Why Women are Willing to Work Hard, but Need a Moral Purpose

Working Hard and Still Being Overlooked

A recent client, Beth, is a high energy, very intelligent, hardworking individual with a tendency to rely on external means (such as spreadsheets, extensive lists, charts and graphs, etc.) to keep herself in the mode of constant activity. She spent much of her time at work investigating every possible scenario that could go wrong in a given situation in order to ensure all her flanks were covered by creating tangible evidence that she is busy doing real work. Her image of herself is based on being the “go to” person with all the answers, and solid reasons for what issues remain unanswered or unfulfilled. She is also a person of high moral integrity, with unimpeachable values of honesty, trust, loyalty, and family. She had been with her previous employer for almost 13 years, however, recently began to feel overlooked by management, despite her hard work, and her excellent performance reviews.

Her self-esteem was beginning to flag, and it was becoming harder for her to continue to perform at her highest levels. In addition, Beth began to question the moral value system of the company when she was repeatedly asked to falsely report various events that took place on her assigned program. In addition, Beth felt she was being placed in a position of compromise when she witnessed inaccurate information being presented to the customer, and unrealistic promises were made which Beth knew the company could not deliver. Furthermore, violations of the company’s own policies and procedures for proper conduct were regularly ignored without consequence to the perpetrators, and Beth felt that this among the other issues, was directly in violation of her own personal value system.

She began to realize working for this company was no longer an option for her, but she felt trapped and also expressed a sense of loyalty to her immediate supervisor and others with whom she had developed close relationships over the years. After so many years, her identity and sense of self was derived from working at that company, whether or not she experienced happiness there. Beth began her coaching engagement many months prior to actually making her move to leave the company, and through the coaching sessions learned that in order to be more successful and gain more self-satisfaction in her work life, she had to improve her ability to separate what was realistic and what she could and could not control. Her goal for our coaching partnership was to apply that learning in finding another source of employment, and to carry the new self-awareness into her new job scenario.