Some have told me: “There is a sense of corporate gaming in your book.” At first, this seemed a strange comment, but later on, after analysing it, and also looking at my many 1-1 mentor clients, I really accept this “diagnosis”.
Not because I’m in it so much any more, but it’s very familiar to me and the book really has the shadow of that experience. And, of course, I see it every day in my clients – in managers, in professionals, in people who once loved their jobs. But now they’re coming to a 1-1 meeting because there’s a kind of fear and anxiety inside them.
Corporate gaming is not burnout or just stress. It is a deep inner turmoil that occurs when a person no longer knows why they do what they do. When the system seems to eat away at the soul.
In my own experience and that of my clients, this is the case:
🌀 There is success, but there is no joy
🌀 you feel like you’re under constant stress and should make some more effort to finally feel at peace.
🌀 you look around and see people around you burning out, getting anxiety attacks, and you quietly notice the same symptoms in yourself, but there’s something else on top of that.
🌀 rest doesn’t help any more, work-life balance lectures and activities don’t help any more, because it’s not fatigue – it’s an inner emptiness and when you rest it seems even worse;
🌀 there is a feeling of constriction inside the system – you run out of air, you can’t breathe
🌀 there is a feeling of perspective: ‘Is that all?’.”
🌀 there is a diminishing of the meaning of material things and a search for something bigger and more important, but at the same time not knowing what it is I am looking for
🌀 and finally the knowledge that changing organisation would make no difference.
The corporate game seems to be the moment when a person realises that the problem is no longer the job, but how they have defined themselves through the job. Not the job itself, but his relationship with work and the concept of work more broadly.
That work is no longer the place where his potential and interests are expressed, but where he disappears. And it is precisely under this anxiety and confusion that, after some internal ‘demolition work’, something new begins.
Not at the level of career counselling, but at a deeper level, where we begin to reconnect with our inner being and our reason for being – one could say our “soul”.
2/3 of mentoring clients do not come to me to develop leadership skills. They come because they no longer understand who they are in the system. And it is only when this anxiety becomes visible that a connection with themselves, with their work, with the world can begin to be restored.
Corporate gaming is a normal experience of growing up as a human being and a necessary experience. However, life shows that support is needed at this point, as one’s identity is being redefined, which involves a very turbulent internal process.
Allowing yourself to rely on someone when you get into a corporate game – it doesn’t have to be me, but the message is the same – relying on others who have come through it is much smoother than getting stuck in your own fear.
