
How "Daddy" affects your job: psychologist
Reuters, U.S.A., By Ellen Wulfhorst Fri May 12, 2006
NEW YORK, U.S.A. (Reuters) - Successes or failures of employees
in the workplace can be traced to what kind of father they had, a
psychologist argues in a new book.
In "The Father Factor," Stephan Poulter lists five styles of fathers
-- super-achieving, time bomb, passive, absent and
compassionate/mentor -- who have powerful influences on the careers
of their sons and daughters.
Children of the "time-bomb" father, for example, who explodes in
anger at his family, learn how to read people and their moods. Those
intuitive abilities make them good at such jobs as personnel
managers or negotiators, he writes.
But those same children may have trouble feeling safe and developing
trust, said Poulter, a clinical psychologist who also works with
adolescents in Los Angeles area schools.
"I've seen more people hit their heads on what they call a glass
ceiling or a cement wall in their careers, and it's what I call the
father factor," Poulter said in an interview. "What role did your
father have in your life? It's this unknown variable which has this
huge impact because we're all sons and daughters."
Styles of fathering can affect whether their children get along with
others at work, have an entrepreneurial spirit, worry too much about
their career, burn out or become the boss, Poulter writes.
Even absent fathers affect how their children work, he writes, by
instilling feelings of rejection and abandonment.
Those children may be overachievers, becoming the person their
father never was, or develop such anger toward supervisors or
authority figures that they work best when they are self-employed,
he writes.
"A lot of people say, 'I never knew my dad,'" he said. But, he
added: "You knew the myth, you knew your mother's hatred, you knew
your anger, you knew your dad was a loser. Trust me, you knew your
dad.
"The father's influence in the workplace is really one of the
best-kept secrets," he said. Poulter co-authored an earlier book on
mothers and daughters called "Mending the Broken Bough." "The Father
Factor" is set for release next month by Prometheus Books.
Looking at the influence of fathers fits with other recent research
on workplace behavior, said William Pollack, a psychology professor
and director of the Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean
Hospital, part of Harvard Medical School.
"There's been a good deal of research to show not only that our
family-life experience and our experience with our parents affects
our personality, but it affects our corporate personality, both as
leaders and followers," said Pollack, author of "Real Boys."
"There's also good research to show that for men and women, the way
they identify with their father and their father's role may well
affect how they interact as a manager or leader in the workplace."
Poulter, by the way, describes his own father as the absent type.
After this book, he said, "my dad won't even talk to me." |