally healthy individuals reject the simplicity and seductiveness of having all their needs nourished through a taproot into the organizational soil. Through planning and effort they can develop a diffuse root system. They have a number of roots into the community, professional associations, families, clubs, religions, and friends from outside their place of employment. If the organizational root is cut, they can still function and grow.
The Pain is Worth the Gain. Breaking organizational codependency is an against the grain experience for most of us. It requires fortitude to let go of an organizationally imposed identity and venture into the unchartered waters of personal autonomy and relevance. Others can help us, but in the final analysis, it is an individual act of courage. The gain, however, is well worth the pain. Finding work that is in congruence with our unique gifts and human spirit and grounding our self-esteem and purpose in that work is a magnificent quest that will not only help us, but our organizations, and our society.
