Do you want your doctor or air traffic controller to be their authentic self?

Some years ago, a rather grumpy executive was invited on a corporate retreat. The aim was to squeeze more performance out of the sales team. He was obliged to fly interstate and then had to drive for several hours to a “wellness centre”, remotely located to enhance feelings of isolation from the daily grind.

After this day of travel, he ventured in to the welcome session where he found his colleagues from around the country sat in chairs arranged in a circle. To his horror, there was a group exercise where each executive was asked to describe their family relationships, name their children, put up photographs of them and then to rate the quality of each family relationship out of 7.

When it came to his turn, he refused to divulge this information. The facilitator dressed in a maroon skivvy with a large quartz pendant, smoothly moved to the next person, with reassuring messages about it being “OK”. The executive was sacked within a week of returning to the office. Not a team player.

Since then, I have heard countless similar experiences. What about the staff member coerced into divulging personal details in front of their colleagues who subsequently suffered a breakdown. Or the one who having shared their innermost personal thoughts and experiences were seduced into a relationship with the convenor. Or the poor sod who was asked to share their fantasies in front of their colleagues on a retreat, only to be confronted by derision and humiliating toys and graphics depicting what they had shared on return to the office.

These appalling experiences were all in the name of boosting happiness, wellness, positive thinking and goodness knows what else. All of these initiatives were predicated on taking employees out of their comfort zones and physically removing them from their support networks. All in the pursuit of greater efficiency and profit.

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Aside from the unethical, largely unregulated practices and practitioners, there are also serious problems with the focus on the employee being the problem, rather than their level of demands, control and support in the workplace. Further, is the uncritically accepted assumption that the dubious goals of optimistic thinking, happiness or “wellness” are desirable or even essential components of performance.

Give me critical thinkers over mindless smiling fools any day of the week. I do not want an optimistic “she’ll be right mate” air traffic controller, I want one who professionally worries on my behalf, and takes calm measured steps to avoid calamity.

I do not want my surgeon to be their “authentic self”, whatever the hell that might be, I want the professional self who is constrained by professional regulations and standards and motivated by the Hippocratic oath. I want the person who can swim against the tide metaphorically by pointing out that our current path is towards the iceberg, before we literally have to swim, against the tide after disaster hits.