This is a follow-up to Mark Andersen's diary about career passion and dreams. Thanks for the plentiful thought provocation, Mark!
"Stick to your strengths."
How many of us have heard that in our workplaces?
It sounds so innocent, so caring about us as employees. And if there's one thing that we as workers want from our employers, it's for them to care about us. To see us as humans-- not as replaceable parts in a machine.
But we have to be careful that employers caring about us doesn't turn into employers controlling us.
Actors dread becoming typecast as much as any fate in the cruel world of the entertainment industry-- and too often, corporations are all too happy to leave us stuck in our strengths, the strengths we've always had, the strengths that may be making a lot of money for our bosses but that don't necessarily help us grow as a person.
In this scenario, our employers' caring quickly becomes the "caring" of an unhealthy parent-- which is contingent on how well we align with them, and serve as their reflections; rather than be our own person interacting with them as equals.
How do we make sure our strengths do not become straitjackets?
By being open to developing new strengths-- throughout our lives.
Despite all the messages we get from our society about how we learn best when we're young. I believe in this information age, this attitude creates the slowdown in "old dogs learning new tricks" more than the other way around.
But Scott Walker and his conservative ilk don't want you to remain open to reinvention into your old age. They think you're a better employee if you get baked into the cake, and get baked when you're young.
Nothing would make Walker and friends happier than if you gave up on your self-determination, and substituted their judgment of your strengths and skills for your own. Because it would mean you stop struggling against their plan for you-- to structure your workplace and your life so that the obstacles are too great for you to develop any new strengths.
Minimum wage workers already live this fate. So does anyone who has to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. So does anyone, indeed, except for the 1 percent. (And even they often live this fate, due to working extra-long hours.)
The overall effect is a population with too little time or energy for anything better than basic survival, or human connection with more than just a small circle of friends and family. Certainly too busy to get involved in politics.
And on a subtler, more pernicious level, a population disinclined to question some pieces of conventional wisdom it has always received... starting with the kinder, gentler cousin of "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" known as, "Stick to your strengths."
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Why is American society increasingly depressing? I would have to say one of the biggest reasons is the narrowing of possible pathways for us to become successful. Here are some examples:
I had a friend in high school who was fat as a child and young teenager. After being teased for her weight in middle school, she decided to lose weight. By high school she was not "skinny", but had lost maybe a third of her weight; and was fit enough that she discovered she had skill for dancing. She made the pom squad as a junior.
Now, I doubt she'd be within a stones throw of making it, because of more and more cheerleaders and Poms preparing at younger and younger ages... because they feel they must, in order to get a competitive edge for a squad. On a practical basis, this has become the main, or only, accepted path to success in cheerleading. My school friend's pathway probably isn't accepted anymore. Not enough preparation at an early enough age to make her competitive, I imagine some cheer coaches thinking. Certainly she has a history of being fat-- how can she possibly be as good as someone who's never been fat in their entire lives? (And now, apparently, something else that's required is enough wealth to afford the activity fees. Sweet.)
Journalism, entertainment, and any other profession which has become increasingly reliant on unpaid internships. Not only does this bias people who already have the wherewithal to afford unpaid work-- it narrows the possibilities both of methods to practice your skills on your own terms, and the number of possible pathways to become skilled. You're had a passion for drama your whole life? You've made your own neighborhood newspaper as a kid? Too bad! That newspaper or movie studio won't hire you without at least two internships under your belt.
(Completely leaving aside the question of what, exactly, you're supposed to learn in an internship... is what the employer is after really the subservient, grateful-to-have-crumbs attitude too many unpaid gigs engender? Is the new most-sought-after job qualification, compliance? Is failure to stand up for your rights in fact the most valuable asset and mindset to have?)
More and more minimum wage jobs and big-box stores are incorporating personality tests into their hiring processes. And conveniently, many employers (especially of customer-service professions) believe that you can teach skills, but personalities and attitudes are something you're stuck with. Is it any wonder that applicants desperate for work are driven to cheat on those tests?
Would Tom Brady himself even have a chance at a pro football career today? Hell, he didn't even start playing football, period, until ninth grade! That's a little old to just be getting started. Doesn't he know that he should've started playing PeeWee football ten years prior? (Never mind the highly exaggerated reports of youth sports burnout...)
And of course, don't forget the plight of millions of older workers, hampered by employer beliefs that old age automatically means slowness to adopt new technology.
Skills are muscles, and will atrophy if not used. Do too many employers know this, and deliberately allow a lot of Americans' skills to atrophy? Judging by the meanness some of our "haves" are taken to indulge themselves in... I have to consider that a distinct possibility.
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Another, more widespread, way that pathways to success get narrowed is in what kinds of qualities decision makers start looking for. What types of skills and strengths they choose to value.
What does a successful person look and feel like? For too many of us, that successful person is looking an awful lot like a Wall Street financier. On an amoral hustler.
Why did Comcast try to make all of their jobs function like sales jobs... even those that shouldn't have any sales component to them, like tech support?
The biggest takeaway was that sales was eventually rolled into every department, from customer service to tech support. There were incentives to sell, the Verge reported, and punishments for those who did not hit quotas. “Eighty percent [of our training] was sales training,” a former tech support employee told the Verge. “From time to time they would pull us from the phones for in-depth training on how to sell. [They told us] to say how much better Comcast is than the rest of the competition. ‘Why would anyone leave us?’”
And this "gotta hustle" attitude has long been infecting professionals, too. With doctors increasingly on the take from pharmaceutical companies in order to pay the bills... it's inevitable that some of them start acting like just as ardent
salesmen of their "product" as the sales reps themselves.
Dentists and
veterinarians, too; have found that upselling (and sometimes
sleazy sales tactics) is as much as part of their job as patient care.
Why are all of us expected to be salespeople and hustlers now? Why is this considered the most sought-after skill to have... even as pushing too hard for a sale can border on coercing our customers? Why does so much business advice focus on increasing your personal charisma and mysticism?
Most of all, why are there so few exemplars of "good salesman" or "charismatic leader"... and they're all the same basic personality type and "confident" appearance?
How is that not supposed to send a message that anyone who is not extroverted, conventional of mindset and looks, and privileged (the better to afford constant personal upkeep) is going to be disadvantaged as a salesperson-- and therefore less valuable in this new economy? Because in case you've lived under a rock for the last decade or so, every job is now a sales job.
It's no accident that the top states for multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs) are Utah and the Bible Belt states. In other words, right-to-work states. And in other words, jobs that require the greatest amount of hustle and personal mysticism. (I just love how the MLM attorney phrases it in that link above... "where people are friendly and where they frequently interact"!! LOL.)
In practical, everyday terms, Republican economic policies mean more of us will be called upon to act like sleazy salesmen, and will need to bilk our friends for a buck. We will also have less time and energy for outside pursuits, new strengths, or people outside a tight circle of family and friends. Clannish, narrow and stressed-- just the way they like us!
Most of all, baked into the cake.
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One of America's biggest criticisms of the European and Asian education systems is their tendency to determine a student's life and career path too early. What a waste of life and human potential. But why are we so eager to go down the same path-- if not in policy like Scott Walker and his ilk want, at least in practical everyday experience?
(Indeed, as far as Scott Walker, there is evidence of better job creation in Republican areas of Wisconsin than in Democratic areas. Brilliant. Hiring for fit, appealing to your base, and putting your thumb on the scale to make your job creation numbers look better, all in one.)
Part of it can only be from a feeling of being beaten down. From an economy that seems to be permanently weak, to equally permanently parsimonious attitudes on the part of "job creators". We don't see any way out of our situation, and no one from the President to our job network seems to know what to do.
The onus is on us to increase our value.
It's our own fault if we didn't to put in the requirements to have a professional career. We couldn't afford the college tuition or cert fees. We had kids, or a sick family member, or just didn't want to work over 40 hours. We didn't want to go out drinking with the Silicon Valley dudebros, we didn't want to believe in the same religion as our Hobby Lobby wannabe boss, we would much rather use our shrinking paychecks for paying off debt then spending on personal upkeep to make ourselves more attractive, and therefore a better salesperson. We didn't want the unpaid internships, we didn't want the cultural coercion at work, we wanted our bosses to treat us as equals.
Since when is putting up with rankism and emotional abuse a good job skill to have? But in effect, that's what too many of our bosses and decision makers communicate is the most important quality they want from us. And they dare call it "respect", "communication skill", or FSM forbid-- even "empathy".
All this emotional abuse-- as if carefully presented to make us feel the maximum culpability and shame-- on all fronts; no wonder we feel so helpless and demoralized. And it's made worse by being dressed up in positive, caring talk-- like "stick to your strengths" and "be who you are".
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There's "be who you are" that inspires us to be even more of who we are... and "be who you are" that condemns us to be who we've always been.
What conservatives want is to make it so, indeed, there is no practical way to improve or reinvent ourselves after that magical window of childhood (or college or whatever part of youth is deemed formative). They want to make it so youth is the ONLY possible time frame we have to do that.
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I did not spend my youth optimally. I wasted my twenties in a flurry of bad decisions and workplace culture-induced demoralization. I am not a slick hustler, I am frequently "not a good fit"; simply because I want to be my own person and be treated as an equal.
I have no choice but to gain the life experiences and strengths now, in my thirties and beyond, that I failed to gain when I was younger.
I did not start out as having strengths in communication and interpersonal skill. However, I know that it's career suicide to not be strong in these areas. More importantly, it's murder on your effectiveness as a progressive to not be skilled in these areas.
At the same time, I want to become strong in these areas without turning myself into Rachael Ray, John Edwards, or Cory Gardner. I want to prove to people that you don't have to be like those people to be great at communicating and connecting. That you don't have to be a "good salesperson" to win hearts (and wallets).
To step back, on the grounds that communication is "not my strength" based on my history, would be doing myself and others a big disservice. It would be removing myself from the fight... as too much stress-relief advice tends to suggest we do... and would ultimately make me not as good a version of myself as I could be.
I am proof that the "formative years" are bunk. I experienced my biggest personality change after going away to college, and discovering that a lot of the values I had been raised with, were no longer operative.
Since then, the biggest stiflers of my growth as a person have been those who repeated lines about "sticking to my strengths" and "not stressing myself out", no doubt based on what their own setbacks had taught them. The kicker was they always delivered those messages with a compassionate, soothing demeanor. A friend, telling me I was doomed to be stuck who I always had been, the rest of my life.
With a friend like that, who needs enemies?
A real friend helps us become the best version of ourselves we want to be. And often, that means adding new strengths we never before thought possible to add.
Old people can learn new tricks... if they are given opportunities to practice and use them.