Are You Running Someone Else's Ego Errands for Work?
More thoughts on the people in charge.
I know the lead up to my point in last week’s newsletter was long asf.
So this week, I want to get into it right away.
I’m still thinking about bosses! Presidents! CEOs! The people in charge of all us little guys.
I watched several documentaries while I was sick. It was the most TV I have watched in a very long time. (So fun tbh!)
There were some similar themes between them that got me thinking about leadership, drive, and persistence and when that can turn rotten into insistence, arrogance, and an abuse of power.
So many of us are literally RUNNING some guy’s ego errands.
And this guy is VERY PASSIONATE about his ego errands!
So passionate that it is peoples’ JOB to run his ego errands. We get PAID to run them.
I watched both TITAN on Netflix and Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster on HBO Max last week.
It’s interesting because each documentary touches on different factors that led to the tragedy and interviews different people that were working at the company responsible for the engineering of the submersible (OceanGate) at the time with a few crossovers. (My point is that it’s not redundant to watch both! YW!)
However, the overarching issue was crystal clear across both documentaries:
The dude in charge (CEO) was an adamant, arrogant know-it-all who let his own ego-driven pursuits put himself and others in grave danger. He surrounded himself with yes men and fired anyone who didn’t agree with him. He became especially hostile (even litigious!) towards those who sounded the alarm when they knew the submersible was destined for implosion.
(I am assuming you all know this story already. This is the one about the submersible carrying paying passengers on a voyage to see the Titanic wreckage at the bottom of the ocean back in 2023. The submersible imploded from pressure. There were no survivors.)
OK I hate to speak so negatively about the deceased, but it’s more out of frustration. This could have been prevented! He could have listened to his team! His team of skilled experts! He persisted and eventually insisted on launching the submersible, bypassing necessary safety measures and quality control protocols.
And people died!!!
Even an innocent teenager who attended with his father. So sad.
The HBO Max documentary explains that the CEO, Stockton Rush came from a lineage of (very successful) entrepreneurs and engineers. His wife had relatives who died on the Titanic.
Therefore, the pressure was on. He had something to prove. (Ego errands!)
To me this dude was part D*nald Tr*mp and part Alex Honnold— you know that guy that free climbs mountains without fear. Stockton Rush was definitely lacking a natural fear receptor and projected this onto the submersible project.
And so here we are: the dude died because of his own ego errands.
So extreme!
How many times has someone who has more power over you at work like a boss or a client insisted you do something they want done that goes against your knowledge and recommendation? It happens all the time. Daily!
And maybe it doesn’t get so extreme in our industry or in other industries day-to-day where people’s lives are in danger, ehhh…but sometimes? (Thinking about the PR gals who *knew* the Blake Lively smear campaign was wrong.)
What I do know with certainty is that in our industry, mental health suffers. Mental health struggles are friggin’ rampant among PR people. There is a lot of verbal and emotional abuse. Sometimes violence like throwing a stapler across the room. (True story. 🙃)
It’s like people enter our industry with a license to let all of their mental illnesses fly freely without consequence.
This may have changed a bit in a post-pandemic, post-Me Too world, but I know it still persists in a lot of places.
In my own experience with managers in PR, I have found that control often gets twisted (PR’ed, lol) into hard work, caring, wanting to do a good job. Control becomes watered down into simply having high standards.
And if you object? Well, you’re just lazy and you can’t take the heat. You’re weak!
But, no.
That’s not correct. The manager is just being a controlling troll because they probably have unresolved childhood hang ups where they constantly felt *out* of control of their surroundings and now they have the sweet taste of poser-power over other people for a change and they’re spinning the f*ck out!
Seriously though, what is “power” when we’re talking about an email job?! Lol. Power over what? The clothing samples? The press release? A client’s brand that literally has nothing to do with you?
Stop it. I can’t. I’m embarrassed.
“Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You’re three‑feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.”— Mary Karr
Since I’m a parent, I’m reading a great book called Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. There is an entire section about how children experience lower rates of depression and anxiety when they have autonomy over some decisions day-to-day. He goes onto share that employees in a business setting show similar stats. Employees weren’t depressed at work because of the actual work they were doing, they were depressed when they didn’t feel they had autonomy in their roles to make their own decisions and were instead overruled by someone more powerful than them.
YUP! Sounds about right. At least for me. (E.g. Having a Boss Is Bad for My Mental Health)
Humans need autonomy! To deny autonomy in a work setting is out of line and inhumane.
I was so controlled in one work setting that I began to question all of my instincts. I was paralyzed by self doubts. I was walking on eggshells. I had to work to someone else’s instincts. I’m not a mind reader, so I usually got it wrong anyway. Everything from who I would recommend pitching first to which order to put people’s names in CC in a single email. I was always “wrong.” I was in a senior position at the time too. I was so controlled that I had to worry if I was putting people’s emails in CC in the wrong order because if I did it “wrong,” I’d be berated later. Yeah, that sounds like an efficient, productive environment! 🙄 Where’s the ~*uRgEnCy*~ now? Because I have never had to work slower in my life for fear of misstepping or messing up in this person’s eyes. And I was already a perfectionist at that time. I was already punishing myself over work constantly.
This was on another level. It was abusive.
Speaking of unchecked abuse, I also watched Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel.
Yikes.
That CEO was so abusive, so terrible, so scary. And while he may be “disgraced” on some level, he got away with all of the sexual assault allegations (of minors!) and went on to work for Kanye. Cool. 👍
One of his former employees who was interviewed in the documentary was quite astute about it all.
He said that D*v Ch*rney was the type of person that never heard the word “no.” He wouldn’t accept the word “no.” Later he goes onto say that he was a traditional predator. Like a shark. He says that someone like him will never change, he’s always going to bite. And he finishes by saying:
“For whatever reason in society, we kind of let that type of person continue.”
Absolutely, yes indeed my man!
Speaking of sharks, I also watched Shark Whisperer on Netflix. OMG. Have you guys seen this? I thought it was amazing. I want to watch it again.
Ocean Ramsey is a woman who has been diving with sharks for most of her life. She’s obsessed with sharks and is obsessed with their safety. They keep the ecosystem of the ocean running properly and as we know our oceans are f*cked. So this is important! Ocean Ramsey is responsible for the United States passing legislation that deems killing sharks in US waters illegal.
She is a true leader. I don’t see her pursuit of shark conservation as “ego errands” at all. She knows sharks are maybe one of the oldest species still living on earth, if not the oldest, and she has a respect for them. She knows they hold ancient natural wisdom and humans can learn from them.
Instead of clutching onto her own beliefs about sharks, she stays entirely open. She is obsessive about observing them daily to continue learning about their behavior to better understand them. She stays fluid and acknowledges that she will always be learning about them. (This is someone who is an absolute expert on sharks.)
She leads with curiosity, not with arrogant rigidity like the men in the other documentaries. She accepts that the sharks are capable of surprising her and killing her. This is a risk she’s willing to take in order to continue her work.
She follows her intuition; her daily dives are a practice - almost like a meditation. She’s so even-keeled speaking to the camera about her relationship to sharks and her studies of their behavior.
She has developed a discernment around them and a skill for being with them in the water through exhaustive observation. She uses her soft skills and mindfulness to adapt her breathing and makes sure to not radiate stress energy in the water—something sharks can pick up on in humans.
To Ocean, every shark is an individual. She names them and recognizes them when she sees them on her dives and they recognize her too.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass explains that when we can name the beings in nature and when we know what they do and what their purpose is, we’re more likely to protect them.
I think we need to see each other’s humanity at work too.
Like when a manager is berating someone, that someone is someone else’s baby! You know? Now that I am a Mom, I am really sensitive about humans. Everyone was a baby once. We all deserve baseline respect, love, and care.
Of course the documentary interviews other people in the industry, all men except for Sylvia Earle. The dudes hate what Ocean Ramsey is doing. Sylvia Earle loves it. (Obviously.) One guy sh*ts on her so hard and is so *blissfully unaware* of how misogynist he sounds to declare that she “has no respect” in “the industry.”
In reality, she is in another stratosphere than him. His title was like “diving guide” or something rudimentary in terms of the “industry.” No one has ever swam so close to sharks as Ocean Ramsey. That guy’s vibe was about as charming as a rusty can, so I am sure he’d be dead if he tried to do what she did. (Bad energy the sharks would hate, obviously.) The men who criticized her were all very jealous, I’m sure of it. If you Google her name now, every article that comes up about the documentary claims how “controversial” it is. Why? If a man did this, we’d be crowning him a hero and applauding his bravery.
The thing is, I don’t necessarily think the men who criticized her are evolved enough to understand that she has done what she’s done through soft skills which are typically more prevalent in women than men. (We all hold masculine and feminine energy, baby!) They couldn’t do what she does unless they’d be willing to come down from their high horses and learn from her. (An impossible ask! Lol.)
Why do you think Republicans are obsessed with holding women back right now? Stripping away rights, etc. It’s like that meme that has been circulated a thousand times, they know the power that women hold and it terrifies them.
The fact that women literally almost die to give life gives us an intuitive edge that men will never understand.
I think we need to embrace this energy when it comes to work and management more and more.
Yet feminism taught us to be little men. Which we have conquered. We are little men now—we manage like them, berate like them, earn like them. (.80 to the dollar and we still out-earn them.) Instead of honoring and valuing women’s skills as a society, we ask women to be little men to measure up. (And when we do, we’re labeled bossy and bitchy.) But it’s not equality when women are the CEO, responsible for all the housework, and the childcare too while men have stayed the same.
That manager I mentioned above had such patriarchal energy, I actually feel bad for her and sympathize with her. She didn’t assert this herself. She learned this in order to survive.
There were a few men in the Shark Whisperer documentary who thought what Ocean Ramsey was doing was admirable and incredible. We need more of those men. This is what will lead us to real equality eventually.
Though I don’t live in New York City anymore, Zohran Mamdani winning the primary election was such a relief. I think he is one of those men. He sees how the systems we uphold without question are harmful for all of us. He sees the bigger picture.
While it often feels like the world is totally ending, there are glimmers of hope. Zohran Mamdani is a glimmer! Ocean Ramsey is a glimmer! They are the whispers that what we’re enduring right now will not last forever.
I hope to see you on the other side of the paradigm shift. <3
Best wishes,
Carrie
