Professional Relationship Blueprints

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 parents--we 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 careers--it'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.