Crises of the spirit take various forms. You find that an idolized boss has feet of clay. You realize that your ambition has dictated an action which you do not feel to be honorable. You choose expediency over friendship in pursuing a certain objective. You find out that some bedrock concepts of ethics, which you thought to be universal, simply do not pertain in the business world.
One way or another, these things involve betrayal.
You've been betrayed before. Friends revealed secrets you told them. Parents misled you "for your own good." And so on. You yourself have broken a trust on occasion.
But the extent to which betrayal is the norm in the world of work-among perfectly nice people-can come as a critical shock when you're in your twenties.
Emily's first crisis of the spirit was the gift of a loved one.
Emily's first job was not what she had set out to get. She had intended to connect with a big company. It was just a fluke that she found herself being interviewed by Leon Lederer.
Leon was a friend of her parents, a neighbor in their affluent suburb. He had recently to quit his job as admin-istrative vice-president of an insurance company to open a local word-processing center. It was his notion that such an establishment, serving the myriad small businesses and professional offices in the community, would be a success.
Emily took the job. She and Leon worked twelve to fifteen hours a day. The age gap disappeared. They were partners. And they made it happen. The center was making money within a month. This was only the first step; Leon and Emily planned a franchised string of them.
Two months after she took the job, they began sleeping together. The tacit understanding was that, for now, Leon had a responsibility to his somewhat dim wife and children. But after that . . .
Actually, there wasn't all that much time to talk about it. Leon was traveling a lot, setting up the first two branches while Emily ran the flagship operation.
So when Leon broke the news, the words reverberated around inside Emily's head without at first making any sense. "I kept saying, 'You sold the business, Leon? You sold our business?'"
He explained: A big outfit had made him an offer he couldn't refuse ... a tremendous offer ... he would move to Chicago to become vice-president for corporate planning . . . Emily would still run the local office ... of course it would no longer be headquarters, but . . .
"Would you believe," says Emily now, "that I was wondering what I had done wrong, where I had failed?" It was not until later that she asked, "What the hell does he mean, his business?" By then, of course, it was clear. It was Leon's business, to do with what he wanted. Emily had been betrayed.
Her mind was a welter of emotions. Shock. Anger. Desolation. Confusion. But one feeling began to predominate: "What I was saying to myself was, 'Somehow it's your fault, Emily, you know.' Where did I go wrong? Either Leon was a rat or he wasn't. If he was a rat, then I must be dumb. If he wasn't a rat, then it must be my fault. I didn't do enough to make him want-well, you get the idea."
From that point, it was just a short step to guilt. "God! How miserable I was! I was to blame, and I didn't even know what I had done wrong so I could fix it."
Guilt has acquired a bad name in our no-fault society. A lot of people want to banish guilt from their lives, and a lot of advisers are telling them how to do it.
But, as Willard Gaylin-clinical professor of psychology at Columbia Medical School-remarks, "Guilt is not only not a 'useless' emotion, it is the emotion that shapes so much of our goodness and generosity. It signals us when we have transgressed from codes of behavior which we personally want to sustain."
So guilt is a mainstay of civilization (as is hypocrisy, another word that gets a bum rap). That's fine-if the guilt is sending you the right signal.
Sometimes, though, the shock is so great that the signals get mixed. Neurologists describe a severe brain injury as a "massive insult" to the central nervous system. Betrayal can be a "massive insult" to the psyche. It can make you feel guilty about things you are not responsible for: even about things that did not happen. This kind of "traumatic guilt" can make a person feel utterly inadequate, unworthy, unwanted.
Emily was lucky. She got over it. "1 was a basket case. Couldn't look for a job. Couldn't even write a nasty letter to Leon after the first try. And I was loused up so badly at work that the new owners would fire me for sure. But I deserved to get fired, right?
"Then one morning I felt something I hadn't felt for three or four weeks. I was mad! It wasn't me. It was Leon, that bastard. Maybe he had his reasons, but I didn't care. I hated his guts. Not that I wanted to see him, or have anything to do with him. I just hated him."
Emily says now she thinks the anger saved her: "Maybe it was no more logical than the guilt-I mean, I was a big girl, and he hadn't made any specific promises, and it was his business, and blah blah blah . . . but that didn't really matter. It was healthier to be mad than to go around like a wimp, blaming myself for everything. I guess a lot of us go through something like that, huh? But we get over it."
Not everybody does get over it. Some people never get over the irrational feeling of guilt they get when they have been betrayed. In fact, they seem to go out looking for sit-uations in which they can be screwed again.
Not Emily. In six months she was fine. She even avoided one of the most insidious of the temptations that beset one at a time like this. She managed to stop short of generalizing and laying down rules for herself on the basis of this episode.
"For a time there, I was making up little proverbs. Never trust a man. Never trust a partner. Never trust anybody. But they got boring, so I stopped. I guess I learned something, but you can't wrap it up into words. I matured some, that's for sure. But as for letting it control my life since then-this happened four years ago-I just haven't."
Allen also began saying "You can't trust anybody" after his first betrayal. But unlike Emily, he kept on saying it. He's built a career on it.
He tells you in a jaunty way what happened.
"I was a patsy. Two of us were handling this account, me and my boss. He decided to change a major strategy point. On his own. I wasn't too sure, but he said, 'Trust me.'
"Trust me!" Allen laughs. He recounts swiftly-like a man who's told it many times-how the plan blew up. Of course, when that happened, it all became Allen's fault. The boss had documentary evidence, witnesses-the works. Allen was out.
He holds no grudge, he'll tell you. It was a good lesson. "Get them before they get you." He has done all right in the ten years since then. He makes a lot of money now, and he has high visibility in his industry.
It's not pleasant visibility, however; nor is it complimentary. People don't like Allen. "Who gives a shit? They don't like the rough going. This is not a game. I come to kill you. When you're in there with me, pal, watch your back at all times. Also your coat and pants."
Of course, one event did not turn Allen into a monster. But the first betrayal did trigger his total commitment to a feral way of life. The stab in the back is unlikely to have been all cause, or all pretext. It is both.
These are extremes. Betrayal can strip away all your protective layers-at least temporarily-or it can add so many coatings of armor plate that one becomes an emotional golem. In between, there is a continuum of reactions to the stab in the back. Some people stay hurt. They are emotionally fearful of trusting anyone. They remain tremulously withdrawn, fluttering on the edges of life and work. Others suffer-but come through the experience with a rueful but healthy view of working life that admits people are imperfect creatures. This is the outcome best calculated to avoid severe crisis in the future. The betrayed person does not shrug it off, but neither does he or she resolve never to trust anybody again. Trust is a risk. It's a risk that must be taken for a fulfilling life, on the job and off.
Then there are the people who forge a cynical determination to always be the betrayers rather than the betrayed. They use the experience to justify the most outrageous and dishonorable behavior.
There is always a profound reaction to betrayal. This is why it is one of the most potentially dangerous of crises. It's nonsense to say, "Business is business," and shrug off treachery as part of the corporate scene. When it first happens, it is always very personal. People whose houses have been broken into and robbed say that the most difficult aftermath is the feeling of violation, the sense that you will always feel not always imperiled but a little unclean in the place. When someone betrays you, you feel personally violated. It's natural to be hurt. It's natural to be suspicious, always asking, "What does he really mean by that?"
But in the end, people must trust each other. Somehow the crisis of the first betrayal has to be resolved with that principle intact.
One seasoned executive says, "In the end, people must trust each other. Somehow the crisis of betrayal has to be resolved with that principle intact."
