EXCERPT: The Father Factor

May 30, 2006— -- Dr. Stephan B. Poulter, a clinical psychiatrist examines how a father's parenting style impacts the way his children function in the workplace. He identifies five major types of fathers such as the "Superachiever," "Time Bomb," "Passive," "Absent" and "Compassionate/Mentor." Poulter argues that understanding your father is critical to enjoying a thriving career.

Chapter 1
Fathers Matter
The Impact on What You Do and How You Do It

It wasn't until after my third personnel conflict with a male supervisor within a six-month period that I noticed a troubling pattern. It was only then [I had] the idea that my relationship with my father might have something to do with my career problems.

-- Linda, age twenty-nine

I have always wanted and sought my father's approval. I rarely received his support and approval. I still look for it at times with colleagues and clients. It is a vicious cycle: I want my father's support, and I know it will never happen the way I want it to -- he isn't that kind of man.

-- Mike, age thirty-seven

Some people are very skeptical about the impact their fathers have had on their careers, especially if they've chosen jobs that are different from their dads'. "I'm a lawyer, and my father was an electrician, so obviously he hasn't had any influence" is a typical response to being asked whether one's father had any effect on one's career choice.

The father factor exerts its influence in many different ways, not just whether you followed in dad's professional footsteps. It can create your most significant weakness on the job as well as your most significant strength. It can determine your level of job satisfaction. And it applies to women as well as to men, to the middle-aged as well as to young people. It is a timeless influence that must be properly understood if you're going to maximize your individual potential and ability in your career and life. The foundation for your career direction, the father factor directs your career selection and development, both consciously and unconsciously; your ability to excel; and your ability to develop meaningful professional relationships. Your father's particular parenting style is the template that forms the father factor in your career.

If you're still wondering about its existence, try an experiment. Think about a conflict with a boss or a subordinate that occurred relatively recently. Perhaps your boss called you into his office to complain about your performance on a recent project. Perhaps you had to put a subordinate on probation. Whatever the episode involved, summarize it in a paragraph, focusing on your words and feelings at that moment. For instance:

I told Joan that I could not tolerate her talking rudely to our major customer again. I explained that I realized this customer could be a pain but that her behavior was inexcusable. For the next fifteen minutes or so, I talked while she listened; I essentially gave her a refresher course on how to treat our clients, Customer Service 101. I said, "I know you think the customer is a jerk, but you should be mature enough not to lash out at him the way you did." As I was talking to her, I felt a bit guilty because Joan is a good person and solid employee, and the customer was truly a jerk.

After writing your paragraph, answer the following questions:

1. Did what you say in the encounter remind you in any way of how your father spoke to you when you were a child?
2. Is there anything that you said that was either the exact opposite of or identical to the tone and substance of your father's conversations with you?
3. Were your feelings in this encounter similar to or the exact opposite of those you experienced when you had a conflict with your dad as a child?

The odds are that, even without going through this formal exercise, you've experienced situations in which your words or feelings at work reminded you of an encounter with your father. People commonly report talking to a subordinate exactly how their fathers talked to them, even to the point of using the same expressions. They also frequently recall relating to a boss in the same way that they related to their father. In other instances, though, the impact of a father on an adult child's work behaviors is more subtle than many would expect. This effect is the theme of this entire book and will be looked at from many different perspectives and under numerous circumstances.

The key, however, is recognizing that there is an impact. The father factor is a negative in your career only if it goes unrecognized and undiscovered. When you're aware of it and learn to manage it, this factor becomes a positive force. Therefore, let's look at some issues that should raise your awareness of the profound impact your father has on your life and your career.

AN IMPACT THAT TRANSCENDSDEATH, GENDER, AND INTIMACY

One obstacle to appreciating the profound effect of the father factor is rationalizingit away. For example:

• My father has been dead for fifteen years; how could he still have an impact on my career?

• I'm a woman, so it makes more sense that my mother rather than my father has affected my career choices and job performance.

• I was never particularly close with my father, so I don't think he has much of an impact.

• My father was a nonprofessional and worked at the same job for forty-two years until his retirement. I am already a professional, have had two career changes, and have never worked longer than four years at any one company.

• I never respected my father's work ethic or his work history. I am completely different.

Let's look at why each of these rationalizations are specious.
If your father has died, that doesn't mean that the feelings from that relationship are dead. Many of the most important relationships we will have in our lifetimes are timeless. We carry the impact of these relationships in our minds and hearts. When women and men of all ages talk to me about the death of their fathers, even the people who maintain that they didn't have a close relationship with their dads say that they were surprised by how much they were affected. People routinely use terms such as devastating and overwhelming loss to describe their reactions. It is not unusual for daughters and sons, then, to suffer from depression and hopelessness and/or to begin to question life's meaning. It is also common for adult children to question and ponder their careers after their fathers' death. Suddenly, a job that they liked may appear trivial and meaningless.

Years later, this death still has tremendous power and influence. When some consider leaving a job long after their fathers have passed away, a number of them note that they can hear their fathers' voices in their head, "I didn't raise any child of mine to be a quitter," and they heed that voice. When others decide to make a significant career change, they often explain it by saying, "I didn't want to end up dying like my dad and never having had a chance to do what I really wanted to do." Therefore, don't underestimate the impact of your father on your career. If your father is dead, recall the enormity of your feelings about him at the time of his death. If he's alive, talk to trusted colleagues or friends whose dads have passed away and ask them whether their career decisions have been affected by the memory of their fathers.

Many women -- in fact, some men -- believe that their mothers had more influence than their fathers did over the adult professional they became. No one would argue the commonsense logic that mothers are invaluable to their children's development. In fact, in the world of stay-at-home moms and often emotionally or physically absent dads in which many of us grew up, mothers had the greatest impact on our lives simply because they were there the majority of the time. Women certainly are role models for their daughters, and it would be absurd to suggest that fathers are models for their daughters in the same way. And because of a distant relationship between many fathers and daughters, their dads are discounted in terms of importance and long-term career influence.

Despite all this, however, most of you from the baby boom generation were probably were raised with a man as the primary breadwinner in your family. In the prototypical nuclear family or some combination of it, Dad wore a suit, work clothes, or a uniform and went to work every day, while Mom was a homemaker. Even if your mother worked, she was probably viewed -- overtly or more subtly -- as second in importance from a work and financial perspective.Typically, men made more money; they didn't take time off to have children or to raise them; and they had "real" jobs (doctor, lawyer, businessman) as opposed to women, who primarily were in the helping professions (teacher, nurse, social worker). It is extremely important to note that being a teacher, nurse, or social worker is by no means less demanding or important than the traditional male professions. There was -- and still is, at times -- a cultural bias against women that has been in place for many years. Though things have changed quite a bit in recent years, typically men still are paid more than women even in careers such as law, medicine, engineering, and business (especially at the top corporate levels); men are still less likely than women to stay at home and raise the children. Women are still considered the primary parents for their children regardless of their career status. Those women raised in a traditional home need to understand their mothers' legacy in the home and also their fathers' legacy in the business world, for these daughters have a double-edged sword approach to their career. One side is their fathers' role and work ethic. The other is their mothers' approach and view of the working woman. It is critical for all daughters to understand each parent's beliefs about the home and workplace. It may be very difficult for a daughter to reconcile her dad's professional accomplishments against her own professional competence and her mother's views of what women should be doing.

For these reasons, along with thousands of years of human history, fathers have generally had a more significant impact on a child's career choices and work habits than mothers have had. The workplace has always been a masculine model and arena for men, and men have been solely defined by their work and the success within it. Most men still view a failed career opportunity as a personal failure, and many women feel the same way about men who don't succeed in their jobs. The home, on the other hand, has been a feminine model for women. Women have been defined by how well they cared for their children and tended to home duties. Right, wrong, or otherwise, these cultural beliefs are very strong and have been in place for thousands of years. Fathers have always been expected to work the land or, since the Industrial Revolution, work away from the home and support all their family's material and financial needs and wants. In family law court, however, the majority of child custody cases are settled in favor of the motherhaving both the legal and physical custody of the children. The reason is that, regardless of the father's emotional and mental fitness, women are viewed as better primary parents. More and more men and women are challenging these types of cultural stereotypes, but there is considerable wisdom for a daughter and son to gain from understanding the effect of their father's work ethic in relation to their beliefs about their own professional lives.