- Email: [email protected]
Can you manage the rest of your life?
European tvfanagemtmt ]ournal Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 133-137, 1994 Copyright 0 1994 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 02~2373/94 $7.00+0.00
0263-2373(94)EOO03-0
Can You Managethe Rest of Your Life? MANFRED KETS DE VRIES, Raoul de Vity d’Avaucourt Management, INSEAD, Fontainebleau
Executives passing the mid-point of their lives in business are prone to anxiety and preoccupation with the meaning of the rest of their lives. Manfred Kets de Vries explores some of the psychological traumas that can arise from physical ageing, loss of sexual potency and generational competition. Often, childhood experiences contribute to the failure to adjust, and marital tensions add to the problem. But things do not have to be so negative. The author suggests some practical and appealing ways of overcoming mid-life angst. Do you ever ask yourself what are you running for, where are you running to? Do you ever stand still and think about your life? Oh, you say, you have no time for that kind of nonsense. Navel-examining is not for you. You are far too busy running. There are just too many balls that you are juggling to keep in the air. And getting older hasn’t made it any easier. On the contrary, life has become increasingly complicated. Now you have to fight on SO many fronts. But in spite of all this
Professor of Human Resource
busyness, don’t you sometimes wonder whether you are still up to it? Isn’t it true, if you are redy honest with yourself, that you are starting to pay more attention to these kinds of questions? They are beginning to take up more of your time. But do you have any idea why? Do you know why you’re becoming more reflective? What do you make of this change in your attitude? You may well tell me you don’t know. But let me change the questions slightly: do you still feel alive when you are doing what you are doing, or do you experience an increasing sense of deadness? Is a feeling of malaise taking over? What happened to the enthusiasm of your younger years? Is it still there or has it gone? Do you have a disturbing feeling that not much new seems to be happening; that it takes a much greater effort to maintain the same level of enthusiasm you had in the past? When you were growing up, everything was so new and exciting. Every encounter was an electrifying experience. It was like the great buzzing, blooming confusion the psychologist William James used to write about. To maintain that same level of discovery now, at mid-life, is a very different story altogether. You have to work so much harder at it. That sense of playfulness of bygone years is not as easy to attain. How well have you retained your ability to play? As an educator I spend a lot of time with middle-aged executives, and given the nature of the programs I run, after a while they begin to talk quite frankly about what redly matters to them. After some preliminaries, they cut the crap and are prepared to deal with the issues that are important to them. They quickly realize that being polite to one another and talking about the weather is not going to help anybody. I also see quite a few executives on a one-to-one basis in my other role as a psychoanalyst, and over time I have discovered considerable similarities in the kind of problems that preoccupy these people. So what are they struggling with? What exactly happens at mid-life to cause such a psychological impact? What makes these people look at certain issues in such a completely different manner from before?
EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol 12 No 2 June 1994
133
CAN YOU MANAGE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
Perhaps a good way to start to answer these questions is to tell you about a dream once recounted to me by an executive who had passed the mid-life point, someone who had become increasingly anxious about the kinds of challenges that were lying ahead of him. This man described how, in his dream, he was sitting in front of his computer screen trying to finish a report. Things seemed to be going well until suddenly a sense of panic came creeping up. He had a foreboding that something terrible was going to happen. When he looked once more at the screen the text he had been working on was no longer readable, but was ‘dripping down.’ Everything looked scrambled up, making all the work he had done incomprehensible and useless. The dream took a terrifying turn as the screen changed into a kind of mirror in which he could see his own face, horribly distorted. He woke up sweating and very frightened. Talking about his dream, the executive referred to the increasing sense of meaninglessness he was experiencing at work. He had a feeling that his job was not really leading anywhere. What was the use of surpassing the annual plan one more time? Of beating the budget? Of increasing market share? He also worried whether he would be able to keep up the kind of pace he had been setting. What he was really concerned about, as the imagery of his dream implied, was the possibility that he might fall apart, and his sense of panic had been increased by the chest pains from which he had recently been suffering. He had begun to wonder if he was suffering from a serious disease. Compare the dream of this executive with the troubled opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which he wrote at mid-life, at a time when he was going through a considerable crisis (he had been banished from his native city of Florence) and was wondering about his identity and career. Midway in our life‘s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was! I never saw so drear, so rank, so arduous a wilderness! Its very memory gives a shape to fear. The dream of the executive and the opening lines of Dante’s poem give us some insight into the kind of issues important to people as they approach middle age. To start with, and probably most importantly, mid-life brings a greater awareness of ageing, illness, and the resulting dependency that may come with them. As the computer screen dream indicates, growing older is accompanied by many transformations. We may have appreciated these facts at one level when we were younger, but our degree of understanding was different then from what it is now. These were issues of an abstract nature; they didn’t really hit home and couldn’t be taken personally. For the young, death is just a 134
distant rumour. While you are under forty it is easy to believe that these issues don’t apply to you - and maybe it is better that way. After mid-life things become quite different. Many of the executives on whose experiences I am drawing here begin to see time differently. They have the sense of its becoming finite; they realize that there is only so much of it left. People begin to think in terms of time-left-tolive as opposed to time-since-birth. The idea of one’s own death becomes a reality, particularly as people to whom one is close begin to die. These people have been important to one’s inner mental map, and this causes feelings of disquietude. Before the age of forty, one really believes one is immortal; after that point it draws upon most of us that time is limited. We become increasingly aware of the inevitability of death, and the fact that it is coming closer. What really brings that point home is looking in the mirror and seeing how one’s face is changing. As the executive discovered in his dream, this can be a terrifying experience. Wasn’t it Cocteau who once said that the mirror is the place where one can see death? Cocteau’s statement holds a certain amount of truth because the mirror forces one to acknowledge that certain things are happening to one’s own body. We must not forget that the ego is foremost a body ego. Bodily image (including the face) plays an important role in stabilizing identity. Physical transformations can have an enormous psychological impact and will strongly affect one’s outlook on life. Physical ageing leads to greater body monitoring and an increase in hypochondriacal anxiety. The changes I am thinking of include the obvious ones, such as losing your hair or turning grey, having to wear glasses, developing a paunch or saggy breasts, getting wrinkles or having dental problems. More narcissistically predisposed women, who are inclined to rely largely on their physical appearance for getting attention and managing their sense of self-esteem, find it particularly difficult to deal with the more noticeable effects of ageing and the changes in their body image. They may try to fight it, and although they may win a few early battles, in the long run they will lose the war. After all, how many face lifts can you have? For men, the greatest narcissistic injuries that come with ageing have to do with facial changes and sexuality. Many men experience serious fears about their decrease or loss of sexual potency, discovering at mid-life that they can no longer hold on to the fantasy of themselves as a kind of Don Juan. Although they may not talk about such issues in public, we may get a sense of it through the joking behaviour seen in the locker room. Of course, where it is really spelled out is in the encounter with a therapist. Dealing with the loss of sexual potency is very different for many individuals. It can be an underlying cause for diffuse
EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol12 No 2 June 1994
CAN YOU MANAGE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
feelings of irritation and anger. It may lead to resentment about the behaviour of younger people. It may arouse envy towards the next generation, who seem unfairly free from such worries. As a consequence (and remembering that envy is one of the major equalizing forces in human life) some executives may resort to displaced aggression and act out their feelings. This is one of the reasons why I often argue that the mythological King Layos is alive and well and living in organizations. In a symbolic way ‘fathers’ may want to kill their ‘sons’. I have encountered a number of senior executives who, upset about the things they cannot change (the ageing process and their decreasing sexual prowess in particular) take their frustration out on other, younger executives. In this way, they show the world that they still have power, even if it is of another order. So, if you encounter an organization where there is a high turnover of younger executives, where statements such as ‘We give our younger executives lots of responsibility’ turn out to be double-edged since very few young executives pass their ‘tests’ and are proven worthy, it is very possible that there is a King Layos on the loose. The many dramatic succession stories we read about in the financial pages may be related to similar psychodynamic difficulties. These stories usually concern senior executives who are reluctant to make way for the next generation. Instead, when the younger, rising stars are perceived as becoming too powerful, they are got rid of. The decrease in potency and the existence of generational envy are related to the very reasonable worry of some executives about whether they can continue to be effective in the work place. They may experience an increasing sense of entrapment and a fear of obsolescence. They may begin to feel imprisoned by routine, that they are no longer learning, that they are less productive. It is at this point in life that many executives become stuck. The future no longer looks very interesting. Some may rise to the personal challenge implicit in this situation and make a career change. Most, however, do not have the courage to take such a step, and instead hang on in their job, even at the cost of their mental health. One way in which some of these executives express their negative feelings is to say that they feel bored. However, as any psychologist will tell you, boredom is a complex state of mind which can be a cover-up for many negative emotional feelings, including free-floating anxiety, restlessness, irritability, nervousness, and depression. Whatever the cause, we do realize that such feelings are not at all conducive to job satisfaction and productivity. Some executives have a different problem. As a direct result of their past success in the job they may start to feel imposterous or fraudulent. Despite their evident and tangible achievements they begin to wonder whether they really are as good as other people think they are. They will attribute whatever success they have to luck, compensatory hard work, or superficial factors
such as physical attractiveness or likeability. People troubled by these irrational thought processes find it hard to accept their own talents and achievements. They have somehow absorbed the notion that they have fooled everyone around them. This may not have been so problematic when they started on the career ladder. With success, however, comes the increasing dread that they will finally be found out. They are preoccupied by an irrational concern that people will discover their feet of clay. Such preoccupations will predictably cause a considerable amount of anxiety.
I
The mythical King Layos is alive and well and living in organizations.
Lingering in the background of people who feel imposterous are perfectionistic attitudes about themselves. These feelings originate in the way these people were treated while growing up, with the likelihood that the family dealt with the achievements of the developing child in the wrong way, causing confusion in the child’s mind about the extent to which achievements were the result of his own efforts. As the child grew up, he began to distrust his parents’ perceptions and consequently his own. His achievements and capabilities are experienced as phony and hollow. No wonder that such children view themselves as frauds; no wonder that they cannot enjoy their achievements, even as adults. The matter may be further complicated, in particular for men, by an unconscious sense of anxiety about doing better than their parents. This anxiety may be accompanied by an equally unconscious expectation that the parents may become envious and retaliatory. In these cases the Oedipal stage seems never to have been satisfactorily resolved. Proper identification with the parents has never taken place. Such relationships remain fraught with conflict. Infantile fears about retaliatory envy, which may well contain a kernel of truth inferred from covert messages, may linger on into adulthood. These feelings may be exacerbated by the tendency for success to elevate the individual from the family background, raising realistic fears of separation, estrangement, and rejection. Thus moving up the career ladder brings not pleasure but rather an intensifying amount of trepidation and anxiety. Many executives, having reached a top position, begin to ask themselves, ‘What next? Am I going to carry on doing the same thing for another fifteen years? Is that all there is to life?‘ For some, finally reaching the position they have been striving for all their lives can come as a real let-down. Instead of bringing pleasure, the achievement may create a deep sense of disappointment. Some executives may suffer from what is called the ‘Faust syndrome’, the melancholia of having everything completed. What they saw as their life’s task has been achieved. There is nothing to strive for any longer. Those who are unable to look for new challenges may become quite depressed.
EUJ\.OPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol12 No 2 June 1994
135
CAN YOU MANAGE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
Others, aware that most organizations are like funnels, wide at the bottom and with very little room at the top, wonder if they will ever achieve the final step, the goal they set for themselves when they began their career. Their original target has come within sight, but the competition is stiff. If they do not make it, how will they handle their disappointment? Will they get over it, or will they become seriously depressed? Faced with this situation, they react with what the Germans call Torschhsspunik - panic at the closing of the gates. They may begin to work frantically, in a desperate bid to reach the end run. They are aware of the fact that the career clock is ticking; they recognize that they are going through the last phase of their career. It is now or never. Others, aware that the cards are not being shuffled right, that they are not going to make it, become bitter. They may take their frustration out on people at work or at home.
I
Executives seem willing to forego the present for the sake of the future. Only the future appears to count.
Other non-work issues begin to preoccupy these men. (I refer to men because unfortunately I encounter very few women at the senior management level.) Many increasingly begin to worry about their relationship with their children and their wife. They realize the balance of their attention has been lopsided, directed mainly toward their work. They feel that they are losing contact with their children. Some have a hard time dealing with their children’s increasing independence. They do not always like what they see, nor how their children are turning out. Consequently, some of them make a desperate effort to change behaviour they find unacceptable. But at this late stage, there is not much they can do about it. The time to act was earlier - when they were not around because they were too busy working on their career. Asked certain questions about their relationships, most of these people reveal a rather instrumental approach to their careers, seeming to reason along the lines of: ‘I am going to put a lot of effort into my career to start with, so that my wife and children will have it better later on’. It is as if they are willing to forego the present for the sake of the future. Only the future seems to count. Executives behave this way with a vengeance. Most of them spend two or three times as much time and energy on their career as they do on their private life. When questioned, they readily express concern about the quality of their private life and claim that they make a conscious effort to put time into it. But when their behaviour is analyzed more closely, many of their professed resolutions merely pay lip service to a pleasant idea. The sad outcome of acting in this manner is that they eventually find out that their wife and children are no longer around when they finally accomplish what 136
they set out to do. In postponing gratification in this way, they miss intimate family moments which will never return. Now, when the chickens have come home to roost, and far too late in the day, they want to make sudden changes and make up for lost time. Their concern about the here-and-now should have started much earlier. Making changes in their family relationships and behaviour of their children at this late stage is not going to be easy. Tensions in the marital relationship frequently form part of this crisis. The children are leaving or have already left the house. The family home is no longer that, and feels suddenly very different. Both partners may begin to worry what life will be like with only the two of them. Will they be able to manage without using the children as an excuse for not dealing with each other? Many couples have great difficulties in handling such a Not infrequently, situation. and not necessarily consciously, they create ‘problem children’ in order to have something to talk about. Problem children may delay their departure, staying at home longer. Some couples will do anything to avoid dealing with issues that are of real concern to each other. Others may start new relationships, have affairs, and may eventually divorce. Quite a few people chose this way of revitalizing themselves. Some men start affairs with younger women; this is one way of denying that they are ageing. These are the Peter Pans who want to remain eternally young. Some may even start a new family, hoping that this time they will get things right. They are looking for a second chance. Some men also find it hard to deal with the enthusiasm of their wives for their own activities. Many women married to high-flying, often absent, executives have little choice but to stop working when their children are born in order to spend time with them. Once the children become more independent, they may start picking up the threads of their previous career. Their renewed energy and interests can arouse the resentment and envy of their husbands, particularly if the men are tired and bored with their own job. An additional source of stress for individuals at this midlife point is the undeniable evidence that their parents are ageing. Witnessing the mental and physical decline of one’s parents’ abilities can be extremely disturbing. Some people may interpret it as a harbinger of their own fate, an indication of what might be in store for them, a sort of caricature of their dread of what will happen to themselves. The increasing dependence of their parents also necessitates their assuming a new and different role. The reversal of the traditional roles of authority and submission vis-his their parents is distressing and hard to adjust to. Moreover, their parents’ impending death is a reminder of their own mortality. I have met additionally
a number of executives who suffer from what has been described as
EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol12 No 2 June 1994
CAN YOU MANAGE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
‘anniversary reaction’. By this I mean an initially undefined form of anxiety which upon closer analysis appears to be related to the anniversary of the death of a loved one. It is most commonly experienced as a state of depression and is basically a strong emotional reaction to an earlier event occurring on the occasion of an annual celebration or remembrance. Some executives become especially anxious as they approach the age at which a parent died. As the date gets nearer, a severe crisis can sometimes be precipitated. Some individuals may even experience symptoms similar to those of a deceased (usually same sex) parent, or other person important in their life. Deeply buried conflicts about rivalry and the realization of death wishes may be revived on these occasions. This, again, makes for complex feelings of unease. Retirement is similarly and simultaneously becoming a reality that can no longer be ignored, and therefore yet another cause for worry. How adequately has it been prepared for? How can it best be dealt with? To those for whom their identity is very much bound up in their job, the idea of retirement can become very frightening. While financial concerns undoubtedly play an important part in these worries, the main problems have a different source. All too often executives fail to plan sufficiently for retirement, both financially and otherwise, because they simply do not want to think about it. For many people, the equation is: you are what you do. So who are you when you no longer have a job? People for whom the job is everything become increasingly aware of the difficulties experienced by others in a similar position to themselves. Identifying so completely with the job does not do wonders for longevity. An extremely high percentage of people whose only interest is work die soon after retirement.
people are being forced to make the best of what initially looks like a rough deal. Many end by pursuing the kinds of dreams they had when they were growing up but were discouraged to follow. The Protean career is here to stay. After all, since we all live so much longer, why stick to only one occupation? Some people nearing the end of their working life assume the role of mentor towards people in the work place. They like to help younger people in the organization; they like to see them develop and grow. This ‘generativity route’ is a constructive way of dealing with the problems of getting older. It is a way of creating some form of continuity and it is a very positive solution to managing existential anxiety. It can also help to create an atmosphere within the organization which fosters personal growth and learning. If an attitude of generativity is absent from the organization - with the older generation, because of their various psychological hang-ups, unwilling to help the next generation - the company will find itself heading towards the graveyard where so many other companies have buried themselves. In Shakespeare’s K&g Czar, the Fool tells the king that he should not grow older before he grows wiser. This is the kind of advice one should heed. Unfortunately, in the word’s of John Lennon’s song, for all too many people, ‘Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans’. I hope, however, that you will not end up as one of those!
However, things do not have to be so negative. There are many more constructive ways of dealing with the process of ageing. For example, many people find renewed fuIfilment in the family. They may make a concerted effort to get closer to their spouse and children. They try to get in touch with their feelings, making an effort to neutralize the emotionally numbing aspect of many organizations. Others find very satisfying roles outside their organizations which can vary from voluntary work for social causes to a greater preoccupation with culture and leisure concerns. Some people, when they begin to feel that they are growing stale in their present position, decide to look for new horizons and find other, more challenging jobs. Some may actually do what I call ‘a Gauguin’, and, like the artist, make a complete break from their previous career. They find the courage to do what they have always wanted to do, but were never allowed or dared to do in the past. They finally become their own person, rather than acting out a parent’s, or self-imposed, fantasy of what they should be doing. With the recent surge in ‘downsizing’,
more and more
EURQPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol 12 No 2 June 1994
MANFRED KETS DE VRIES, INSEAD, Boul~rd de Constance, 77305, FontainebZeau, Cedex, France. Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries is the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucou~ Professor in Human Resource Management at the European lnstitute of Business Administration (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France. He is also a practising analyst and a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and the ~nte~atio~l Psych~nffZytic Association. He has held professorships at McGill University, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Montreal, and the Harvard Business School. He is the author, coauthor, and editor of ten books and over 100 articles and chupters in bag. His last books include Handbook of Character Studies, Organizations on the Couch, Leaders, Fools, and Impostors, and Life and Death on the Executive Lane. His research interests are in the interface between psychoanalysis, dynamic psychiatry, and ~nagem~t.
0263-2373(94)EOO03-0
Can You Managethe Rest of Your Life? MANFRED KETS DE VRIES, Raoul de Vity d’Avaucourt Management, INSEAD, Fontainebleau
Executives passing the mid-point of their lives in business are prone to anxiety and preoccupation with the meaning of the rest of their lives. Manfred Kets de Vries explores some of the psychological traumas that can arise from physical ageing, loss of sexual potency and generational competition. Often, childhood experiences contribute to the failure to adjust, and marital tensions add to the problem. But things do not have to be so negative. The author suggests some practical and appealing ways of overcoming mid-life angst. Do you ever ask yourself what are you running for, where are you running to? Do you ever stand still and think about your life? Oh, you say, you have no time for that kind of nonsense. Navel-examining is not for you. You are far too busy running. There are just too many balls that you are juggling to keep in the air. And getting older hasn’t made it any easier. On the contrary, life has become increasingly complicated. Now you have to fight on SO many fronts. But in spite of all this
Professor of Human Resource
busyness, don’t you sometimes wonder whether you are still up to it? Isn’t it true, if you are redy honest with yourself, that you are starting to pay more attention to these kinds of questions? They are beginning to take up more of your time. But do you have any idea why? Do you know why you’re becoming more reflective? What do you make of this change in your attitude? You may well tell me you don’t know. But let me change the questions slightly: do you still feel alive when you are doing what you are doing, or do you experience an increasing sense of deadness? Is a feeling of malaise taking over? What happened to the enthusiasm of your younger years? Is it still there or has it gone? Do you have a disturbing feeling that not much new seems to be happening; that it takes a much greater effort to maintain the same level of enthusiasm you had in the past? When you were growing up, everything was so new and exciting. Every encounter was an electrifying experience. It was like the great buzzing, blooming confusion the psychologist William James used to write about. To maintain that same level of discovery now, at mid-life, is a very different story altogether. You have to work so much harder at it. That sense of playfulness of bygone years is not as easy to attain. How well have you retained your ability to play? As an educator I spend a lot of time with middle-aged executives, and given the nature of the programs I run, after a while they begin to talk quite frankly about what redly matters to them. After some preliminaries, they cut the crap and are prepared to deal with the issues that are important to them. They quickly realize that being polite to one another and talking about the weather is not going to help anybody. I also see quite a few executives on a one-to-one basis in my other role as a psychoanalyst, and over time I have discovered considerable similarities in the kind of problems that preoccupy these people. So what are they struggling with? What exactly happens at mid-life to cause such a psychological impact? What makes these people look at certain issues in such a completely different manner from before?
EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol 12 No 2 June 1994
133
CAN YOU MANAGE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
Perhaps a good way to start to answer these questions is to tell you about a dream once recounted to me by an executive who had passed the mid-life point, someone who had become increasingly anxious about the kinds of challenges that were lying ahead of him. This man described how, in his dream, he was sitting in front of his computer screen trying to finish a report. Things seemed to be going well until suddenly a sense of panic came creeping up. He had a foreboding that something terrible was going to happen. When he looked once more at the screen the text he had been working on was no longer readable, but was ‘dripping down.’ Everything looked scrambled up, making all the work he had done incomprehensible and useless. The dream took a terrifying turn as the screen changed into a kind of mirror in which he could see his own face, horribly distorted. He woke up sweating and very frightened. Talking about his dream, the executive referred to the increasing sense of meaninglessness he was experiencing at work. He had a feeling that his job was not really leading anywhere. What was the use of surpassing the annual plan one more time? Of beating the budget? Of increasing market share? He also worried whether he would be able to keep up the kind of pace he had been setting. What he was really concerned about, as the imagery of his dream implied, was the possibility that he might fall apart, and his sense of panic had been increased by the chest pains from which he had recently been suffering. He had begun to wonder if he was suffering from a serious disease. Compare the dream of this executive with the troubled opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which he wrote at mid-life, at a time when he was going through a considerable crisis (he had been banished from his native city of Florence) and was wondering about his identity and career. Midway in our life‘s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was! I never saw so drear, so rank, so arduous a wilderness! Its very memory gives a shape to fear. The dream of the executive and the opening lines of Dante’s poem give us some insight into the kind of issues important to people as they approach middle age. To start with, and probably most importantly, mid-life brings a greater awareness of ageing, illness, and the resulting dependency that may come with them. As the computer screen dream indicates, growing older is accompanied by many transformations. We may have appreciated these facts at one level when we were younger, but our degree of understanding was different then from what it is now. These were issues of an abstract nature; they didn’t really hit home and couldn’t be taken personally. For the young, death is just a 134
distant rumour. While you are under forty it is easy to believe that these issues don’t apply to you - and maybe it is better that way. After mid-life things become quite different. Many of the executives on whose experiences I am drawing here begin to see time differently. They have the sense of its becoming finite; they realize that there is only so much of it left. People begin to think in terms of time-left-tolive as opposed to time-since-birth. The idea of one’s own death becomes a reality, particularly as people to whom one is close begin to die. These people have been important to one’s inner mental map, and this causes feelings of disquietude. Before the age of forty, one really believes one is immortal; after that point it draws upon most of us that time is limited. We become increasingly aware of the inevitability of death, and the fact that it is coming closer. What really brings that point home is looking in the mirror and seeing how one’s face is changing. As the executive discovered in his dream, this can be a terrifying experience. Wasn’t it Cocteau who once said that the mirror is the place where one can see death? Cocteau’s statement holds a certain amount of truth because the mirror forces one to acknowledge that certain things are happening to one’s own body. We must not forget that the ego is foremost a body ego. Bodily image (including the face) plays an important role in stabilizing identity. Physical transformations can have an enormous psychological impact and will strongly affect one’s outlook on life. Physical ageing leads to greater body monitoring and an increase in hypochondriacal anxiety. The changes I am thinking of include the obvious ones, such as losing your hair or turning grey, having to wear glasses, developing a paunch or saggy breasts, getting wrinkles or having dental problems. More narcissistically predisposed women, who are inclined to rely largely on their physical appearance for getting attention and managing their sense of self-esteem, find it particularly difficult to deal with the more noticeable effects of ageing and the changes in their body image. They may try to fight it, and although they may win a few early battles, in the long run they will lose the war. After all, how many face lifts can you have? For men, the greatest narcissistic injuries that come with ageing have to do with facial changes and sexuality. Many men experience serious fears about their decrease or loss of sexual potency, discovering at mid-life that they can no longer hold on to the fantasy of themselves as a kind of Don Juan. Although they may not talk about such issues in public, we may get a sense of it through the joking behaviour seen in the locker room. Of course, where it is really spelled out is in the encounter with a therapist. Dealing with the loss of sexual potency is very different for many individuals. It can be an underlying cause for diffuse
EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol12 No 2 June 1994
CAN YOU MANAGE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
feelings of irritation and anger. It may lead to resentment about the behaviour of younger people. It may arouse envy towards the next generation, who seem unfairly free from such worries. As a consequence (and remembering that envy is one of the major equalizing forces in human life) some executives may resort to displaced aggression and act out their feelings. This is one of the reasons why I often argue that the mythological King Layos is alive and well and living in organizations. In a symbolic way ‘fathers’ may want to kill their ‘sons’. I have encountered a number of senior executives who, upset about the things they cannot change (the ageing process and their decreasing sexual prowess in particular) take their frustration out on other, younger executives. In this way, they show the world that they still have power, even if it is of another order. So, if you encounter an organization where there is a high turnover of younger executives, where statements such as ‘We give our younger executives lots of responsibility’ turn out to be double-edged since very few young executives pass their ‘tests’ and are proven worthy, it is very possible that there is a King Layos on the loose. The many dramatic succession stories we read about in the financial pages may be related to similar psychodynamic difficulties. These stories usually concern senior executives who are reluctant to make way for the next generation. Instead, when the younger, rising stars are perceived as becoming too powerful, they are got rid of. The decrease in potency and the existence of generational envy are related to the very reasonable worry of some executives about whether they can continue to be effective in the work place. They may experience an increasing sense of entrapment and a fear of obsolescence. They may begin to feel imprisoned by routine, that they are no longer learning, that they are less productive. It is at this point in life that many executives become stuck. The future no longer looks very interesting. Some may rise to the personal challenge implicit in this situation and make a career change. Most, however, do not have the courage to take such a step, and instead hang on in their job, even at the cost of their mental health. One way in which some of these executives express their negative feelings is to say that they feel bored. However, as any psychologist will tell you, boredom is a complex state of mind which can be a cover-up for many negative emotional feelings, including free-floating anxiety, restlessness, irritability, nervousness, and depression. Whatever the cause, we do realize that such feelings are not at all conducive to job satisfaction and productivity. Some executives have a different problem. As a direct result of their past success in the job they may start to feel imposterous or fraudulent. Despite their evident and tangible achievements they begin to wonder whether they really are as good as other people think they are. They will attribute whatever success they have to luck, compensatory hard work, or superficial factors
such as physical attractiveness or likeability. People troubled by these irrational thought processes find it hard to accept their own talents and achievements. They have somehow absorbed the notion that they have fooled everyone around them. This may not have been so problematic when they started on the career ladder. With success, however, comes the increasing dread that they will finally be found out. They are preoccupied by an irrational concern that people will discover their feet of clay. Such preoccupations will predictably cause a considerable amount of anxiety.
I
The mythical King Layos is alive and well and living in organizations.
Lingering in the background of people who feel imposterous are perfectionistic attitudes about themselves. These feelings originate in the way these people were treated while growing up, with the likelihood that the family dealt with the achievements of the developing child in the wrong way, causing confusion in the child’s mind about the extent to which achievements were the result of his own efforts. As the child grew up, he began to distrust his parents’ perceptions and consequently his own. His achievements and capabilities are experienced as phony and hollow. No wonder that such children view themselves as frauds; no wonder that they cannot enjoy their achievements, even as adults. The matter may be further complicated, in particular for men, by an unconscious sense of anxiety about doing better than their parents. This anxiety may be accompanied by an equally unconscious expectation that the parents may become envious and retaliatory. In these cases the Oedipal stage seems never to have been satisfactorily resolved. Proper identification with the parents has never taken place. Such relationships remain fraught with conflict. Infantile fears about retaliatory envy, which may well contain a kernel of truth inferred from covert messages, may linger on into adulthood. These feelings may be exacerbated by the tendency for success to elevate the individual from the family background, raising realistic fears of separation, estrangement, and rejection. Thus moving up the career ladder brings not pleasure but rather an intensifying amount of trepidation and anxiety. Many executives, having reached a top position, begin to ask themselves, ‘What next? Am I going to carry on doing the same thing for another fifteen years? Is that all there is to life?‘ For some, finally reaching the position they have been striving for all their lives can come as a real let-down. Instead of bringing pleasure, the achievement may create a deep sense of disappointment. Some executives may suffer from what is called the ‘Faust syndrome’, the melancholia of having everything completed. What they saw as their life’s task has been achieved. There is nothing to strive for any longer. Those who are unable to look for new challenges may become quite depressed.
EUJ\.OPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol12 No 2 June 1994
135
CAN YOU MANAGE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
Others, aware that most organizations are like funnels, wide at the bottom and with very little room at the top, wonder if they will ever achieve the final step, the goal they set for themselves when they began their career. Their original target has come within sight, but the competition is stiff. If they do not make it, how will they handle their disappointment? Will they get over it, or will they become seriously depressed? Faced with this situation, they react with what the Germans call Torschhsspunik - panic at the closing of the gates. They may begin to work frantically, in a desperate bid to reach the end run. They are aware of the fact that the career clock is ticking; they recognize that they are going through the last phase of their career. It is now or never. Others, aware that the cards are not being shuffled right, that they are not going to make it, become bitter. They may take their frustration out on people at work or at home.
I
Executives seem willing to forego the present for the sake of the future. Only the future appears to count.
Other non-work issues begin to preoccupy these men. (I refer to men because unfortunately I encounter very few women at the senior management level.) Many increasingly begin to worry about their relationship with their children and their wife. They realize the balance of their attention has been lopsided, directed mainly toward their work. They feel that they are losing contact with their children. Some have a hard time dealing with their children’s increasing independence. They do not always like what they see, nor how their children are turning out. Consequently, some of them make a desperate effort to change behaviour they find unacceptable. But at this late stage, there is not much they can do about it. The time to act was earlier - when they were not around because they were too busy working on their career. Asked certain questions about their relationships, most of these people reveal a rather instrumental approach to their careers, seeming to reason along the lines of: ‘I am going to put a lot of effort into my career to start with, so that my wife and children will have it better later on’. It is as if they are willing to forego the present for the sake of the future. Only the future seems to count. Executives behave this way with a vengeance. Most of them spend two or three times as much time and energy on their career as they do on their private life. When questioned, they readily express concern about the quality of their private life and claim that they make a conscious effort to put time into it. But when their behaviour is analyzed more closely, many of their professed resolutions merely pay lip service to a pleasant idea. The sad outcome of acting in this manner is that they eventually find out that their wife and children are no longer around when they finally accomplish what 136
they set out to do. In postponing gratification in this way, they miss intimate family moments which will never return. Now, when the chickens have come home to roost, and far too late in the day, they want to make sudden changes and make up for lost time. Their concern about the here-and-now should have started much earlier. Making changes in their family relationships and behaviour of their children at this late stage is not going to be easy. Tensions in the marital relationship frequently form part of this crisis. The children are leaving or have already left the house. The family home is no longer that, and feels suddenly very different. Both partners may begin to worry what life will be like with only the two of them. Will they be able to manage without using the children as an excuse for not dealing with each other? Many couples have great difficulties in handling such a Not infrequently, situation. and not necessarily consciously, they create ‘problem children’ in order to have something to talk about. Problem children may delay their departure, staying at home longer. Some couples will do anything to avoid dealing with issues that are of real concern to each other. Others may start new relationships, have affairs, and may eventually divorce. Quite a few people chose this way of revitalizing themselves. Some men start affairs with younger women; this is one way of denying that they are ageing. These are the Peter Pans who want to remain eternally young. Some may even start a new family, hoping that this time they will get things right. They are looking for a second chance. Some men also find it hard to deal with the enthusiasm of their wives for their own activities. Many women married to high-flying, often absent, executives have little choice but to stop working when their children are born in order to spend time with them. Once the children become more independent, they may start picking up the threads of their previous career. Their renewed energy and interests can arouse the resentment and envy of their husbands, particularly if the men are tired and bored with their own job. An additional source of stress for individuals at this midlife point is the undeniable evidence that their parents are ageing. Witnessing the mental and physical decline of one’s parents’ abilities can be extremely disturbing. Some people may interpret it as a harbinger of their own fate, an indication of what might be in store for them, a sort of caricature of their dread of what will happen to themselves. The increasing dependence of their parents also necessitates their assuming a new and different role. The reversal of the traditional roles of authority and submission vis-his their parents is distressing and hard to adjust to. Moreover, their parents’ impending death is a reminder of their own mortality. I have met additionally
a number of executives who suffer from what has been described as
EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol12 No 2 June 1994
CAN YOU MANAGE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?
‘anniversary reaction’. By this I mean an initially undefined form of anxiety which upon closer analysis appears to be related to the anniversary of the death of a loved one. It is most commonly experienced as a state of depression and is basically a strong emotional reaction to an earlier event occurring on the occasion of an annual celebration or remembrance. Some executives become especially anxious as they approach the age at which a parent died. As the date gets nearer, a severe crisis can sometimes be precipitated. Some individuals may even experience symptoms similar to those of a deceased (usually same sex) parent, or other person important in their life. Deeply buried conflicts about rivalry and the realization of death wishes may be revived on these occasions. This, again, makes for complex feelings of unease. Retirement is similarly and simultaneously becoming a reality that can no longer be ignored, and therefore yet another cause for worry. How adequately has it been prepared for? How can it best be dealt with? To those for whom their identity is very much bound up in their job, the idea of retirement can become very frightening. While financial concerns undoubtedly play an important part in these worries, the main problems have a different source. All too often executives fail to plan sufficiently for retirement, both financially and otherwise, because they simply do not want to think about it. For many people, the equation is: you are what you do. So who are you when you no longer have a job? People for whom the job is everything become increasingly aware of the difficulties experienced by others in a similar position to themselves. Identifying so completely with the job does not do wonders for longevity. An extremely high percentage of people whose only interest is work die soon after retirement.
people are being forced to make the best of what initially looks like a rough deal. Many end by pursuing the kinds of dreams they had when they were growing up but were discouraged to follow. The Protean career is here to stay. After all, since we all live so much longer, why stick to only one occupation? Some people nearing the end of their working life assume the role of mentor towards people in the work place. They like to help younger people in the organization; they like to see them develop and grow. This ‘generativity route’ is a constructive way of dealing with the problems of getting older. It is a way of creating some form of continuity and it is a very positive solution to managing existential anxiety. It can also help to create an atmosphere within the organization which fosters personal growth and learning. If an attitude of generativity is absent from the organization - with the older generation, because of their various psychological hang-ups, unwilling to help the next generation - the company will find itself heading towards the graveyard where so many other companies have buried themselves. In Shakespeare’s K&g Czar, the Fool tells the king that he should not grow older before he grows wiser. This is the kind of advice one should heed. Unfortunately, in the word’s of John Lennon’s song, for all too many people, ‘Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans’. I hope, however, that you will not end up as one of those!
However, things do not have to be so negative. There are many more constructive ways of dealing with the process of ageing. For example, many people find renewed fuIfilment in the family. They may make a concerted effort to get closer to their spouse and children. They try to get in touch with their feelings, making an effort to neutralize the emotionally numbing aspect of many organizations. Others find very satisfying roles outside their organizations which can vary from voluntary work for social causes to a greater preoccupation with culture and leisure concerns. Some people, when they begin to feel that they are growing stale in their present position, decide to look for new horizons and find other, more challenging jobs. Some may actually do what I call ‘a Gauguin’, and, like the artist, make a complete break from their previous career. They find the courage to do what they have always wanted to do, but were never allowed or dared to do in the past. They finally become their own person, rather than acting out a parent’s, or self-imposed, fantasy of what they should be doing. With the recent surge in ‘downsizing’,
more and more
EURQPEAN MANAGEMENT JOURNAL Vol 12 No 2 June 1994
MANFRED KETS DE VRIES, INSEAD, Boul~rd de Constance, 77305, FontainebZeau, Cedex, France. Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries is the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucou~ Professor in Human Resource Management at the European lnstitute of Business Administration (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France. He is also a practising analyst and a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and the ~nte~atio~l Psych~nffZytic Association. He has held professorships at McGill University, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Montreal, and the Harvard Business School. He is the author, coauthor, and editor of ten books and over 100 articles and chupters in bag. His last books include Handbook of Character Studies, Organizations on the Couch, Leaders, Fools, and Impostors, and Life and Death on the Executive Lane. His research interests are in the interface between psychoanalysis, dynamic psychiatry, and ~nagem~t.