Is your workplace a cult?

Have you taken a toddler for a walk lately? When they get too tired, they sit down.

When do we lose that innate connection to when we need to rest, and why?

Why have so many of us come to believe the utterly barmy notion that being a “good” worker means prioritising work over everything else?

I realise not everyone does this – but it is a dominant narrative in our culture, and many of us have internalised it to the point we can’t even see it as the cultural artefact it is. When you’ve internalised this belief, missing your kid’s birthday party because you have a work deadline seems as inevitable as the sun rising in the east. But it’s not. It’s learnt.

When we’ve internalised this belief, we think that the only alternative to prioritising work over everything – and being “good” - is putting work at the bottom of the pile – and thus being “bad”. Why?

It is cultish. Here’s 3 relevant criteria for what constitutes a high control group from a list by cult researcher and psychologist Dr Steve Eichel.

  • The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.

  • Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.

  • Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.

Take a look at the rest of the list, if you’re interested, through the lens of your relationship with work.

I’m not saying corporate cultures are per se cults (although some of them can be), but that on the continuum from totally fine to potentially damaging levels of control, many of us have taken on beliefs about the need to sacrifice family relationships, friendships, personal identity and even our health to work that raise red flags when considered in the context of cultish dynamics.

Once you see these dynamics for what they are, you can’t unsee them. What then?

Until next week,

Take care of yourself and others

Madeleine

PS If you’d like to work with me as you shift the balance of power in your life to something healthier for you, let me know. Send me a message to enquire, and please share with anyone you think may benefit.

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Madeleine Shaw