“What topic would you like to tackle today?” I ask my coachees at the beginning of each coaching session. The sessions are used to reflect on what the coachee wanted to work on since the last session or to prepare for upcoming challenges.
Jan, a manager in an industrial company, answered this question in our last appointment with: “No idea!” It had only been two weeks since his last vacation. The department’s results far exceeded the forecast. His team had also worked together efficiently during Jan’s absence. Evidently, we had managed to permanently resolve the conflict that a few team members had had with each other in a team-building exercise and through Jan’s coaching sessions. He remarked – “I’m doing brilliantly. I’ve never enjoyed working with a team quite so much and with such great success.” Well that’s good to hear.
Unfair promotion processes
But there was still something that intrigued Jan. He had met with a colleague from his former employer during his vacation. His colleague told him that the manager who had been appointed to the position Jan would have liked to have had was currently under massive pressure due to the changed market environment. “When I heard that, I just felt satisfaction!” Jan admitted. Satisfaction – such an interesting emotion. It feels good, but like “Schadenfreude” – the pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune – it leaves the bitter aftertaste of a wound that has not healed. An interesting topic for this session.
“What was so bad about you not getting the job?” I wanted to know.
Jan replied – “It wasn’t so much about the position itself, but they didn’t even talk to me. I had been in the talent pool for a long time. My boss presented me with a fait accompli and told me that X would be my new line manager. Just like that.”
“And what exactly was so bad about that?” I asked. This confused Jan a little. He raised his voice – “The process is just not right! That’s no way to treat people! It’s not fair!”
Suffering from subjectively assessed apparent inadequacy
“How long have you had this feeling? When did you first experience it?” I asked. Lo and behold, Jan remembered a situation that most of us are familiar with from our school days: In PE lessons, two teams are formed. The team captains choose players for their team. Who gets to choose first is decided as follows: They stand opposite each other at a distance and move toward each other “heel to toe,” with the heel of one foot touching the toes of the other. The player who can step on the other player’s foot at the end gets to vote first and, of course, chooses the best player for their team. Then it’s the other captain’s turn to choose the best player from the remaining players and so on. The later you are selected, the worse the team captains think you are. The game continues turn by turn until only the two weakest players remain. The subjectively assessed individual inadequacy becomes obvious to everyone.
As Jan talked about it, he became increasingly emotional: “I’ve always hated that. This waiting and hoping and only being picked in 3rd or 4th place in the end. Yet I was a good soccer player,” he said. “Children can be so cruel!”
Shame, powerlessness, and anger – classics among losers in staffing decisions
I’ve been told that in modern PE lessons, the heel-to-toe game has now been replaced by the following procedure: One pupil forms two teams. A second pupil can choose which team they want to play with. The first pupil ensures that there is an equal number of good and bad players in each team, which automatically means that the two supposedly weakest players are not the ones left at the end. This avoids the less athletic children failing in front of others and helps to get around the problem temporarily. But at some point in our performance-based society, a ranking system is created, a selection of the best, at the latest when the number of “players” required is limited.
This is a typical scenario when filling vacancies in a company. After all, there can only ever be one person for the position in question. The emotional reaction of those who do not get the position is, as with Jan, a mixture of shame, powerlessness, and anger – to varying degrees of intensity.
We can often understand from a purely objective point of view that the competition was rated as more competent than ourselves. However, our ego wants to protect us from the unpleasant feeling of being a loser and therefore looks for an external cause for the fact that we feel bad. If it does not do this, we run the risk of slipping into something as self-destructive as depression. As it is our ego’s job to protect us, it usually finds someone or something to blame, no matter how professionally and with how much effort the recruitment process is organized in the company:
- “The boss who promoted that colleague doesn’t have a clue.”
- “A neutral body should have decided. Why don’t we conduct Assessment Centers?”
- “The Assessment Center or the consulting company that implemented it was bad!”
- “How can the result of an AC day carry more weight than years of performance in the company?”
- Or Jan’s conviction: “They should have at least talked to me!”
Helping our ego to overcome self-created problems
Just because you are convinced of something, that does not mean it is true.
And so I asked Jan based on Byron Katie’s “The Work” – “Is it true, Jan, that they should have talked to you?”
Jan: – “YES! Our corporate values included transparency and honesty.”
I asked Jan to think about the state he was in. The thought that nobody spoke to him still leaves him stunned and angry now that he reflects on it years later. The vacation mood he was in at the start of our session had completely evaporated. It happens that quickly when the past catches up with you. When we lack clarity, we are at the mercy of our emotions, like a small child.
Me – “Who would you be without the thought ‘They should have talked to me?'” Jan immediately becomes much more relaxed. “I would be free.”
We delved a little deeper and played through various scenarios. Jan’s boss at the time had probably come to the firm conclusion that X was the more suitable candidate for the job as a result of observations in everyday professional life. Based on this assumption, what difference would it have made if X had still been given the job,
- but Jan’s boss had also conducted an interview with Jan or
- an Assessment Center had been implemented in which both candidates had done well?
Jan replied – “In that case, I would have said it was a set-up anyway. I would have seen the interview or the AC as an unnecessary spectacle. And I would have been even angrier.”
Jan was amazed. The reversal of his original thought had some truth to it: “They should NOT have talked to me.”
Fortunately, we can help our ego to solve self-created problems.
Accepting power and powerlessness
In their book The Psychology of Human Leadership: How To Develop Charisma and Authority, published in 2011and well worth reading, Michael Paschen and Erich Dihsmaier argue that: “In order to build up a relationship with power, we need to be able to endure our own powerlessness, as we must always have the ability to integrate both power and powerlessness in life. Those who cannot deal with their own experiences of powerlessness are unable to trust and, as constant skeptics, will always avoid relationships in which power plays a role.” (p. 190)
Jan had left his former employer some time ago out of anger at the unfairness of the promotion process. His current employer highly values his competencies, but recommended coaching to work on his perceived reserved attitude before potentially moving up the career ladder.
It seemed that during the session, Jan understood that he had no control over how and whether he was promoted. He has learned to be more accepting of this kind of powerlessness. Jan felt a little exhausted afterwards and at the same time somewhat lighter than at the start of our session. Should he have to face another round of “heel to toe,” he now seems much better equipped for it.