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American Politics  » Professional Relationship Blueprints

Professional Relationship Blueprints

Our professional relationships draw on two sets of relationship

blueprints. The Authority Blueprint governs our relationships

to authority figures, as well as our relationships to our

subordinates when we are in a position of authority. The Sibling

Blueprint governs our relationships to our co-workers.

Many companies today try to foster a sense of community (and

employee loyalty) by claiming to be one big happy family. The

irony is that even without the company's efforts to create a

sense of family in the workplace, we do experience our

professional environment as a family. Of course, the family our

company resembles is our family, complete with the same

dysfunctional dynamics we experienced growing up.

Our Authority Blueprints are based on our relationships with our

parents. The Male Authority Blueprint is based on our

relationship to our father and applies to our interactions with

men in authority. Our Female Authority Blueprint is based on our

relationship to our mother, and applies to our interactions with

women in authority. When we are in a position of authority,

we're the most influenced by the blueprint of our same-gender

parent. The thing is, when we relate to our superiors at work,

we are not only influenced by our relationship to our parents--we

actually experience it. On an unconscious level, we project our

unresolved issues with our parents onto our supervisors. We

expect our supervisors to provide us with the kind of love and

support that we didn't receive from our parents.

If we have specific issues with either one of our parents, we

will get to work through these issues in our professional

relationships to authority figures. If we never felt able to

disagree with our father, for example, we may also have trouble

disagreeing with our male supervisors. We may not feel entitled

to voice our opinions, which means that we rarely get

acknowledged for our contributions. This, of course, can have

adverse effects on our ability to advance, be recognized, have

our validation needs met, and feel safe. If we were able to

ignore our mother's rules and requests as children, we may not

completely respect the authority of our female supervisors. We

may unconsciously test their authority and see how much we can

get away with, because we need them to provide us with the safe

and strong boundaries that our mothers didn't. Of course, this

can also have a negative impact on our prospects for career

advancement and job security.

When we're in positions of authority, we unconsciously become

our parents. Most often, we identify with our same-gender

parent, but we can take on the management styles of both. If we

experienced our father as being an irrational, authoritarian

jackass, it's a safe bet that the people we supervise feel the

same way about us. If we never had to respect our mother's

requests, then we may find that our employees don't respect

ours.

Now, the good news is that simply becoming aware that we're

projecting our issues with our parents onto our supervisors is

often enough to change our behavior and our experiences. On a

conscious level we understand how inappropriate it is to expect

our supervisors to meet the needs of our parents. It's obvious

that we're not working for our fathers, for example, and so we

can freely express our own opinions with no fear of punishment.

When we hear our mothers' voices coming our of our heads, it's

often enough of a wake-up call to let us alter our management

style, and make more effective and elegant choices. The

interesting thing is that when we stop relating to our

supervisors as our parents and create healthy and supportive

relationships to authority, we often find that our relationships

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to our parents also improve.

If our supervisors are our parents, then our co-workers are our

siblings. This means that we experience sibling rivalry in the

workplace. We compete against our co-workers for the love and

attention of our parents (supervisors). This is the reason that

office politics can be so emotionally charged. We're playing for

much higher stakes than we realize. It's not just about getting

ahead in our careers--it's about winning the approval and

attention of our parents. And since we believe that there's not

enough love to go around, we will do anything we can do to stay

ahead of the game. If we grew up with siblings, we will

unconsciously resort to the strategies we used as children to

compete for our parents' attention. If we didn't grow up with

siblings, we're at a significant disadvantage in our

professional relationships. We've never had to fight for our

parents' attention before, while many of our competitors have

years of experience.

When we choose to stop relating to our supervisors as our

parents, our relationships with our co-workers also improve. We

may still compete with our co-workers, of course, but at least

now we're no longer competing for the love of our parents. We're

no longer competing in a high-stakes game. This relieves much of

the pressure, and allows us to have more fun playing the game.

The competition we experience with our co-workers is now far

more healthy.

About the Author

Kevin B. Burk is the author of The Relationship Handbook: How to

Understand and Improve Every Relationship in Your Life. Visit

http://www.everyrelationship.com for a FREE report on creating

AMAZING Relationships.