It is very easy to get brainwashed in the business world. When you go to the same place every day and hear the same messages over and over, they sink in.
You don't even realize that you've internalized beliefs that may be completely untrue -- like the belief that your boss's opinion of your work really, really matters, or the belief that being a manager makes someone right.
More business people than not are brainwashed and they don't even know it. They have no idea that they have been drinking gallons of toxic lemonade over the years. Are you brainwashed, too? Here are ten signs that you are!
You are brainwashed if:
1. You believe that your job title and/or your salary are a mark of your worth.
2. Your annual performance review is a big event in your life.
3. You use business-jargon terms like "high-performing team," "strategic imperative" and "employee engagement" and you believe them.
4. When you need something to do your job, like a piece of new equipment, you think "I hope my boss isn't mad at me for asking for it."
5. If you have not reached the career goals you expected to reach by now, you believe that you can close that gap by working harder.
6. You often wonder what your boss thinks about you, and hope that you're pleasing him or her.
7. You never question your managers' decisions, because they are bosses and they surely know the right answers.
8. When talking with your co-workers, you find yourself quoting company policies and rules to explain your views.
9. You believe that your employer is looking out for you and your career because that's what employers do.
10. You take the company's side when other people question the organization's moves and motives, because the company wouldn't do something if it weren't the right decision.
We have been raised to respect authority, and we have been taught that lesson too well. Even as adults we fail to ask hard questions about our beliefs, including the critical question "Why do I hold the beliefs I hold? Where did my beliefs come from?"
If we can look at our own beliefs with a little bit of distance, we will quickly see that many of the things we think we believe are merely ideas that were handed down to us by people who were brainwashed themselves.
We get brainwashed at school (and sometimes, sadly, at home) and the brainwashing continues in the workplace. We feel scared and apologetic about calling in sick even when we are feeling terrible. We are adults, but we afraid of other adults because they are called Team Leader or Manager. We don't think there's anything wrong with that worldview. It feels normal to us.
We think it's acceptable for grown-up people who pay mortgages and drive cars to skulk around in fear of other people just because they have different words on their business cards. That's a sickness, but we don't see it that way. We can't see the brainwashing.
We can't see the dirty water in the fishbowl we are swimming in, but more and more people are starting to ask the same questions I am asking you now.
Why would we be willing to trade our adulthood and our self-determination for a paycheck? It makes no sense. We can get paid and remain adults with our own opinions and our own paths.
We have to insist on maintaining our right to our own beliefs and decision or that right will disappear. The working world will happily accept us in our brainwashed state.
We heard from Tony, who found his voice at work and told his manager "You can't call me on the weekends anymore. It disrupts my family time when you call me and it happens every weekend. I've been hoping that the calls would taper off but they haven't been so I need to let you know. We can talk about whatever we need to talk about on Monday morning."
Tony's boss was in a snit after that for two weeks, and then he calmed down.
"I like my boss, but be takes it too far," said Tony.
"I had to set a boundary with him. Everybody else in our department is afraid to do it. They ask me what secret technique I used to get the boss to stop calling me on the weekends. I told them I didn't have a secret technique, I'm just not afraid of getting fired. If I get fired I'll get another job."
Tony's boss backed off. He knows that he needs Tony more than he's willing to admit. That's business!
If we don't know that we are marketable and can get another job at any point should our current job go away, we are not in control of our careers. That's a terrible place to be.
Many people are shocked out of their brainwashed state by losing their job or by seeing the inanity or immorality of decisions that are made around them at work. They realize that they have one life to live and that they can't fall back on the excuse "I'm only doing my job" when their heart and their brain are in conflict.
We get to make our own decisions about our actions at work and about our careers every day.
We have to make those decisions, because not making a decision is a decision in itself. We are all entrepreneurs now, no matter how we get paid.
How will you run the business called My Career? Here's how, I hope: with your eyes wide open!
