Three Corporate Maxims that Can’t Be Trusted

Learn from my Scars and Sacrifices

You shouldn’t believe every lesson that you learn on the inside of a big company. If you’re listening to the wrong leader, you could easily be fooled into drinking poison Kool-Aid or allowing situational ethics to slowly eat away at your morals and values.

During my 15 plus years working in corporate America, I learned a lot. I started as a corporate writer before transitioning to the frenetic pace of agency life. During my progression, I learned much more than functional writing, marketing, branding, or public relations skills.

I learned about how companies operate, and I studied people closely. I became a student of internal politics, navigating landmines, and building consensus like a game of chess. To protect myself and advance, I learned to exercise leverage and negotiate effectively.

As I rose through the ranks and worked with different leaders, I learned many lessons through observation and direct advice.

Some advice was harsh and cutthroat: “Crack the whip to keep people in line and ride them hard until they deliver.” Some was cold: “There are a dozen cheaper, younger versions of X employee waiting right outside.” Some was just plain sad: “Someone has to fall on the sword, and it isn’t going to be me.”

Much of the advice employed a twisted logic that started with the ends and then explained away the means. The further I climbed into the executive ranks, the more skillfully the leaders made questionable actions simply disappear. Their slick rationalizations seemed elegant, sophisticated, or simply necessary. I like to think that I mostly resisted this slippery-slope logic, but I’m sure it seeped into my actions in one way or another.

That’s the problem with corporations. There’s often an unwritten understanding about what kind of behavior is permissible in the interest of advancing corporate interests. After one stays at a company for too long, this culture slowly starts to seep into your decisions and behavior, as if by osmosis. Being my defiant self, I always tried to fight against principles that I felt were wrong, which did not make me popular with those calling the shots.

Looking back, there was one common theme that ran through all the advice given, lessons taught, or wrist slappings delivered: who I am must be changed in order to advance.

Here are three verbatim pieces of counsel that I fought against then and continue to reject to this day.

Build up emotional armor/thick skin

As you may know, showing emotion in a corporate environment typically is frowned upon as evidence of instability. Calm, cool, dispassionate communication and decisions are the preferred standard of behavior. Emotions are viewed as less legitimate than thoughts.

The primary problem, however, is that humans are not robots. Swallowing your emotions, especially in extremely high-pressure or toxic environments, is actually a recipe for emotional and psychological damage. It can lead to mental health issues like anxiety, depression, addiction, and worse.

In a former job, I ran a sizeable piece of business with incredibly abusive clients. In my review each year, I was told that I needed to “build up my emotional armor” and not get upset when clients bullied, manipulated, or tried to get members of my team fired. In retrospect, this was a very convenient thing to say when an executive wants to continue making millions on a client and avoid taking action against unprofessional behavior.

In real, non-corporate life, however, building up a thick skin has downsides. When we toughen up and harden ourselves, we lose some of our capacity to exchange compassion, love, and connection with others.

“They tell you to develop a thick skin so things don’t get to you,” critically acclaimed actress Viola Davis tells social psychologist Brené Brown in “Braving the Wilderness.” “What they don’t tell you is that your thick skin will keep everything from getting out, too. Love, intimacy, vulnerability.”

Humans are social creatures, and social connection is really what supports our emotional well-being. In my experience, “building up emotional armor” to deal with a malevolent client might earn you a bigger title or a tiny bump in pay, but it’s not worth sacrificing your ability to make healthy connections.

Keep your weaknesses/opinions close to the vest

If you ask anyone I’ve worked with, they’ll tell you that I’m an honest kind of guy. I like to be transparent and open. If you ask me for my opinion, I’ll give it to you. I’m also fairly open about my deficiencies. I know that I can get anxious, that I can let my passion get the better of me, and that I can get disappointed when I don’t succeed.

A common refrain throughout my entire career was that I needed to be more careful with what I shared, keep things “closer to the vest” or bite my tongue to keep from rubbing someone the wrong way. At various points, I’ve attempted to do all of these things. I’ve worn masks, become risk-averse, kept my opinions to myself, acted like I had all the answers, and used perfectionism to shield myself from criticism.

None of that is real. It’s an act. It’s simply posturing and projection. When you’re shielding yourself from the criticism of others, you’re preventing yourself from making honest connections. You’re spending all of your energy and effort protecting yourself from the opinions of others that you don’t have much left to make significant contributions.

“Our families and culture believed that the vulnerability that it takes to acknowledge pain was weakness, so we were taught anger, rage and denial instead,” writes Brown in “Braving the Wilderness.” “But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us.”

In “Daring Greatly,” Brown explains that it takes real courage to be vulnerable. Creativity and innovation are impossible without vulnerability. It takes the admission of weaknesses and insecurities to grow and make yourself stronger. Without transparency and honesty, you can’t be empathetic and intimately connect with others. I no longer waste my time trying to hide myself to prevent the discomfort of others.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it actually turns out that the weak and insecure people are the ones who spend all their time trying to deny, hide, and conceal their soft spots.

It’s a dog eat dog world

This is a common sentiment in the corporate world. It essentially equates to the “zero sum game” philosophy, wherein you’re either victorious or defeated. Everything is viewed implicitly (or explicitly) as a battle for domination and victory.

If you’re on a sports team or part of a hyper-aggressive salesforce, then, sure, I suppose this kind of in-your-face pep talk will light a fire and enhance performance. In the regular world though, treating everything like it’s a corporate death match simply does not inspire ethical or compassionate behavior.

This philosophy lends itself perfectly to the “ends justifying the means.” If you always have to win, then you become willing to do whatever it takes, which could include but is not limited to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, bribe, and bluff. After one of these things inevitably occurs, the perpetrator often offers this justification: “if I didn’t do it, the other guy would have.”

“Win or lose” is a false dichotomy that also lends itself to problematic corporate-level behavior. Companies trying to lock in wins and close deals are focused on short-term success. They are pushing for immediate gains, which can lead to the deception of customers, manufacturing shortcuts, and sacrificing long-term strategic value for quarterly profits.

Here’s a business example: the most successful negotiators focus on the best deal for both parties. If you view a negotiation as a zero-sum game, you are only trying to “claim value” and are limiting collaboration, often to what is currently on the table. If you negotiate to “create value” for both parties, then the boundaries of what can be negotiated become flexible. In other words, either you’re trying to get the most slices of a small pizza or you’re splitting up an extra-large pizza and reserving the pieces with the toppings you like most. Clearly the latter is better.

From a human standpoint, always needing to win is no way to live. It means that you’re constantly on edge. Everyone becomes a competitive threat to your “perceived” position of dominance or gain. It reduces your willingness to be collaborative and also increases the likelihood that you will dehumanize other people as obstacles to your victory. A much more psychologically healthy point of view is that everyone can benefit — a rising tide lifts all boats.

One Takeaway on Truth

Everyone seems to have wisdom to share these days. Don’t just accept sagacious sayings as true because the speaker has authority, a title, years on the job, or a ton of followers.

Question it. Triple check the intentions behind the advice. Ask if it’s self-serving. Kick the tires and take it for a test drive. Conscious, deliberate thought forms the foundation of my strongest beliefs.