Are Ghosts Of The Past Hampering You Or Your Reports?

Granted the workplace is not a therapy office, nor are mentoring or management 1 on 1s therapeutic processes. Yet, everyone you work with has a past, a childhood, a culture that enhanced and to some degree contaminated how they view themselves in the world.

If you remain unaware of this while attempting to facilitate someone’s career growth, you can be blind to the most fundamental issues your direct report is burdened by and/or struggling with.

To provide deeper understanding, these are real life examples, gleaned from our decades of executive coaching for a wide variety of companies. Identities have been disguised, but the real life issues have not AND in every case we had to unravel the root causes in order to get at the “ghosts” that were hampering forward progress:

*** A young and brilliant manager who had been required to meet unrealistic expectations by his parents had become a “perfectionist” to protect himself. But, in his career, this hampered his ability to step out, to have strong opinions, to make mistakes in the name of agile creativity.

*** A designer in her thirties was referred to us because, despite her excellence in her role, any time she felt the least bit “slighted” she was reduced to tears in public, robbing her of professional authority. In her childhood, both parents were highly critical and unable to provide support or praise, due to their own ghost-filled backgrounds.

*** One high-achieving sales person told us that he had a constant “fear of failing.” When we asked when he’d failed in his life he looked puzzled and said, “never.” When we asked what his relationship was like with his father, his face turned dark and he said, “I could never please him, he always preferred my brother who is super outgoing and funny. I’m not that way.” So we had to help him extricate that “ghost” from his workplace confusion and subsequent hold backs.

*** When we began working with a highly motivated and energetic woman in a product leader role, it was immediately obvious that she could not receive compliments and would, instead, giggle, blush, and bat them away. What was underneath this self-sabotaging behavior? She had two brothers who had not achieved anywhere her level of success, and she’d taught herself to remain “as much like them” as she could so she wouldn’t be seen as “arrogant” in her family of origin.

*** A whiz-bang manager in finance aspired to a larger role but was refused, his manager citing a lack of Emotional Intelligence. Hence his request to work with us. Upon investigation, we learned that his “ghosts” included an emotionally disturbed mother and a shut-down father. It was an environment that had trained him well to be as reserved and independent as possible, which worked well growing up and in his initial career moves, but now hampered his ability to be seen as a Senior Manager.

*** Early in her executive career, an extremely intelligent HR leader confided in us that she was unable to stand up to the CEO when she had important and sincere objections. Why? Because in her growing up culture, she’d been admonished to never speak back to her father or any other adult male. Later, in her career, she’d been able to avoid a direct collision with this “ghost” by working primarily with other women. But now, she had to examine the underlying problem that was threatening to derail her career.

These are just a few samples of real life “Ghosts of the Past” that exceptional men and women have had to address, face into, and move away from in order to get on with their very real excellence.

Please add other examples of Ghosts of the Past - either your own, or those you’ve seen in people you have worked with. Thanks!

(Photo: Family by Shauna Ullman/Flickr)

To find out more about me and my husband Jim Sniechowski, PhD, visit our website. Our new book, “25 Power Speaking Tips That Will Leave Your Audiences Wanting More,” is available in Kindle here. And to learn more about “Ghosts of the Past” our 7th book is dedicated to this topic.