Career Nightmare: The Worst Possible Thing that Could Happen at Work

Each year, my former employer Oracle Corp. sends a few cohorts of high-potential leaders to executive-training programs around the world. And about 18 months ago, I had the honor of being the executive sponsor for one of those cohorts during its intensive week-long session at the University of Michigan. 

In addition to sitting in and commenting on their business-plan presentations, I also had the specific assignment of speaking to this group of global hotshots on the subject of “authentic leadership.” 

My guess is we’d all probably agree that inauthentic leadership is pretty easy to define—after all, most people run into at least one such bozo during our careers—but I struggled for a bit to come up with a genuine and meaningful approach for conveying the powerful principle of truly authentic leadership to this global group of 40 high achievers.

So I decided to talk about two things with which every member of the cohort was surely familiar: fear and courage. And to open the group’s minds to the deepest meanings of those concepts, I shared a brief film clip of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King from his famous address from a pulpit in Selma, Alabama, on March 8, 1965—here’s a transcript from that film clip:

“Deep down in our nonviolent creed is the conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36 years old as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life, some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right—but he’s afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid he’ll lose his job, or he’s afraid he will get shot or beat down by state troopers, then he may go on and live until he’s 80 but he’s just as dead then at 36 as he would be at 80. And the cessation of breathing is merely the belated announcement of the death of the spirit.

“A man dies—a man DIES when he refuses to stand up for that which is right; a man DIES when he refuses to stand up for justice; a man DIES when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. So we’re gonna stand up right here!...Like anyone, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now; I just want do to God’s will.

“And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over—and I have SEEN the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will GET to the Promised Land! So I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing ANY man because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

Of course, in the context of such world-changing eloquence and courage, I told the Oracle high-achievers that I was not in any way attempting to equate our work at Oracle with the immortal and transcendent work of Dr. King; rather, I’d shared his timeless words to underscore the power of confronting our fears, of tackling what others believe is impossible, of not being content to see the world as it is but instead embracing what it could be.

For our purposes, I told the group, Oracle was a company in transformation as it moved from its traditional on-premise business model to the cloud, requiring Oracle to transform not only its products and technologies but also its processes, its revenue models, its sales organization, its support models—and, fundamentally, changing how the company thinks, how it evaluates risks, and how all of its employees and particularly its leaders shift their mindset and thinking to that of digital business.

It's understandable, I said, that such profound and sweeping change will frighten some people, and that some will have a tendency to want to cling to the past and the practices that made Oracle so successful for almost 40 years. And so it will be your job, I told these high-potential folks, to show your colleagues by your example how you confront those fears, seize control of them, and turn those fears into opportunities.

I then asked the group for some examples of the worst possible thing that’s happened to them at work, or that could happen to them at work. Not just a disappointment, but the worst, most-awful thing. 

One person said he’d been passed over for a promotion. Yeah, I replied, that’s no fun—but is it the worst?

Another person said not receiving funding for a key project—sure, I said, that can be tough to take. But is it the worst? Then more voices called out:

“Getting a small raise!” 

“Being transferred to a manager who’s an ass!”

“Getting an average rating on your annual performance appraisal!”

After briefly acknowledging that such things can be disappointing or frustrating, I finally said, “C’mon, folks—either we’re not being honest with these answers, or we all live pretty charmed professional lives! Come on—what’s the WORST thing that could happen to you at work?!?”

And someone said, rather meekly, “You get fired.” Another said, “The company has a bad quarter and you get laid off.” Another: “You get acquired and your team gets laid off.”

Okay, I said, now we’re getting somewhere! So losing your job—getting fired or laid off—is the very worst thing that could happen, right? And most of the people agreed—that was the consensus.

But, I said, I beg to differ--while getting fired or laid off surely stinks, my worst professional nightmare is letting down my colleagues by taking the easy way out and not fighting for what’s right. Letting myself down by backing away from a difficult but necessary battle, and allowing an inferior idea or approach rule the day because I lacked the will and/or the courage to confront the deeply rooted group-think that resists change, deflects innovation, and subtly ostracizes those who don't go along to get along.

Letting the company down by going along with what's known and what's easy rather than challenging it with new ideas that in the long run will help everyone but in the short term will ruffle feathers, raise questions, spark disagreements, and force rubber-stampers to confront reality. And I said that in any company the size of Oracle--with close to 150,000 employees--those forces of inertia and group-think can be so vast and so deeply entrenched that only extraordinary leaders are able to overcome them.

Immediately, my colleagues began tossing out examples of similar situations they’d run into, and we talked for some time about how they handled their decisions, what was the outcome, and what they learned from it. And I urged them, as they continue down their path of becoming the leaders of tomorrow, to always fight for what is right, to always question misguided approaches, and to always find ways to convert that nagging fear that all of us experience into energy, into resolve, and into the courage to do the right thing.

In closing, please enjoy these two quotations from extraordinary world leaders who, while separated by about 2,000 years, achieved remarkable outcomes by confronting that worst possible thing and crushing it:

--“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” --Marcus Aurelius

--“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” --Eleanor Roosevelt

Thanks for your time--and 2017 seems like the perfect opportunity for all of us to "look fear in the face" and then use our "power to revoke it at any moment."