Are you an “Engaged Workaholic”? On Marriage, Michael Clayton and Your Workplace

Are you an “Engaged Workaholic”?  On Marriage, Michael Clayton and Your Workplace

[Popular press/personal example] 

I’m not referring to workers and their marital status.  Like marriage, however, in the workplace there are joyful moments and compromises.  To begin, let’s look at one example, albeit a fictitious one.   

I’m reminded of the film Michael Clayton, where actress Tilda Swinton, plays Karen Crowder, a newly anointed legal counsel for a large multinational.  In an early scene from the film, Crowder is preparing for an interview (the scene cuts back and forth from her home and her office’s conference room interview).

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Interviewer: So, with all that pressure and workload, how do you keep a balance between work and life?

Karen Crowder:  Balance?

[Laughs]

Karen Crowder:  I think that's, um, that's something that you search for your whole life, isn't it? Um,

[Scene cuts to Karen getting ready]

Karen Crowder:  It's a shifting balance, really. It's, um, you know. You try to, um...

[She stops, rubs her temples, then the scene cuts again to when she's more fully dressed, looking in the mirror]

Karen Crowder:  When you really are enjoying what it is you do, who needs balance? There's your balance! There's your balance. When you're really enjoying what it is you do, there's your balance.

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Do you feel like Karen Crowder and have that type of balance in your job? Or are you pushing through the weekend’s leftover work from last week just to stay above water? 

If you are like the latter, maybe there is hope. Karen Crowder, however, exemplifies what has been coined as an “engaged workaholic.

A recent Los Angeles Times article by Kathleen Doheny reports on research where experts point to these engaged workaholics as different from the typically categorized “workaholics” who are single-minded in their pursuit to working through breaks, lunches, dinners, weekends until their lives resemble a 70-80 hour workweek carousel, with very little in the way of balance or relaxation (mental and physical) (Doheny, 2012).

Nohria, Groysberg & Lee (2008) point to four drives people seek  (acquire, bond, comprehend and defend) as people and employees.  These same drives are what successful companies seek to provide to their employees to improve and maintain their effectiveness, productivity, high morale and strong organizational culture (Nohria et al., 2008).

But these four words can be challenging to achieve amid economic cuts and real-life workplace issues as well as personal dynamics – finding innovative ways to engage employees is a full-time job for human resource experts, especially the in-house variety (Heymann & Barrera, 2007).

Engagement, say some experts, is basically a result of how one is treated in the work environment. (Doheny, 2012)  Demands in the office, warehouse floor or other workplace fit two patterns:   great demand, but a lot of control, and great demand but very little control.  The second pattern increases stress and cardiovascular disease risk factors. The conclusion is there are unfavorable health consequences  related to an imbalance of effort and reward systems (Ryan & Deci, 200) ; Heymann & Barrera, 2007)

Doheny (2012) provides a short Likert-Scale infobox quiz, adapted from the researchers’ experiment design,that allows the reader to determine whether he or she is an engaged workaholic or a “classic” workaholic.   The results can be depressing … or illuminating, depending if you are Karen Crowder or not.

References

Heymann, J., Barrera, M. (2007) Engaging Employees in the Company's

 Profits and Their Own, Harvard Business School, 1-28

Clayton Productions LLC, (2012).  Michael Clayton.  Retrieved from

 http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0465538/quotes

Doheny, K. (2012, February 13).  When It’s All Work; Getting too wound up in your job

 can be bad for you, physically and psychologically. Unless of course you love it

that way.  Retrieved from www.latimes.com

Nohria, N., Groysberg, B.,& Lee, L. (2008) Employee Motivation:

A Powerful New Model, Harvard Business Review, 1-7

Ryan, R., & Deci, E. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic

Definitions and New Directions. Contemporary Educational

Psychology, (25), 54-67.

Martin, J., & Schmidt, C. (2010). How to Keep Your Top Talent. Harvard

Business Review, 3-9.