A woman I have been coaching for over a year - we will call her Jess - recently talked to me about a lightbulb moment she had, triggered by what she called an existential crisis. Jess works in big tech which is facing mass layoffs at the moment. She has been at the same company for 7.5 years consistently progressing, taking more responsibility, making more impact, and getting recognized and compensated accordingly. Jess likes her job and is generally happy with the work-life balance, the office perks, friendships, and the impact of the work she is doing as well as what she is learning along the process. So when faced with a potential upcoming layoff (she has not yet been impacted by the mass layoffs but knows they are coming in the region she is in and anticipates she might be one of the many who will be made redundant), she took a moment to consider what that would mean for her. She felt anxious, nervous, afraid, angry, upset, lost, insecure — and the list of negative feelings went on. She didn’t know where to start and how to chew on the uncertainty.
“In so many ways”, she said, “it’s harder to company-proof my house (representative of and a metaphor for her life) than to ex-proof my house. I have company branded mugs, hoodies, tea saucers, cocktail mixers, notebooks, pens, travel cups — my company is everywhere in my house.” She thought, if she is not a successful techie, what is she? Who is she?
When I asked her what made her feel nervous, she had to think for a minute. She said she wouldn’t know how to break ties with her company. She said she defined herself as an employee of the company — her company was a huge chunk of her identity! How would she explain it to her parents, her friends, her community, her network that she no longer works for this company everyone knows and respects? “In so many ways”, she said, “it’s harder to company-proof my house (representative of and a metaphor for her life) than to ex-proof my house. I have company branded mugs, hoodies, tea saucers, cocktail mixers, notebooks, pens, travel cups — my company is everywhere in my house.” She thought, if she is not a successful techie, what is she? Who is she? For someone like Jess, who had built her entire idea of herself around her successful career and felt no need or urge to explain her deeper self, her strengths, her expertise, her hobbies outside work to people around her - she could just say “I work for Company X” or “I work in Big Tech” and people would immediately respect her and not ask any further questions - this realization (that a job is not permanent!) led to a feeling of being lost in an ocean of growing insecurity.
Unfortunately, Jess’s story is quite common, not just among techies but also among others in high-powered, high-pressure jobs. What happens when you identify yourself as your job title and as an employee of your company more than anything else — so much so that you lose touch with your deeper self? What happens when you are mostly in a routine in your job and working long hours most of the time so you don’t dedicate the time to take a pause and reflect on what is working for you, what is nourishing you, what is putting you in the flow zone? What do you actually enjoy about your job and what is the meaning / purpose behind it?
When asked these questions, Jess told me she works to live. She likes her job and her environment enough and doesn’t find it unbearable, and that, to her, is why she has been able to stay in the company and progress steadily. Well… that and the praise and respect she gets from the outside world of course. Fair enough! “If you work to live, what do you do to live?” I asked Jess. This question, she said, is what triggered an “a-ha moment” for her. She might grab a drink with coworkers after work at the local pub but then she goes home, might watch a bit of Netflix, will definitely on to her emails and might get some more work done before going to bed. She explained she is often too tired when she gets home. She said “in fairness, the company takes care of me. I eat free healthy food during the week, I work out at the company gym on the weekends, I drink hipster coffee at the company barista, I can play with and socialize with my coworkers at the dedicated play zones in the office, so I don’t really feel like I need hobbies or a life outside of work”.
Many hard-working people who strive for achievement and the golden key to success self-objectify as state-of-the-art work machines and productivity junkies. The human brain loves dopamine and adrenaline which is what people are able to be hooked on through the productivity, efficiency and rewards & recognition structures companies provide.
Career enmeshment, which seems to be what many people including Jess have been experiencing these days, is a term psychologists use to describe Jess’s situation where the lines between people’s personal and professional lives become blurred, individual identities lose importance and become hard to define without their career links such as their job title, their company name, etc. Many hard-working people who strive for achievement and the golden key to success self-objectify as state-of-the-art work machines and productivity junkies. The human brain loves dopamine and adrenaline which is what people are able to be hooked on through the productivity, efficiency and rewards & recognition structures companies provide. Arthur C. Brooks writes in his article, ‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy, “praise stimulates the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is implicated in all addictive behaviors…. success also resembles addiction in its effect on human relationships. People sacrifice their links with others for their true love, success. They travel for business on anniversaries; they miss Little League games and recitals while working long hours. Some forgo marriage for their careers—earning the appellation of being “married to their work”—even though a good relationship is more satisfying than any job…people willingly sacrifice their own well-being through overwork to keep getting hits of success.” Our jobs can play with our common human weaknesses and take advantage of our addictive tendencies. The constant need for dopamine, the human tendency to measure their self-worth by their “success” as perceived and rewarded by others, creates the situation which psychologists call the “hedonic treadmill”, in which satisfaction and the high don’t last very long and people must immediately focus on the next milestone in search of the next dopamine hit.
Are you nodding along as you are reading this article? Do you see a bit of yourself in Jess?Ask yourself these questions to identify if you suffer from career enmeshment:
Is your job / your company the biggest part of your identity?
When you first meet new people, do you introduce yourself by telling them your job title / the company you work for?
When you first meet new people, do you ask them where they work as one of the first questions?
Do you find yourself sacrificing relationships for work?
Do you find yourself sacrificing hobbies for work?
Are you always on with work emails / pings, even outside work hours / on holidays?
Does the idea of losing / quitting your job feel like a big loss of identity for you?
Is your living space covered with work branded swag?
What do you do for fun? Who do you do it with?
Do you feel you belong to a community (outside of work) or two?
I also recommend watching this Harvard Business Review video to spot more of your tendencies that might signal or lead to career enmeshment:
Some strategies I have found useful for building my own holistic identity as well as some thoughts my coachees have identified as helpful go-to’s are listed below:
Explain what you do, not where you work: It is indeed a common thing to ask and to be asked “What do you do for a living?” when you first meet someone. As opposed to falling into the trap of saying only where you work, e.g. “I work at Microsoft”, explain what you do, e.g. “I help big companies find online channels to promote their product and services to their target audiences”. That way, you identify and associate yourself with a mission or a skillset, as opposed to the company brand / name. If you explain what you do, people will be more inclined to ask more questions than if you just say the company name, which will give you an opportunity to explain to them and yourself what you spend your time on, what your skillsets are, what your value is. This is even more true and important if you work for a big brand name.
Tune into your interests, strengths, values, and skills: Think about what you are naturally interested in and what you are good at, as well as what you value and cherish. The intersection of all of these thought bubbles will be where you can shine. So, if you have technical chops, are interested in travel and value diversity, then the tech division of a multi-cultural travel company might be where you might find yourself to be the most thriving. Also look at your interests, values and skills outside of work and see where you can be leveraging and nourishing them completely outside of your career sphere. If you are interested in hiking, maybe you can join a hiking club in the city you live in (as opposed to joining the hiking club of your company) If you are a yogi, it might be good to build a yoga community outside the company, as opposed to (only) going to the yoga classes at your company — which are also amazing and very convenient as well as time and cost-effective, however don’t help with career enmeshment.
Get excited about new possibilities: A friend of mine who is also facing uncertainty in the midst of tech layoffs, said that he was talking to his old college professor about the current climate at their 20th year alumni reunion, and she said, "Please give me a call, if you are laid off, because we would absolutely love someone with data analytics chops like you from the industry to come and teach a class and help with research." He was all of a sudden super excited about this opportunity that would not have come up, had he not gone to this alumni event and chit chatted to his old professor about a potential layoff. He has always been interested in academia and research and was told that he was a great teacher and trainer when he facilitated workshops and trainings at school and at work. Thinking about what else might be / is out there for you, going back to the drawing board might be anxiety-provoking for sure, but it’s also exciting and energizing!
Diversify and hedge: Like my investment banker friends would always say, “No matter what you do, make sure to diversify your portfolio.” This is also true for what you have to offer to the world. I remember I went to my first ever weekend yoga workshop back in the day thinking I will double click on something I am interested in. This was some 15 years ago - before it was cool to do yoga workshops. All the attendees were full-time yoga teachers except for me, an every day yoga enthusiast. When I came home from the workshop, I told my boyfriend at the time, (now husband), that everyone also assumed I was a yoga teacher, and that that was odd for me and I was surprised no other non yoga teachers had attended the workshop. To my surprise, he replied, “Why don’t you become a yoga teacher?” Again, this was a time when it wasn’t yet cool to do a yoga teacher training as a side gig, if you have a different career path that you’d like to continue on. The people who did the yoga teacher trainings (which were full time programs that lasted 5-6 months so you couldn’t do them alongside your corporate job, and there weren’t a ton available anyway!) were those who wanted yoga teaching to be their full-time career. So when my husband told me, "Maybe this is a sign you should train to become a teacher, why not?!", I thought, “Well, that’s a silly thing to say, I have a different job track, I am not going to teach yoga for a living”. We talked about it for a while and I was encouraged to do the training anyway for fun because I sure am interested in yoga, and who knows, if one day we decide to move to Bali or something, I will be able to make money teaching yoga there!. My husband was thinking "interests", "transferable skills", and crucially, "portfolio diversification". A few years down the line, I did indeed do a yoga teacher training and have been teaching a couple of yoga classes on the side for fun and variety. While I am still very much connected to my full time job at Google, my yoga community, my coaching community, my moms and parents communities keep me diversified and associated with more things than just my corporate job.
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Hi! I'm Merve. 👋 I help corporate leaders and business owners build high-performing teams, grow their businesses, and advance their careers.
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