Why the Modern Workplace Creates Exhaustion

I became familiar with what was called the Peter Principle when I was 20 years old. At the time, it was a revolutionary business concept. The Peter Principle was first published in 1969 by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull. This article will focus on career exhaustion and anxiety. My clients also found career anxiety to be permeating many other aspects of their life. From over 300 clients, attorneys made up the largest category.

The Peter Principle proposed that in a hierarchy of authority such as found in government jobs, employees tend to rise to his or her level of incompetence as was the protocol at the time. For example, my father-in-law was a wharf builder and repairman as a government employee. He enjoyed working with his hands, repairing wharfs and building new ones. As more senior employees retired or moved on, he would be offered the position of Foreman, responsible for several employees.

He always turned down the offer, even though he had two jobs, married with 3 children and his wife was a homemaker. Anyone else would have been too attracted to the opportunity to pass it over. He intuitively knew being responsible for others is not something he was comfortable with nor having to fire a former co-worker. Had he accepted the offer the anxiety would have been crippling. He was unusually aware of who he was and his temperament. The demands of the new position as well as the impending conflict was predictable. The key to such was based on the degree to which he sensed the needs of his core identity.

The Peter Principle pointed out that people were being promoted not so much on their job performance nor because they possessed the skills required for the next one. Promotions were based on longevity and loyalty to the company. Most often these people continued to be promoted until they reached a position where they are no longer competent, yet still many tended to remain.

The result of the lack of knowledge or the skill required by the next position, not only caused poor performance leading into corporate frustration but also through motivational nonconformity the employee would experience chronic anxiety, emotional exhaustion, loss of significant meaning, purpose, and burnout to follow. The book became a bestseller as the symptoms were widely known.

The Peter Principle is particularly relevant because it focuses on the ultimate measure: competence. Whereas Authentic Systems focuses on motivational conformity to the Life Theme which does brings job satisfaction sidestepping common burnout and anxiety. An employee may be technically competent at a higher position yet still experience chronic anxiety or burnout if the role conflicts with their underlying motivational orientation.

Another client had an unusual conflict. He earned his degree in Business Administration and just passed his CPA exam. He wanted to work for a private firm in Utah but since he was not a Mormon, he could not get past the first interview. Reluctantly, he applied to the Internal Revenue Service and was immediately hired. A year later he came to me miserable. He loved working with numbers and like a detective on the hunt, enjoyed auditing suspicious returns. That is, he liked what he did. His challenge was he didn’t like who he was being. He would often need to go to the taxpayer’s home or business to go over the books. As soon as they locked eyes, he felt “…the judgement of a saint examining the face of a demon.” It was his title of IRS agent that he found embarrassing.

While the Peter Principle focuses on the mismatch between skills and job demands, Authentic Systems focuses on those who have the skill but experience non-conformity with their deeper authentic identify. They experience a role that continuously frustrates the expression of their deeper sense of self and motivational orientation. While the incompetence focuses on the “doing” of the job causing poor performance and frustration, incompetence of “being” is far more damaging. Here they know they have the skills to perform well but they seem to experience exhaustion, chronic anxiety, burnout, loss of meaning, and a decline in interest.

Business Roles and the Life Theme

John Miner, Professor of Human Recourses wrote Role Motivation Theories. He spent decades developing psychometric instruments to measure career motivations. He discovered that different occupations attract different motivation profiles of employees. His research demonstrated that rather than a single best profile to dominate hiring practices that organizations need four types. Furthermore, by mismatching individual motivations to the wrong career type only causes frustration, anxiety, work exhaustion, and the lack of meaning and purpose. Occupations do not possess inherent meaning. For Miner, they possess opportunities to express motivational organizations.

Meaning therefore, arises from the congruence between a person’s enduring Life Theme and the dominant demands of the work. People are generally drawn toward careers whose motivational structure resonates with their dominant Life Theme. Miner offers support for role motivations and Authentic Systems’ four Life Themes. Role motivations are the occupational expression of deeper motivational organizations evidenced through their employees.

Here are four Corporate Domains John Miner discovered that appeal to four profiles of major motivation: Love, Justice, Wisdom and Power.

Achievement Motivation (Change) Task

Based largely on the work of David McClelland here we have a general description of the Power Life Theme: they are willing to take on responsibility even when events are beyond their control. They desire accomplishments as a measure of success. They thrive when they can solve difficult problems and are seen as an authority.

Managerial Motivation (Harmony) Justice

Miner argued that successful managers possess motivations beyond achievement alone. Managers are always balancing human capacity against production. They desire to influence others preferring to coordinate with others as a team effort. They have a positive attitude toward corporate authority and are always seeking harmony between work production and corporate expectations.

Task Motivation (Knowledge) Wisdom

These individuals are primarily motivated by the work itself. They are trained in a specific type of specialized career as a skilled professional. They are held as an expert in the field, executing precise technical mastery in problem solving as an attorney or accountant. They enjoy the intellectual challenge as their reward.

Group Motivation (Caring) Love

These individuals are motivated by helping organizations function through developing people. They enjoy helping others by supporting them toward their goals. They become teachers, coaches, and personal management. Many are in the hospitality business.

Organizational Roles and Identity Motivation.

Miner’s study revealed that different organizational roles require different motivational systems. Success occurs when a person’s motivational orientation matches the demands of the job. Poor performance or dissatisfaction often results from motivational mismatch rather than lack of intelligence or skill. This is where exhaustion and anxiety begin to manifest.

Miner spent decades developing psychometric instruments to measure these motivations. He discovered that different occupations attract different motivation profiles. His research demonstrated that rather than a single best profile to dominate hiring practices that organizations need all four types. Furthermore, by mismatching individual motivations to the wrong career type only causes frustration, anxiety, the lack of meaning and purpose.

Occupations do not possess inherent meaning. They possess opportunities to express motivational organizations. Meaning arises from the congruence between a person’s enduring Life Theme and the dominant demands of the work.

People are generally drawn toward careers whose motivational structure resonates with their dominant Life Theme. This provides a bridge between Miner’s role motivations and Authentic Systems. Role motivations become the occupational expression of deeper motivational organizations.

The Peter Principle shows how employees can elevate to levels of incompetence if they are not aware of their authentic inner motivations and suffer the consequences. John Miner demonstrates that the world of business is broken into the most successful four major motivational patterns linking with Authentic Systems.

My research long ago began with Fredrick Nietzsche (1844-1900). He saw that human beings possess relatively stable psychological dispositions and character. Nietzsche regarded character as naturally constituted, substantially inherited and relatively stable, while allowing that individuals can reorganize and give form to their inherited drives making our motives natural causes. When these drives are blocked or restricted, anxiety results.

For Nietzsche, when fundamental drives are chronically prevented from finding expression and cannot be successfully integrated or redirected, their force turns inward, producing psychological conflict, bad conscience, guilt, resentment and conditions resembling anxiety.

In fact, current neuroscience discovered that when a person’s enduring motivational orientation is continually obstructed by work, relationships or social expectations, the resulting division within the self can be experienced as anxiety.

As you can see, career exhaustion occurs when your Life Theme does not match with your career in type and kind. If you suffer from career exhaustion, knowing your Life Theme offers an opportunity to finally understand how to armor yourself against Career Exhaustion.