VitallyMe Profiles

John is an acquaintance of mine, an executive who had recently been promoted to manage a division in a large corporation. When first promoted about one year before the events described here, John had many excellent managerial skills. He was very goal focussed, results orientated and had a very carefully structured, systematic way of getting things done. John was very self disciplined, self reliant and he always held himself accountable for achieving the goals the company set for his division. He made his division very successful.

In spite of these excellent managerial skills and the division’s successes, morale in his division was very low – especially among managers and staff who worked directly with him. John said he was not aware of this. But about a year after his promotion, his personal assistant, whom he respected, told him how people felt. She said that while he never lost his temper or treated people badly, he seemed to both perceive and treat people in a very impersonal way. Someone had put it this way: “John acts as if his division’s people were like cogs in a machine, whose only purpose was to make the machine more efficient”. She then gave him a book on leadership and said he should read it.

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Up until I was about 30 years old, I had felt uncomfortable around shy, introverted or withdrawn people and usually avoided contact with them. Consciously, I think I avoided them because I assumed they probably had little to offer and it would not be worth the effort of engaging with them. Subconsciously, I think I avoided them because they reminded me that when I was younger I had inwardly felt very shy and also assumed I had little to offer – even though my behaviour was outgoing and disguised these internal feelings.

This way of seeing shy or quiet, introverted people changed quite suddenly and dramatically when I met a man named Jim at a social function. The function’s host, who saw Jim standing alone staring at the floor with a drink in his hand, introduced me to him hoping I would draw him out. As I had expected, I found the attempt to initiate conversation with Jim very difficult. After struggling with this for about ten minutes, I suddenly remembered that the host had said something about Jim having an interest in philosophy. Since my graduate and undergraduate studies had been in philosophy, I thought this subject might provide an opening and I began to describe a book I was reading on existential philosophy.

I had only been speaking for a few minutes, when during a brief pause, Jim suddenly began to speak. He in fact launched into a brilliant – although quiet and halting – monologue about existential philosophy. The suddenness of his response and the depth and clarity of his thinking left me absolutely astonished. For the next hour he did almost all of the talking, speaking about other subjects with the same depth, clarity and brilliance. As the function ended, I told Jim I had really enjoyed the conversation and said I would like to continue it later.

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Jane had recently been appointed the CEO of a large clothing retail chain. She was a very articulate, optimistic, creative and charismatic person and had risen up the corporate ladder into leadership positions quite rapidly. Her charismatic personality and her many successes within the company had won her the CEO position at the early age of 35. However, along with her many strengths as a leader Jane also had a significant Achilles Heel: Given her charismatic and inspiring leadership style, she found it difficult to communicate with and listen with very conservative, analytical people.

Shortly after being promoted to CEO, working with her senior management team, she had created a vision and strategic plan for growing the company quite rapidly. However, her CFO – a highly conservative analytical thinker – had warned her against expanding so rapidly, saying that if retail sales dipped even slightly, the company would become insolvent. Feeling her usual irritation with this very conservative and analytical person, she ignored his warning and began implementing the expansion plan. Then six months into the plan the global financial crisis hit, retail sales plummeted – and very suddenly the company was on the verge of collapse.

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We most commonly associate “addiction” with some kind of compulsive substance abuse (alcoholism, addiction to tobacco, drugs, etc) – but “addiction” could equally be applied to certain kinds of compulsive activities (e.g. Workaholism). While activity addictions are in some ways different from chemical ones, all addictions have one thing in common: they are all ways of avoiding experiencing or dealing with uncomfortable emotions.

James’ story, told to me over a long evening together, is a case in point. James was a lawyer specialising in litigation, and though the work was intense and often stressful, he was always able to keep his cool and he thrived on it. He had enormous energy and endurance and worked long hours – but he had many other interests that he actively pursued. For example, he was involved in rock climbing, was a committed and talented karate student and a skydiver.

This capacity to control his emotions and keep his cool under pressure made a major contribution to his success at work and in other activities. But James said this had reached a point where he almost never experienced emotions of any kind because he was constantly involved in intense, focussed action almost all of his waking hours. This had resulted in the break up of two marriages, mainly because his wives hardly ever saw him, and when they did, he would never express or show any emotions or talk about anything very personal. His last wife told him it was like living with a robot.

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