"I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” - Sarah Williams

Today, I am going to share some thoughts about an issue that has been with me through most of my years as a manager, and that became more challenging as my level of responsibility increased. A fear of losing myself, and who I am, to the job and its demands. I will also share some things that I’ve found helpful in working to cope with this fear.

Early in my career as a manager, and even when I was working as a senior systems programmer with frequent on-call and after hours work, this took the form of a vague uneasiness. An awareness that the demands of work, and my choices regarding how I would respond to those demands, could have important consequences in my personal life. I’m sure many of us have faced these choices and have seen the negative impacts that some choices could have on our relationships and family life.

Even at this early stage, my awareness helped me choose to put my loved ones first most of the time. Still, there were times when long hours at the office created stress and friction at home. In my second marriage, I am very fortunate to have a partner who has been not only understanding, but also wise in helping me understand that my effort not to bring work home wasn’t very helpful when it kept me late at the office. With her guidance, I started bringing some of my work home so that I could at least be present with our family even if I was working.

We continued working as partners to manage the impact of my increasing workload as a I entered the next phase of my career as a manager. I worked to make good choices about what I needed to bring home and what could wait. She gently reminded me when it was getting late and I’d be better served by wrapping things up and getting some time to unwind before trying to sleep. This worked relatively well for a while.

In the meantime, I began dealing with a different aspect of my fear of losing myself to my work. Working as a manager requires me to “work against type”. Many of the aspects of this work are not well aligned with my personality and temperament. I naturally value harmony and prefer to seek ways to avoid conflict. I am very concerned with people's feelings, and It takes a significant effort for me to deal with situations where there is disagreement about the direction I am providing, or when I must discipline employees. I prefer to create collaborative teams where members offer their expertise and ideas to help define solutions, and where we can reach agreement about the best approach.

Of course this isn’t always possible, and as I found myself being asked to play more and more responsible roles, with greater authority, the extent to which I worked outside my natural preferences increased. I had to lay off some employees when the work they did was no longer needed, and I worked to find them new roles with the university. I had to shut down some aspects of our operations and deal with some unpopular consequences of these decisions. I found myself in conflict with the executives I reported to, truly dysfunctional conflict in rare cases, but most often simply differences of opinion. Still, some our differences were about critical issues like budget, staffing and strategic direction.

As my work changed, and demanded that I take effective action in ways that were at odds with my temperament, I grew aware that the vague uneasiness I had felt in the past was crystallizing into a fear that working in this way would change who I am in some fundamental way. That acting as a person who could effectively confront conflict, direct others to take actions they resisted, and lead changes that had challenging, and sometimes negative, consequences, would reduce the empathy, kindness, and even optimism, that I had always valued as innate in me.  Whether this fear was reasonable or not, it was something I have felt keenly at times.

Unfortunately, I also suffered a significant medical issue related to the stress of my work. My efforts to balance the demands of my job, and the stresses it created, with my own health and personal life failed. It was six months before I could return to work full time. What had worked for a while wasn't enough to keep me well. It felt as though my fear that the job would change me had been realized in a very tangible way. For a while, it seemed it might leave me permanently disabled. It certainly got my attention and demanded that I change.

My fear, and my health crisis, motivated me to take action to seek ways to do the work I was asked to do in a way that was more and more consistent with who I am. Whether I would have actually seen important changes in my fundamental personality, I don’t know. I intentionally chose to emphasize collaboration and make sure we valued the subject matter expertise and experience of our staff. I advocated with senior executives for priorities that honored our capacity and commitment to delivering excellent service. In the darkest days of a budget crisis, I emphasized the need for senior managers and executives to look for ways that we could offer our employees hope in the darkness. After my health scare, I reduced the number of hours I worked from an average of 60 per week to something much closer to 40, and I very rarely bring work home anymore.

I am grateful that our new CIO has a very strong commitment to building a culture within our IT organization that maintains and expands on our desire to recognize, appreciate, and honor the great abilities and character of our employees. I am seeing an even greater emphasis on helping people develop and guiding them to realize their potential, and I am glad to be able to participate in mentoring and coaching activities that are very much aligned with my natural abilities. I am glad to participate in, and advocate for, these positive directions.

I have written in the past about the steps I have taken to keep my values fresh and present in my daily life at work, and to remind myself of what is most important to me. To do what right with love and, most of all, my loved ones. These became even more important as I acted to change my behavior. Even writing these essays is a conscious choice to emphasize to myself that who I am is worth working to maintain and to strengthen. By sharing these thoughts, I am holding myself to my own values and standards by declaring what I believe openly where it will be read by my loved ones, and by others I honor and respect.

Retirement is less than five months away for me now and I am confident that I will not lose myself to my work. I am grateful for the journey of self discovery that this fear has helped motivate me to pursue. I appreciate the openness that I’ve met with from so many of my colleagues, including key executives, as I worked to maintain my integrity as a person in the face of the stresses of my job. More than anything, I am grateful for the deep and gentle love of my wife, family, and dearest friends. These loved ones give me so much reason to be my best self, and they keep my honest. I love them so.

© 2017 James Michael. The text of this work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0