On the surface, it would seem your professional and intimate
lives are worlds apart. However,
when you peel back the layers, you find patterns that are mirrored in
both. For example, whatever upsets
you in your personal life will upset you in the workplace, even if you are
taught to suppress it at work.
Eventually those upsets will
affect your decision-making.
With that said, whoever you are is who you are. If you find it normal to manipulate
people in your intimate life, there’s a good chance you will replicate the same behavior in your professional life.
In either case, you will most likely have a list of justifications for
why you do it. At the opposite
end, the same occurs if you are someone who empowers those around you. What is interesting is both the
manipulator and the empowering person can find themselves in leadership
positions.
If you were to analyze the manipulator, you may find several
patterns as a leader. To name two,
they will have resentful people around them or they will only hire “yes-men”who are not as smart as them.
Having the pattern of resentful people can cause unintended
chaos. Once people figure out they
are constantly being manipulated, they may become rebellious as a way to get
even. This can be a refusal to
cooperate, do work, late with assignments or attendance in a professional
arena. Unfortunately, manipulative
people tend to stay in management positions because they produce short-term
results. In an intimate life, it
can result in arguments or refusal to cooperate as a team of two. This is the path to break up or
divorce.
When the leader hires “yes-men”, people do as they are told. They find themselves forced
to agree with the manager, who can be very charismatic or demeaning and
authoritative. One of the greatest
problems in this environment is that people may not be able to make decisions
in the absence of the leader. In
that case, the leader may become resentful of his work team or spouse because
they appear too weak. Or they lack
initiative to act independently.
For the empowering person, there are patterns also. In some cases, empowering people may
stretch you beyond your normal capacity to think. Initially that can be uncomfortable. In some cases, it could appear you are
being manipulated. Except, unlike
the manipulator, empowering environments solicit feedback from others, even if
the thought is controversial. That
gives people a greater ability to interact and learn from one another. In an intimate relationship, the
patterns will be similar. The two
people will constantly learn from one another and feel empowered to contribute
in other ways. Those contributions
can be the result of going the extra mile, sharing resources or advocating for
one another.
Perhaps one of the big differences between the two types of
people is trust. The empowering
person may have a greater sense of trust for the people around them. He or she may even be comfortable when
mistakes are made. They will most likely have a process for discussing mistakes so everyone involved can learn from it. If, on the other hand,
the manipulator has no trust, he or she will manipulate you to do things their
way. Therefore, they are less open to perspectives of others. As for mistakes, they may be used
against you.
From another perspective, perhaps what is most telling is
that whomever you are in life – work, play or love – says more about how you
see yourself. It almost never has
anything to do with your intimate partner or your work colleagues. Manipulation may have more to do with
the fear of looking bad. That may
be the case if you are already self-conscious about some deficiency you have
been hiding forever. The
empowering person may be much more transparent and willing to look foolish or
learn from mistakes because he or she values learning. Which of the two are you?
What do you
think? I would love to hear your feedback. And I’m open to ideas. Or if you
want to write me about a specific topic, let me know.
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