Workaholism

I was reviewing this year’s Top 100 Independent Agencies and thinking about the individual commitment that it takes to build agencies like these when I came across research about workaholics.

Work nearly destroyed Bryan Robinson’s life. Nearly 20 years later, Robinson related his struggle with work addiction in his book “Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them.” The UNC Charlotte professor and psychotherapist wrote of his addiction, “I used work to defend myself against unwelcome emotional states – to modulate anxiety, sadness, and frustration the way a pothead uses dope and an alcoholic uses booze.”

His experience led him to study work addiction – what he calls “the best-dressed problem of the 21st century” – and its consequences.

Robinson says entrenched attitudes continue to obscure an understanding of work addiction: “A lot of people tease they are becoming a workaholic. We don’t tease about being alcoholic or overeating. It’s something people still don’t take seriously.”

Unfortunately, workaholism is often portrayed as a virtue. “There’s still this notion that it’s a good thing. In my private practice I see people fall apart, their children are miserable. True workaholism within the context of the family is a devastating problem to everyone concerned,” he says.

Robinson offers this simple scenario to illustrate the difference between a workaholic and a hard worker: The hard worker sits at his/her desk, dreaming about being on the ski slopes, while the workaholic is on the ski slopes dreaming about getting back to work.

More often than not, workaholics and their families don’t seek help until a crisis such as a failed marriage, a child acting out or job loss. Many workaholics have conflicts with colleagues and are fired because of their behavior.

Healthy workers experience work as a necessary and sometimes fulfilling obligation; workaholics see it as a haven in a dangerous, emotionally unpredictable world.

According to Robinson, workaholics tend to work alone and focus on the details of their job. They often attach their egos to their work. On the other hand, healthy workers see the bigger picture and work cooperatively with others toward common goals. Workaholics often look for work to do, whereas healthy workers enjoy their work and while they sometimes work long hours, they focus on getting the job done efficiently.

Daily factors that enable workaholism include an unpleasant home situation or family members placing demands on the wage earner. Robinson also points to media stereotypes and advertisements, as well as embedded cultural beliefs, as enabling factors. Of course, the list of enablers would be incomplete without the addition of “technology,” or what Robinson deems the “Blackberrization” of our lives.

Robinson estimates that one-quarter of the population can be classified as workaholic. “So many organizations hire workaholics because they think they’ll get more out of them, but research shows they don’t make the best workers; the rate of burnout is higher, the trajectory of their careers is lower, and they are not team players,” Robinson says.

Are Top 100 principals and employees workaholics? I have no scientific data but the ones I’ve met seem to be very well-balanced people. In fact, I bet it’s precisely because they are not workaholics that they have been able to lead and succeed as they have.