The Dangers of Getting Jobs Through Friends and Family

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.

-Tacitus (c. 55-120 A.D.)

What You Will Learn Watch out about taking up a job with the help of family and friends. Nepotism is usually considered a negative term and can serve to create resentment in all employment environments. Your friend or family member’s act of kindness could ultimately result in a strained and imbalanced relationship. You are safer getting a job without the help of family and friends.

“Oh, I already have a friend there. I’ll just contact them.” In the legal recruiting realm, this is one of the more common things we hear after informing an attorney that a certain law firm has a job opening. There is a lot you need to consider before you decide to apply to a job through a friend or relative or take a job working for a friend or relative. First, it is exceedingly rare that a friend or family member will ever be able to get you a position. The reason for this is simple: despite what you think, the involvement of friends or family members in your job search may actually hurt you because they may not want to help you get a job. Moreover, all employers know the severe problems that can arise when friends or relatives work together. Due to this, simply going through a close contact is often something that is counterproductive to your job search. Second, even if you are one of the few people who are able to get a position through a friend or family member, you could run into a great deal of trouble and harm your relationship with that person in the process.

When you are seeking a job through a friend, you may be surprised to find that he or she will not help you get a job with his or her organization. Moreover, the organization may actually look upon you negatively and not hire you if you try to use a friend or family member to get a job.

One of the most common things that people think is that friends are their best allies in a job search. After all, the job market is a harsh place. Who better to help you with your job search than a friend employed inside a firm for which you would like to work? A friend certainly recognizes all of your strengths and appreciates you for the person you are. In addition, the thought of depending upon a stranger when you have a friend or family member close by does not make a lot of sense. Certainly you can always trust a friend over a stranger, right?

I have been a legal recruiter for several years. I have represented more candidates than I can count. In all of my time as a legal recruiter, I have never once had a candidate get a job through a friend. Incredibly, I have actually gotten several candidates jobs with firms where they thought that they had friends inside who were helping them with their job searches-”insiders” who never managed to get their friends interviews. Moreover, when I think back on my own life, I do not think that I have ever gotten any job by having a friend or relative help me.

The issue with using friends to try to help you with your job search is that you never know your friends as well as you think. Almost instinctively, many friends are competitive with one another. When you are dealing with people close to you, you will often agree with them just to avoid argument. In fact, if you spend more than a couple of hours with your family or a group of your friends, you will find this sort of thing occurring probably every few minutes throughout each conversation. Friends and family also often do their best to laugh extra hard at each other’s jokes and cover up their unpleasant qualities. Your friends and family will most often say they love your taste in music, your choice of clothing, your house or apartment, your writing, and most everything you take seriously. It is possible your friends and family mean this. It is also possible they do not.

The thought of asking a friend to help you with a job search is, in effect, an attempt to shield yourself from the harshness of the world. The same enthusiasm your friends and family have for you in the personal realm, you may imagine, will directly translate to an eagerness to help you find work with their organization. I would offer at the outset that this is a possibility, and you may not be wrong in thinking this. Notwithstanding, this is often not the case.

One of the more common things that happens when people ask a friend or family member for help is nothing. The friend or family member gets your resume and thinks about it and then (for whatever reason) decides he or she does not want to forward it to the powers that be. You cannot imagine how common this is. If you have forwarded a resume to a friend inside a company recently, call the company about it. In more than 50 percent of cases, your “friend” will not have even forwarded the information. He will pleasantly tell you that he will, but he doesn’t. Your friend will often lie and tell you he forwarded the information when he did not. Again, I have seen this more times than I can count. The number is more than 50 percent (with the possible exception of firms which pay “bounties” for employees who bring candidates to their company).

Your guess as to why this occurs is as good as mine. Perhaps your friend or family member simply does not want the two of you working in the same office. Perhaps your friend does not want to take responsibility for what you might do if you were hired. Perhaps (just perhaps) your friend honestly does not think as highly of your capabilities as you do. While your friend may not tell you that he resents you because you once had, did, or said such and such, you can believe this can come out if you come to him seeking assistance with getting a job. Again, you will not even know this has come out-it just will. The firm may never see your resume.

Assuming your friend or family member does forward your resume, be prepared for all sorts of brutally honest assessments of your character and talents of which you personally may never have been aware. Most friends speak about one another with other groups of friends when the other is not around. Not all of this conversation is pleasant. Do you have any idea what your friends are saying about you? I can almost guarantee you that some of it is negative. You probably do not know even 10 percent of the negative things your friends and family say about you when you are not around. I have a question for you: do you want any of this negative information to be communicated to your potential employer?

There are reasons why organizations do not like to hire friends and family members of their employees. Nepotism has traditionally been considered a negative term. The word originates from the Latin word nephos, which means nephew, and was created to describe Pope Calixtus III’s hiring of nephews as cardinals. The first anti-nepotism policies probably originated in the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages or Renaissance, when resentment began to build against incompetent people being appointed to high clerical offices. To this day, nepotism is something which can serve to create resentment in all employment environments. In this instance, I define “nepotism” as the hiring of friends as well as relatives.

Reducing corruption and increasing efficiency are the primary reasons many organizations have anti-nepotism policies. Corruption has always been a concern in this realm. If individuals who are friends or relatives work together, organizations fear that these individuals may collaborate to advance their own interests rather than the interests of the organization. Nepotism can also lower the morale of those who supervise relatives or friends of high-level members of the organization, those who work with them, and those who feel that rewards or promotions have been bestowed in an unfair manner. One or two friends or relatives may react negatively (and contrary to the interests of the organization) when another is criticized or disciplined. Finally, perception is a serious problem. Other employees will often perceive unequal treatment of a friend or relative regardless of whether or not this is the case.

While a great deal could be written about nepotism, suffice it to say that it is something many employers are concerned about. Using a perceived “in” with a firm to try to get a job may actually hurt you because of the firm’s own feelings about nepotism.

It is important to note that not all firms will be against nepotism. For example, in smaller, family-owned firms, nepotism is often common because it provides an efficient way to identify dedicated people. Nepotism may also foster a dedicated, family-like environment that boosts the morale of everyone-relatives and friends alike. A good example is the Central Intelligence Agency, which actually encourages the hiring of married couples. Having both spouses free to discuss classified information actually can reduce the strain of a high-stress career.

While nepotism may have its place, it is important to note that more often than not it is something that can scare away employers. It is, therefore, better off avoided in the job search.

I review a lot of the resumes that we receive from throughout the United States each day at our recruiting firm, BCG Attorney Search. There are two things that I frequently see: (1) associates (i.e., younger attorneys) who obviously do not have the qualifications to work inside a certain law firm, and (2) associates working for small law firms that are owned by their father or mother (with their own last name in the masthead) who are secretly looking for jobs. Each and every time I speak with these associates, I find that they are in positions because of family members and are extremely resentful of those family members for whatever reason. They have lots of negative things to say about them and desperately want a new job with the same salary and level of responsibility. Not once in my career have I seen someone from this class of associates who was qualified for a job even remotely as good as the one he or she was in at the time. Nevertheless, these associates always resent and, in most instances, hate the family member who got them the job they were unqualified for to begin with. Moreover, these associates refuse to go to a less-prestigious firm or job. Most often, in fact, they believe they should be working for an even better organization.

If you accept a job through a friend or family member, watch out. More importantly, watch yourself. In the end, you will likely be your own downfall. It is your friend or family member’s act of kindness that will ultimately unbalance your relationship.

The typical pattern that happens when someone is hired by a friend or family member is as follows. First, the people hired are grateful for being hired, but generally want to feel as if they deserve their good fortune. Accordingly, the friends or family members hired will look for all sorts of justifications to show the world and demonstrate to themselves that they deserve their good fortune.

One response from the people hired may be to believe that their being hired is a “payback” of sorts for everything that they have ever done to be kind to their friend or family member. They begin a process of justifying their hiring by everything they have ever said or done for the friend or family member.

Another response may be for the people hired to begin comparing themselves to others in the firm and believing that they are more intelligent than all of those other people. Therefore, the hired friends or family members justify their positions by often unjustly attacking their fellow employees.

The most common reaction, though, is that the hired friend or family member will become resentful against the person who helped him or her get the job to begin with. The receipt of a favor can come to mean, in the hired friend or family member’s eyes, that he or she was hired due to this and not based on merit. There is what I would term “hidden condescension” in the act of hiring a friend or family member that grinds at the new employee all the time.

Whomever you are working for likely cares more about (1) getting the job done and (2) doing the job as well as it can be done than about having friendly feelings flowing between the two of you. Your status as a friend or relative of someone does not mean that you are automatically the one who can best do the job. If you cannot do the job in the best manner, more resentment is going to arise when your friend or family member asks another person to help with a given task.

One of the more brilliant statesmen of the 19th Century, Napoleon’s foreign minister Talleyrand, decided that his boss was leading France to ruin. Talleyrand therefore decided that he needed to take Napoleon down. Obviously, the task of overthrowing Napoleon would not be a small one. In order to carry it out, Talleyrand desperately needed to enlist the assistance of someone he could trust. Instead of turning to a friend for help, Talleyrand turned to his worst enemy, Fouché, the head of the secret police.

Fouché had even previously tried to have Talleyrand assassinated. The brilliance of Talleyrand’s choice was that it provided Fouché with the opportunity to reconcile with Talleyrand on an emotional level. In addition, there was nothing Fouché would expect from Talleyrand, and, quite the contrary, Fouché would work hard to prove that he was worthy of Talleyrand picking him for the task. When people have something to prove, they will work harder than those who do not. Compare this to what could have occurred if Talleyrand simply went to a friend for help.

Talleyrand chose Fouché because he knew that their relationship would be based entirely on their mutual self-interest in removing Napoleon and not be poisoned by personal feelings. While their effort to topple Napoleon ultimately failed, they were able to generate much interest in the cause and have a good relationship going forward.

Like Talleyrand, it is important to realize that getting a job and working in a job on equal ground and in an atmosphere of mutual self-interest is crucial. Personal feelings obscure the fact that there is work that needs to be done in an efficient manner. In a work environment where everyone is evaluated and judged on merit, more productivity and honesty on all sides can only ensure good business.

One of the more disturbing phone calls I have received over the years was from the Dean of Career Services at a second-tier law school. The dean had read an article I wrote which advised attorneys on how to get a job in a tough legal market. The dean told me that the first place everyone should always look to get a job was with his or her family. The dean then told me that people should go to events and “make friends” with other attorneys and then ask them for a job (a.k.a. “networking”). As I listened to the dean speak, it became abundantly clear to me that she did not like any manner of getting a job that did not come through friends or family. In her view, getting a job through a friend or family member was far better than getting a job through a “stranger.” It is natural when looking for a job to contact the people you know to see if they can help you with your job search. In fact, I would guess that most attorneys early in their careers contact a family member, a personal friend, or an acquaintance when seeking a new job. Most people I have worked with as a recruiter (who have contacted me for assistance) have been clear with me that before contacting a recruiter they contacted a friend, an acquaintance, or another person they were connected with in some social manner to see if they could help with a job search. Moreover, most attorneys who have been practicing for a year or more have at some point in time told a friend that they would try to assist him or her with getting a job at their law firm.
While it may sound hard to believe-and contrary to the advice of the dean-you actually may be safer getting a job without the help of family or friends and working in an environment without family or friends. You do both at your own risk. Most of the time, I believe the risks far outweigh the potential long-term and short-term rewards.

The Greek Parthenon and Your Career

What You Will Learn It is crucial to have career options in your life. You need to have additional skills incase there is a demand for something different than what you are doing. Run your career in such a way that you can adapt to all economic climates. Support your career and life with multiple pillars.

One of the most important lessons for our lives and careers comes from the Parthenon in Greece. The Parthenon has been standing in the same location for almost 2,500 years and is considered one of the world’s great cultural monuments. It is largely because of the Parthenon’s multiple columns that the Parthenon has survived for so long. If you understand and employ the lessons of the Parthenon, you should never have any issues with feeling secure in your career and life.

I personally have run my career according to what I call the Parthenon Principle (the “Principle”). I define the Principle as the following:

Your career needs to be supported by multiple pillars. The more pillars that support your career, the better. If you are in a situation wherein you are supported by just one pillar or just a few, you are in danger and need to make sure you get more pillars.

I left a job as an asphalt contractor to be an attorney due to the Principle. I left the first law firm I worked for due to the Principle, and I left the second law firm due to this Principle. I run my career right now due to the Principle. The Principle is something that can guide your life and enrich your career as well, and it is something you should always be aware of. The more you understand and employ the Principle, the better off you will be. Here are some of the rewards for understanding and guiding your career under the Principle:

• If you lose your job, you do not care for the most part.
• If you do not get an important job, you do not care for the most part.
• If a business you are involved in fails, you do not care for the most part.
• If something happens in one part of your career, you do not care.

The rewards gained from understanding the Principle are profound. Over the past year, for example, I have seen incredible reversals of fortune in two businesses I operate–a student loan business and a recruiting business. The financial losses from these have been millions of dollars a month. While the loss of jobs and business from this has been painful, other businesses have picked up the slack, and I have been largely unaffected. I feel as secure today as I felt before this turn of events. I feel this way because I am running my career according to the Principle. The scariest and worst thing I believe I could do for myself would be to support my companies on one pillar alone. At all points in time, I have multiple businesses running, and this enables me to feel secure. In fact, I would say I feel more secure than the CEOs of most Fortune 500 companies because I have tried to create a Parthenon with my own career. You should do the same.

The Parthenon represents the fact that we cannot just do things in one way in any pursuit, and rely upon that one way of doing things. We cannot be dependent upon any single method of support in our careers. If we are to rely upon one way of doing things, then we are taking a massive gamble. A career and life needs to be supported in multiple ways and through multiple outlets. Being overly dependent for your income on one data point is extremely dangerous.

For example, about 18 months ago I was in the student loan business, and this was my largest business. Overnight, the value of student loans on Wall Street went almost to zero. The government changed the compensation that student loan lenders could receive. I was almost entirely put out of business overnight. At the time, our company had probably $20,000,000 in real estate and other assets dedicated to this business. We had hundreds of employees who were dealing with this business in one form or another. Then overnight everything changed. The business stopped operating, and even the company’s real estate holdings lost probably half of their value within the following 12 months.

We pulled through this catastrophe quite easily and without too much difficulty because we were anchored by so many other businesses.

Then something else happened. Our second largest business, a large group of recruiting companies, experienced a dramatic and devastating loss in revenue. The company coughed a bit due to this, but has since pulled through just fine due to even more businesses that we have started. Due to the Principle again, the business ended up being fine because there were so many other companies there to pick up the financial slack. This is how it is with the Principle: Multiple pillars help you survive. This does not just apply to companies. It also applies to you and your career.

About a decade ago, I was sitting in my office in front of a computer and I received an email, and everyone in the office received the same message. In the subject line it said something like “All Personnel: Partnership Class Decisions”. At the time, I was in my third year of practicing law and I was very dedicated (at least, I thought) to what I was doing. The Holy Grail for young attorneys is to become a partner in a law firm. Attorneys go to college and work and compete very hard to get into the best law schools. Then they go to law school and continue to work and compete very hard. Only the best attorneys from the best schools typically get jobs with the best law firms, and very few of the attorneys who go to work in the best law firms ever end up becoming partner in these “best law firms”. The entire process is extremely difficult. Once an attorney is inside one of these law firms, he or she typically needs to dedicate himself or herself to the work with a great passion, in order to succeed. It is not uncommon for these attorneys to work 3,000 hours a year for many years in order to become partners.

When this email came into my inbox, you could hear the entire office go silent as everyone started reading it. Although the subject line of the email mentioned “All Personnel”, the more I read the email, the more I realized that this email was not something I should have been reading. It should have been addressed to “All Partners”. Someone had made a terrible mistake. While I am reconstructing this from memory, I remember that the email contained statements such as the following:

Jack will not quit if we do not make him partner this year. We have decided to string him along until next year at which point we will make him partner. He is clearly material to be a partner in our firm right now but we will delay making him a partner yet one more year.

Cindy is someone who is not partner material in our firm. Nevertheless, the decision has been made that until she quits, or otherwise leaves, we will let her know that she should “keep trying,” and in the outside chance that she does leave, she is easily replaceable.

The email then listed various individuals who would be made partner that year, and a smattering of people who would not make partner and would be asked to leave the firm. I could not believe what I was reading. A few minutes later, all of the computers in the building were turned off by some sort of remote switch. Someone had made a terrible mistake by sending out this particular email to everybody. Incredibly, a couple of days later, the head of the law firm sent an email to everyone implying they had fired the head of human resources for sending this email.

There was someone in our office in Los Angeles that I referred to as “Jack” in the quote above. He was one of the more solid and good guys I had ever known, and I liked him a great deal. He had been working in the law firm for over a decade and was then in his fourteenth year of practice or so. It is rare for someone to be an “associate” and not a “partner” for fourteen years and not leave the law firm or decide to do something else altogether, but Jack was someone who was solid and really stuck things out. I remember walking by his office the day the email had gone out, and he had a noticeable perk to him that was absent before. I think he was on the phone with his wife and telling her about what had just happened.

Over the next year, an incredible number of changes occurred within the law firm. The most important change was that the power structure within the law firm was reorganized. An important partner from another law firm, whom I’ll call “Robert”, had come over and assumed leadership of the office. Under Robert’s leadership, the firm was eliminating many of the attorneys who had been there before his arrival, and Robert also ensured that many of the attorneys he had brought with him were placed into the partnership ranks.

The next year when partnership decisions were handed out, Robert made partner a few young associates he had brought with him from the other firm, but not Jack. The day after Jack learned that he had not made partner, he reported to work as usual and was in his office that morning. Robert came into his office and asked Jack to do a very simple assignment that an attorney with six months of experience should have been doing–not someone with 15+ years of experience. Jack responded with some hostility. From what I heard, Jack said something like the following:

“You know, I am a little upset right now because I have been working here over a decade and believed I was going to be made a partner in this law firm yesterday. I am not sure why you are demeaning me by giving me this work right now. I am pretty upset right now, and would rather not deal with you while I am upset.”

Robert apparently looked at him for around 10 seconds and said “okay” and then walked away. Less than 30 minutes later, Robert walked into Jack’s office and said something along the lines of the following:

“I have two pieces of paper here. One is a check for $30,000. The other is a severance agreement for you to sign that says you will not sue us. If you sign the severance agreement you can have the check. If you do not want to sign the agreement you cannot have the check, and you are fired. Either way, I want you to be out of the office within the next 15 minutes and never come back.”

Robert may very well have had good reasons for doing this to Jack, but the episode was quite alarming for me to hear. It was astonishing to me how a 10+ year career could just come to a screeching halt like this. The good news is that Jack was able to find another job eventually, and everything ended up being okay. However, I have seen similar things happen to scores of other attorneys, and it does not always turn out okay. Many of those people did not find other jobs for a long, long time.

What is the lesson of this? Under the Principle, you need to have many options available to you at any given time, and it is dangerous to put all of your eggs in one basket. Here, Jack was entirely dependent upon the whim of one law firm and their decisions about what happened to him. He also did not have numerous clients at the time. If he had had numerous clients and were he not as dependent upon the law firm for most of his work, he would have had better leverage. He could have left the law firm and easily made money with those clients. However, Jack did not have any of these things, and it held him back.

The Principle demands that you give yourself multiple methods of support in your career. If you want to be a lawyer, that is fine; however, you better be sure that your career is not entirely dependent upon the whims of one person. You need to have clients or a skill so profound that you can help dictate the terms of your career. The more you support yourself with multiple methods of doing things, the better off you will be.

This is why the Parthenon survives to this day. Its weight is supported in multiple ways, by so many pillars.

The Greeks built the Parthenon to celebrate their victory over the Persians, and it was completed in 432 B.C.

Over the course of the next 1,000 years, this building was a temple to the Goddess Athena.

• Sometime in the Sixth Century the Parthenon was converted to a Christian church.
• In 1456, after Athens fell to the Ottomans, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque. The Ottomans added a minaret to the Parthenon; however, the building was not further modified.
• In 1687, the Venetians attacked Athens and the Ottomans used the Parthenon to store gun powder. The Parthenon was hit with a shell and the gun powder exploded destroying much of the building. But the Parthenon still survived and is still standing today.

The Parthenon is now a massive tourist destination. The building just keeps providing value no matter what age it is, and it is all due to those columns. If there were not so many columns, it would not still be standing. You too need to provide value and run your career in such a way that you are always providing value.

Although I am an attorney, I originally did not want to go to law school and become an attorney. Instead, my dream was to be an asphalt contractor. The problem with me being an asphalt contractor, though, was that my skin was not very good at being out in the sun and, specifically, on asphalt in the sun. As an asphalt contractor you need to work on black pavement all day around smoking hot asphalt. The black asphalt really absorbs the sun and it is not the equivalent of being out on a sports field, for example. It is much worse. I would get so sunburned being outdoors that several times a summer I would literally physically have to peel a layer of my skin off that had become very burned. My face was constantly coated with zincs and all sorts of lotions to keep the sun out as much as possible. Being outdoors on hot asphalt was not something I believed my body could handle over the long term.

“You would do fine being an asphalt contractor,” I remember a relative saying to me one day. “But your body probably would not, and you could not last doing this.”

So I decided to practice law instead, where I could work mainly indoors. You need to choose what you are doing and your career based on the idea that you can keep doing it forever, and will not be stopped. You do not want to be stopped by the sun, by one person who does not like you, or anything for that matter. You need to run your career in such a way that you are supported like the Parthenon and can adapt to all climates.

One of the interesting characteristics of the Parthenon and its columns is that they were designed to be thicker at their bases than they are at the top. Architecturally this was done so that they would appear taller when standing at the base of the Parthenon. This creates an optical illusion for people visiting the Parthenon and portrays more strength and height than really exists. In your career and life, you need to be supported with a strong foundation and always need to be portraying strength. The less weaknesses you have, the better.

Although it occurred a long time ago, most Americans remember the controversy surrounding Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in the 1994 US Figure Skating Championship in Detroit. Here, acquaintances of Harding struck Kerrigan on the knee after a practice. Both skaters became almost overnight celebrities due to this particular incident. In my mind, what makes this so interesting is that it highlights the incredible vulnerability that many people have in their careers. The idea that a career could be taken down by a blow to the knee is a dangerous lesson. In our careers, it is extremely important that we are not just dependent upon a knee, or one potential outlet. We need multiple outlets in order to succeed.

One of the saddest things that I regularly read about is the careers of child stars who end up not succeeding later in life. I have heard about some becoming robbers and having similar problems after having had incredibly successful careers when they were younger. There are also stories of young stars who have ended up having great careers when they are older, but these stories seem less common. The idea that I am trying to stress is this: if you do not have other options in your career and job search, then you are making a horrible decision. Your career needs to be supported with multiple pillars because the idea of long-term security should factor into how you run your career.

My first legal job was with a law firm and group of people whom I really liked. However, the longer I was at the law firm, the more I realized that I would never be able to run my career from the standpoint of the Principle. The business and clients that came into the law firm came primarily from two or three very powerful partners who earned millions of dollars per year. The other partners in the law firm were partners in the sense they had titles but they really did not have any business for the most part. Consequently, their careers were controlled by those with clients. While my perception may have been off a bit, the idea I got while working in this law firm was that the partners had so much work that they were not really looking for others to bring more clients into their business. Instead, they were most interested in worker bees whom they could control. The firm had so much work that the worker bees did not have any time to go out and meet people and get business. It was largely due to this reason that I left this firm; I did not see much of a future in it. The primary partners were, at the time, making twenty-five times as much money, in some cases, as the other partners. The idea of continuing to work in a firm wherein I would be so dependent upon a few people above me did not appeal to me.

The challenge of all of our careers is to be supported like the Parthenon on numerous columns and with numerous potential sources of work, should one source fail. You should never allow yourself to be boxed in by being dependent upon just one person, skill or income stream for your success. If you are an attorney, you probably need to have lots of clients. If you are in a company, you need to have lots of allies. If you are good at one thing, you need to make sure that you have other skills, in case whatever job you are doing becomes obsolete. You do not want to be vulnerable to any one person, or to the economy.

I left the practice of law and eventually went into recruiting because, for me, this seemed like something that was more in accordance with the Principle.

• First, I felt the profession was safe because recruiting has been around in one form or another for thousands of years.
• Secondly, I knew I could be diversified because I would have several candidates at one time, whom I could work with and, since recruiters get paid if and when a person gets a job, I knew that if one person did not get a job, another person would.
• Third, I knew that since the job required me to find candidates, and my success would be determined based on this skill, I would not be dependent upon another person to give me work.
• Fourth, I knew that I could work with numerous law firms and not just one, and this would give me extra support.
• Fifth, I knew that since I was working with law firms, even if the economy was poor, there would still be business and recruitment opportunities. When one practice area in a law firm is doing poorly during a recession, another is doing well. For example, corporate work may dry up in law firms during a recession but bankruptcy will take off.

This is an example of a career that uses the Parthenon. Eventually, to keep this business going in all economic climates, I started other businesses that supported this business when it slowed down, despite the support it had. Year after year, I have had an enjoyable career that is without a lot of stops and starts, due to my understanding of the Principle.

You too need to use the Principle in your own career. Support your career and life with multiple pillars.

Do Not Be Influenced by Others’ Negative Opinions of You

What You Will Learn You have skills and abilities which merit profound appreciation. The more positive affirmations you receive, the better you will typically become at your job. You should probably look for a different situation if you are being diminished and your work is not being taken seriously. You need to realize that you are an important person worthy of immense and genuine respect and this is the most important thing in your life and your career.

I have kept a journal for years.  Today I opened the journal and found a quote that I had written down on July 4, 2002.   I had written this quote down because at the time I had just gotten out of a relationship in which the person I was with had decided that I could do absolutely nothing right whatsoever.  At that time I was reading a self-help book about recovering from bad relationships, and this particular quote had really hit me with a tremendous amount of gusto, because I believed it really described what I had been going through.  I was sitting in my backyard in the afternoon after the breakup and being quite depressed, but still looking hard for answers.  When we are in the eye of the storm, we often do not realize it until someone tells us we are.

Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another.  It may be intentional or subconscious–or both, but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event.  It is designed to reduce a child’s self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy–unworthy of respect, friendship, and the natural right of all: love and protection.

Inevitably, victims are made to feel guilty–made to believe the abuse they suffer is their own fault.

No one ever has the right to abuse you, whether you are a child or an adult.

Everyone deserves someone to be crazy about them–to nurture them.

–Unknown

What stuck out for me so much about this quote was that I had been told how awful I was for years.  In the relationship I was in I was told I would never be a good businessperson, never worthy of respect in the world, never be a good father and never be a good husband.  These kinds of messages have the tendency to be self-reinforcing because the more we hear negative information about ourselves, the more we tend to believe it.  I can remember that when I was in this relationship all I wanted to do was escape emotionally and physically.  Were I still in this relationship, you might find me as one of those lonely men who sit on a bar stool night after night somewhere.  I’ll bet many of the men who crowd bar stools all over are emotionally abused.  Somewhere in the backgrounds of many unhappy and unsuccessful people is some kind of emotional abuse–and it is probably ongoing in their lives.

The reason I am sharing such deeply personal information with you is because in some respects you yourself might be emotionally abused, and I want to offer you insight and support.  You might be, or you might have been, emotionally abused in a relationship, by a parent or relative, or by an employer.  Someone around you, or some group around you, might be telling you that you are negative and incapable.  For whatever reason, you may be led to believe that you are incompetent and unworthy.  When I think about emotional abuse, I also think about our jobs and what many people experience in certain jobs.  Many people simply are not appreciated in their jobs.  They are told that they are doing a bad job, they are threatened constantly with termination, they are made fun of and they are systematically passed up for promotions.  As a result, they feel a constant sense of inferiority in their jobs.

There is so much happiness and success available for the taking in the world that, whenever I see people extraordinarily unhappy with their lives and unappreciated, I want nothing more than to intervene with knowledge and guidance.  In my life, once I got out of that abusive relationship, everything miraculously changed.  I started excelling in my job.  I became happier.  My relationships with everyone around me suddenly became fulfilling.  I met a wonderful woman who became my wife, and today I am living the life of my dreams.  This all came from spending the majority of my time with someone who believed in me and supported me, instead of someone who was fighting against my dreams and me.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is quit a job for your emotional and psychological health.  People who are abused and not valued by their employers should seek other jobs.  Criticism can achieve a useful purpose and can motivate you to improve.  However, there are also circumstances under which individual employees of various businesses are so severely and commonly abused that it rises to an extremely unhealthy level.  In these cases the criticism actually serves to diminish the employees and it makes them feel as if they are not worthy of their job.

When you read stories in the papers about employees going on rampages, the story is usually about an employee who was systematically abused and was made to feel inferior by the employer.  One of the reasons we often hear about this in places like post offices is because the employees there feel trapped, and they feel as if they have skills that would simply not be valued elsewhere.  Given the good size pensions postal employees receive and the fact that the pay is not that bad, postal employees often feel trapped in their jobs.  If you had delivered letters for the past 15 years, what else would you feel qualified to do?  If you are ever in a situation in which you feel trapped or abused, the best thing you can do is look for another job.  No one should remain in a job or position wherein they are demoralized and made to continually feel inferior.

Whoever you are and whatever you do, you have skills and personality traits that are in demand somewhere.  You need to do everything within your power to take advantage of these skills and traits, and to put yourself in situation wherein you will be appreciated.  You have skills and abilities which merit profound appreciation.  You just need to be working for an employer that realizes this.  The more positive news and affirmations that you receive, the better you will typically become at your job.

About a year ago I was at a conference and spent some time with a man who had apparently lost over 50 pounds during the previous year, had quit drinking on a daily basis, had stopped taking stimulants on a daily basis and gone from emotionally withdrawn to incredibly happy and motivated.  Since I did not know the person as he was before I met him, I was very curious:

“How on earth did you do this?” I asked him.

“I decided whom to spend my time with and whom not to spend my time with,” he told me.

When I thought about this statement I realized that it was no different than the experience I had years earlier.  People’s negative opinions of the world and about us can have a profoundly negative influence on our lives.  This is especially so when we are not appreciated and loved.

Several years ago I was working inside of a law firm and there was another attorney who had been there for at least 10 years.   I could not figure out why the law firm had kept him around so long–or why he had stayed.  All anyone did was talk about how stupid this guy was, and constantly make fun of him.  The associates who had just gotten out of law school even talked about how stupid he was and made fun of him.  The partners did the same thing.  Despite the fact that the law firm was going through what seemed to be a full time downsizing of laying people off and firing them, this guy was never let go.  Incredibly, despite mergers and other events at this law firm, and countless firings, he is still there today.  I figure that the law firm must just enjoy keeping him around to harass.  In actuality this attorney is not that bad at his job.  He is, however, someone who has tolerated incredible abuse throughout his career.

What makes this so incredible is that this particular guy was earning (10 years ago) probably more than $250,000 a year.  He has since been promoted and, despite all the abuse he has suffered, he has continued to do very well in his job.  I never understood why this guy tolerated so much abuse.  From what I have seen, there are people like this in most law firms and companies.  I remember another law firm I worked in that had hired a similar kind of person.  There are people inside every organization who are systematically made fun of and abused, while others around them enjoy poking fun at them.  These people become like the court jester, and it is as if the organizations pile on them all of their issues and insecurities.

In addition to people who are so directly put down and made fun of inside organizations, there are also people who experience a more subtle form of abuse.  They are systematically degraded and put down and their dreams crushed over and over again by their employers.  In the years I have spent studying human performance and what it takes to succeed in a job, one fact that occurs to me is that there are situations in which getting out of this pattern of abuse can be extremely difficult.  For example, if you are working in one of many American small towns it is often very hard to find a job as good as the post office and with as many benefits.  Despite having to endure various types of abuse (often by customers), many people stay employed in the post office year after year.

Last night I was watching a special about General Motors and the problems this company has been experiencing for decades.  As part of the special, they were showing the numerous suppliers and others scattered throughout the United States who were dependent upon GM for business.  What made this so interesting was that the suppliers were often in small towns with no other employers, and in some cases a supplier might only employ a few people.  I thought about this and what it would mean for someone who works for one of these suppliers.  Some of the people that were featured on the show had worked for certain suppliers for 20 or more years.  They had lived in small communities that had existed for a long time, thriving on the income solely generated by the suppliers.  In addition, many of the people working in these factories only knew how to do one thing.  For example, they might operate a certain machine that makes bolts.

Imagine doing something like this for 20 or more years.

Imagine still if you did not like your job and did not have any other skills.

Imagine if the people at work were not nice to you and you felt abused.  Being trapped in such a position would be absolutely horrible.

You might be in a situation right now, wherein you feel as if you are being abused and not treated the way you should be treated.  You might not feel appreciated in your current job.  If you are being diminished and your work not taken seriously, you should probably look for a different situation.  It does not do you any good to be in a work situation in which you are not appreciated and cherished for who you are.  Two of the most important things you have in your life are your self-worth and your sanity.  You need to realize that you are an important person worthy of immense and genuine respect.