What I Keep in My Heart From My Corporate Career

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

For those of you who don’t know my story yet, I was suffering from Perfectionism Syndrome my entire life up to September 2018. Because of it, along with other factors, I had three burnouts during my corporate career in the engineering, consultancy, and financial systems industry. Despite the odds, I keep in my heart many souvenirs, and I will share some of them with you today!

I had a fabulous manager

He is going by the name of Zied. He is the most incredible geek I’ve met so far! I will be forever honored by having had him as a manager and mentor for five years.

Before joining his team as a software quality engineer, I was supposed to move to another country to work for a software consultancy company. He doesn’t know about it, but he was the reason I changed my mind. As soon as he offered me, I canceled the procedure!

I followed my gut, and that was the right thing to do. It was one of the few decisions the miserable perfectionist former me never regretted! The interview conducted by three managers — Zied, his manager, and the Swedish quality team manager — was pleasant, to say the least. I even met the team afterward!

Two days before, I was tortured by another multinational company. I was supposed to have a one-hour-meeting. In reality, I spent five hours between the tests and multiple interviews from the four corners of the globe.

As a young perfectionist with almost no healthy boundaries and who needed to leave a “perfect” impression, I accepted the unplanned succession of events without saying a word.

I didn’t know it was anything but acceptable, that the employer was not respecting my time and, implicitly, my person. I had no clue about being treated as a “whole” versus a “thing”. I only felt something was off.

More to the point, it was a no-brainer for me to accept Zied’s offer. Both the other multinational group and the consultancy company packages were way better, but it didn’t matter.

There was something special about Zied. He inspired trust. Even when we lack the required knowledge, our instincts might guide us. The whole person concept represents the four basic needs of life — to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.

Pay me fairly, treat me kindly and respectfully, use my mind creatively in doing work that truly adds value, and in doing it in a principle-centered way. ~ Stephen Covey

 

The financial offer covers only the first need. With the help of Zied, I had the impression I could also nurture my second and third needs since the last one tied to our spiritual intelligence depends on the organizational mission much more than on your direct manager. He didn’t fail me!

I was a demanding person and a workaholic, which comes with no surprise to those of you who are familiar with the Perfectionism Syndrome, given the expectations both from ourselves and others are too high, and that perfectionists derive their sense of self-worth from their achievements.

Zied was gentle and understanding. He never stopped supporting me. At some point, we were working on a complicated project. It required performing some tests at 4 am. Because he is a servant leader, he volunteered to be the support consultant to fix any software bug.

There was a time when we had a delivery. It was my birthday. I was supposed to meet a friend of mine at 6 pm. Unluckily, there were too many issues to be fixed, which took way more time than I planned. Can you give a guess who was stuck with me? Bingo!

Zied was hearing my phone ringing. I was too focused to answer. I asked him whether he could take it. It was from my friend. She begged him to fire me! She prepared a surprise party. Twelve people were waiting for me. He struggled with making me go!

I experienced two of my burnouts while working with Zied. I didn’t even know what was happening to me. He didn’t know either, but it didn’t matter. He had my back.

I was fortunate to have you as a manager for five years and will be forever grateful, my dear friend Zied!

I had so much fun

As counterintuitive as it may sound given I was a workaholic — I rarely had lunch with my team or friends since I wasn’t eating before 3 pm most of the time, when the opportunity was presenting itself to have fun, I was making the best of it!

The first thing my ex-colleagues tell me when we catch up is “We miss your loud laughter so much even though we were always afraid of getting fired because of you!”

What I didn’t tell you is that my desk was in front of one of the group directors' office. He was a serious guy most of the time. My ex-colleagues were quite surprised by seeing him talk to me enthusiastically, and were complaining he barely said hi to them.

I might know the secret. I believe he appreciated my “workaholism” — he would call engagement, my confidence, how I was speaking about critical issues during meetings, given most of the managers who reported to him were silent, and my optimistic outlook.

For the quick story, one of my ex-colleagues was having some trouble with her baby boy. She struggled with stopping using the diapers and was talking about it for a whole week. I was curious to know whether she was doing something wrong and willing to help her.

“Did you ask around and do research about some methods which proved themselves to be effective? I remember my mother told me she was successful in doing it from the second time.”

For some reason, my question didn’t come the right way. Maybe because I didn’t show any interest for a whole week or contribute to the discussion. Maybe because I didn’t invest that much time in building the relationship. Maybe because I didn’t deserve her trust in the first place. Or maybe for a reason I ignore!

No matter what the explanation is, her answer came sarcastically, “Well, we all know you’re ‘Miss Perfect’ even when it comes to diapers, congratulations!” The former emotionally imbalanced Myriam needed to be right and prove it.

I called my mother, put her on the speaker, and asked her about the topic. She told us I was confused only once when she put me naked on her thighs. Everybody was laughing. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was the following:

The director came out of his office. His face was too red because of having laughed silently — I’d guess — before showing up and adding while still laughing, “Let’s hope your silly story didn’t reach the first and third floors!” (we were in the second one).

I looked at him and said: “Oh! I didn’t realize your door was open! It’s not a big deal anyway! The most important thing is that you all had fun!”

I didn’t feel embarrassed, not even for a second. I need to admit I used to be a strange and complex mixture of confidence and a recurrent feeling of worthlessness — explaining my workaholism and the pleaser tendencies. I had some internal security to practice self-deprecating, but not enough to stop deriving my self-worth from achieving and being appreciated by everybody.

I did what felt right no matter what

I was very confident when it comes to speaking any principled truth and listening to my integrity call. I had an epiphany while reflecting on this piece: even if our caregivers loved us inconsistently; hence, instilling numerous limiting beliefs and distorting our original Center — the Principles — some of us stay very connected to their conscience and will never hesitate to do what seems right.

They stand for the truth but can be clumsy and reactive when they are not understood without having to explain their good intentions. Because they had to learn how to be hypervigilant with people around them and pay attention to the smallest swings in their mood — as an adaptation to their environment and the conditional love they received — they expect people to do the same. This behavior has a label: we call it the “Fearful Avoidant” attachment style, and it is draining.

More to the point, the difference between those folks who believe in the principles while suffering from an insecure attachment style and the principle-centered servant leaders; thus, implicitly secure is progressively developing a skill going by the name of “Emotional Intelligence”.

I heard after leaving the company that I was known for being the troublesome collaborator because I was saying, loudly, what others whispered in the corners. I sympathize! It is the outcome of a “Cover-up culture”, which happens to be the norm for most organizations.

When the culture of an organization mandates that it is more important to protect the reputation of a system and those in power than it is to protect the basic human dignity of individuals or communities, you can be certain that shame is systemic, money drives ethics, and accountability is dead. ~ Brené Brown

 

Should you be interested, I explored what could change the organizational culture from a “Cover-up” to a “Daring Greatly” one here.

There was a time when I needed to assess my team members’ performance. I wanted to grant two of them the “Exceed expectations” rating of the scale for different reasons. Unfortunately, there was a constraint, and I needed to make a choice.

I went for the girl who deserved it. For the other one, I was willing to encourage her hard work and commitment, but I had to follow the rules. It was too hard for me to announce the performance result and witness her disappointment.

I couldn’t sleep for several days, not because I did something wrong and that I was feeling guilty about it. I felt that I failed her because I had no power to make her happier, and I couldn’t live with it. I didn’t stop talking to Zied about the topic for a while.

Ultimately, he suggested I can ask for promoting her if I felt she could rise to the challenge. The idea made me feel relieved and I thanked him for it! I went to the HR department to formulate the request.

I was asked to make it official through an email where I needed to detail the new role duties and expectations. I was provided the list of people to be included (a long one), which I did.

A couple of weeks or so passed by without getting any feedback. I was enthusiastic about the idea of informing my collaborator about the news and couldn’t wait for more. When I asked the HR director for an update, he told me we would be having a meeting with my manager and the famous director in the story above.

There was a whiteboard. They started talking about some organizational restructuring and tons of restrictions while drawing diagrams at the same time. I listened attentively without interrupting. When they were done, I pitched my request again. 

When I was seeing where it was going from their answers, those were my closing words:

You currently have one disengaged collaborator. If she is not granted the promotion, you will have to manage two!

My fulfillment was limitless when he eventually said “Okay, Myriam!”. I gathered the team to announce the news with the excitement of a 5-year-old girl. She wasn’t aware of what I risked for that promotion.

It didn’t matter to me, as it didn’t matter either to let everybody know what I was doing for them as a project manager when nobody was watching. I was “supposed” to care about the projects and my deadlines regardless of the team capacity.

I was limited by time and unable to communicate all the details to the team. There were too many projects, too many dependencies with other teams to coordinate, too many issues to investigate, fix if possible, or re-direct to the right person — escalate worst-case scenario.

Even though I was a workaholic, the perfectionist couldn’t manage the huge amount of priorities & issues and explain herself & decisions at the same time. I knew I was doing the right thing, and it was enough.

Some of my colleagues who were involved in the global picture of the projects recognized it. Also, they were kind enough to express it publicly. Below are a few samples:

Final thoughts

My corporate career was full of ups and downs. It would take an eternity to talk about all the silly moments, adventures, hard feelings, wins, shortcomings, learnings, mistakes, gentleness, cruelty, compassion, frustration.

I suffered an injustice several times during my career. It hurt me a lot. Some of my good friends could hardly believe the level of unfairness and the mediocre behavior of some individuals. I could have kept in my heart tons of resentment.

Instead, I choose to keep all the bright moments, all the genuine connections, all the precious learnings. Instead, I choose love!