DISSATISFACTION
Whether thinking about retirement, a sabbatical, or a dream business, most working adults fantasize from time to time about the day they will be free to pursue some deeper calling. This yearning, while hard for many to articulate or even admit, can be frighteningly strong, because it springs from a place close to our core. As poet and organizational consultant David Whyte observes, “While we think we are simply driving to work every morning to earn a living, the soul knows it is secretly engaged in a life-or-death struggle for existence.”4
Most executive coaching clients with whom I’ve worked over the past two decades are living out their personal versions of this struggle. They are talented, ambitious, and successful—through a corporate lens—but essentially dissatisfied with their professional role. Something else is stirring inside. In working with hundreds of these clients, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern over the years—the unrelenting pace and compression of their lives, the politicization of their jobs, and the diminishing light in their eyes.
Although he was a fast-rising senior leader within First Union Corporation during the early 1990s, J. C. Faulkner felt increasingly frustrated in his role. “There were some negative things percolating inside of me,” he says. “We had an inefficient management team. There was a political sense about us that hurt our ability to compete— too focused on the inside and not focused enough on the competition.”
One night, while working late at the office, J. C. helped himself to coffee in the break room. He’s not normally a coffee drinker, but needed the boost to get him through a pressing pile of work left by a colleague. He returned the next morning ready to pick up where he left off and was greeted by his boss’s executive assistant. She asked if he had been working late, and although he didn’t want to admit it, he was kind of glad that somebody noticed.
“What I need to know,” she said, “is whether you drank a cup of coffee while you were here. If you did, you owe twenty-five cents for the coffee.”
“Well, I drank two cups,” he replied. “So I guess I owe you a half a dollar.”
The money, of course, was not an issue. What caught him off guard was the bad taste the assistant’s response left in his mouth, a familiar feeling of disappointment, disengagement. He was sure that hundreds of employees throughout the division were feeling it as well. “At that moment, I made a promise to myself,” he says. “When I create a company, people will never have to pay for spending time at work.”
