Unprofessional

I haven’t been listening to Anne’s advice so she says she’s going to hit me over the head with a two-by-four. Her advice has been blunt and forceful, so I brace for what’s to come. I’ve driven the hour or more down 280 and up into the Los Altos Hills to walk with Anne and her two German Shepherds and get advice on my work. My questions are around career progression, roles and responsibilities, feedback, promotions and culture. I have concrete questions related to concrete scenarios. Apparently they’ve inspired her to need to hit me with a piece of hardwood, proverbially of course (I hope).

We carefully cross the road and dip down a trail into the woods. Anne says I seek too much validation from my work. She has heart-to-hearts CEOs and founders with successful companies, fabulously wealthy, influential thought leaders, powerful managers…and they are unhappy. They are unfulfilled. They throw their passion, energy and time into their work and emerge without having reached their destination. The dogs lead us over a bridge and up a dusty hill, and Anne tells me I’m headed down the same dark path. I’ve wrapped my sense of wholeness, of successfulness, of worth too much into my work and it will never deliver. My company’s job is to get the most possible out of me while giving me the least possible compensation; that’s business. I bristle but silently; when I ask for advice I listen to it.

It’s time for me, Anne says, to reflect on what I need to feel validated. Then, consider carefully and realistically what I can expect to get from my work. Nothing deeper, nothing broader. The gap will be large. Then figure out how to fill the rest of my validation needs outside of work. I must choose the activities, hobbies and people that help fill me, and invest in them enough to reach what I crave. But I must not just dabble in extracurriculars while placing my sense of success and value on the shoulders of my job. It will buckle.

We’ve emerged back on the road when her voice gets softer. She says she’s not trying to be too harsh, but I need to hear this now – really HEAR it. She is hitting me over the head, she says, with a two-by-four, so she can be certain to get through to me. As I think about my place in the world and my sense of identity, I’m to ask myself, what do you do UNprofessionally? Now, do I want to come in for a glass of water in the garden and we can catch up more generally?