3/2/2014
High Status, High Income, Dead.![]() 4 senior bankers have killed themselves in the last week. As a Bloomberg article says, Though the reasons are not clear in either case, the coincident deaths will feed the discussion of excessive stress levels in the financial industry, not just for the young interns working 100-hour weeks but also for accomplished executives. Stress-related resignations, heart attacks and suicides may be par for the course in a high-octane, risky businesses, but the public does not really want finance to be one of these: Its money is at stake. That sounds callous but it’s what all employers, including yours, are ultimately concerned about. If you are self-employed then you are likely to be even less caring about your own wellbeing than the average money-focused, gimlet-eyed employer. Enough now. These men were amongst the most high-status, intelligent and wealthy people in society and they killed themselves. If they can find themselves locked into a despairing panic state then any of us can. I don’t think it’s possible to say these 6 things too often:
There are a great many techniques that will help you manage your time and your attitude towards work but working a consistent 50 hour week is just not sustainable. Don’t swallow the rhetoric about Hard Working Taxpayers. With unemployment down, why is productivity also down? Economists are baffled but for a small fee I'll tell them why this is: Everyone is outrageously hacked off, largely for excellent reasons. Don’t wait until you want to jump out of a window before you address it.
30/6/2012
What The Libor Scandal Can Teach UsA bubble has burst and the banking system is reeling. Since the early ‘80’s we’ve all been in awe of the City, convinced that we’re too dumb to know what this mythical place was up to.
People in banking know that ‘The City is a massive cesspit,’ as Vince Cable said yesterday, or that it is, as the Governor of the Bank of England described it, ‘excessive, shoddy, deceitful and manipulative.’ The Governor of the Bank of England, Chairman of the Monetary Policy Committee and the Financial Policy Committee might have had authority but he had no power to address the everyday corruption that everyone knew about. This Cycle of Corruption, of money, power and policy all feeding each other, is not new and the turning of this current cycle is very far from over. Bankers are not alone in choosing personal gain over gains for all, we are all of us more or less happy to allow people we don’t know to struggle. We know that if only the poor had made different choices they too could be wealthy, if only the homeless weren’t so lazy and self indulgent they could be kings of the world. And of course we know this is nonsense. The tension between what we know in our hearts and what we say we know can make people judgemental, bitter, aggressive and even slightly mad. The comments section of any online news outlet demonstrates this perfectly. Recalibrating our values can be difficult especially when it can effect what we earn, how we support or are supported by people we value, and most especially our status. But ultimately it's about how we want to be related to and remembered. Success is so much more than the size of your bank balance.
14/3/2012
Gordon Gekko Gets Real The New York Times has published a resignation piece from Greg Smith, the executive director and head of Goldman Sachs’ United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. A man who’s responsible for selling things to more than half the world has had enough.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman- sachs.html?pagewanted=2&_r=4&hp ‘These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.’ The 1987 film Wall Street was an excoriating satire on short-termism and greed which attracted generations of people with psychopathic tendencies into Finance. Browse this report into the issue. It takes a long time for the zeitgeist to change, and we’re entrenched in a culture that reward disgraceful behaviours with huge wads of cash, and tells the rest of us that money is the only measure of success. It’s a message that’s quickly filtered down through every section of society from celebs and industry to medicine, charity and council estate gangsters. ‘My sense is that the majority of the people in finance have an urge to prove themselves. And banks offer a platform where they can do so. I feel there’s a particular kind of insecurity to many bankers, a form of neediness and a deep desire to compensate. Love? Many people in banking try to project an image of perfection, and banks play to that, trying to make you look perfect and feel invulnerable. It’s very easy to get hooked to that life, to become addicted to work and the money.’ 1 There’s never ending research on people who are poor and very little on people who are very rich, but increasing anecdote suggests that people in high earning jobs have serious problems with exhaustion, addiction, terror of failure and entrenched self-loathing. Which seems a sane response to being prepared to rip someone’s face off as part of your job. Now that a hyper-successful super-achiever has spoken out about his disgust at a system that encourages people to see themselves and other people as things, perhaps the message will filter down. Gordon Gekko got rich not through talent but through illegal insider trading. And when he got out of prison no one was there to greet him. 1. Luyendijk J. Ex-mergers and acquisitions banker: ‘There’s no time for friends’. The Joris Luyendijk banking blog. The Guardian. 2012 January
26/2/2012
High Powered Jobs And Stress Eric Joyce MP has been charged with assault after losing it in the Strangers Bar of the Commons. Like bankers, traders, doctors, sales reps and lawyers there’s very little mental health or pastoral support for MP’s – the Chaplaincy role in Parliament seems more ceremonial than anything else – and it would seem that Joyce was left to get on with it after his previous arrest, driving ban and loss of his Shadow Cabinet job in 2010.
Many people thrive in high-pressure jobs, it looks as if Joyce did too until the day that he didn’t. Like Joyce, Nick Leeson and Kweku Adoboli were left to get on with things after a number of actions that suggested they might not be managing. Part of the reward for this kind of lifestyle is high wages, high status, tolerance of illegal behaviours like drug use and driving convictions, and lots of perks to offset the ludicrous hours, non-negotiable deadlines, high workloads, often tedious processes and sustained adrenalin drenching. Of course, all the research shows that high pressure jobs can double the risk of anxiety and depression, as well amplifying any vulnerability to eating disorders, drug and alcohol dependence. Perhaps counter-intuitively, people who’re attracted to this kind of work can have real problems with self-esteem, shame and self-loathing. Psychopathic personalities thrive in this toxic arena. A great many of us have some psychopathic traits but an environment that rewards pure greed or encourages you to ignore the human consequences of a deal or an ideological policy positively nurtures madness. Alastair Campbell is not known for his lack of robustness and he remains open about his own mental health problems. One in 4 of us will experience it. Clients who come to me from prestigious backgrounds experience it and leave feeling less like a miserable failure on the verge of collapse. They don’t make videos about it but neither are they ashamed or afraid of asking for confidential, professional help. |
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February 2018
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |