Rush Hour of Life E-Book

Walter Schmidt

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 453

Beschreibung

It is about time that we learn to reconcile career and family ourselves - This book offers a path to a healthy work-life balance. There is an increasing demand for practical solutions to solve the conflict between the modern business world and family life. This is especially important for young working couples in their "Rush Hour of Life" when both of them have a career and are needed in the upbringing of their children. Walter Schmidt has discovered the reasons for the apparent incompatibility of the values and attitudes. He has developed a new model to achieve a healthy work-family-balance by transferring the concept of Salutogenesis, introduced by Aaron Antonovsky, and that of Servant Leadership, coined by Robert K. Greenleaf, to the reconciliation of family and career. He believes that the key to the solution lies in a fundamental change of behaviour of the persons involved. The most important factor is the Sense of Coherence: The belief that we live in a world that is generally comprehensible, offers resources to solve problems, and rewards efforts. This sense can be developed and fostered by consciously dealing with one's own emotions and relationships as well as through exercises introduced by the author, such as the "partner maps".

Leseprobe

Enjoyment of life

is not related to the satisfaction

that a career and family provide,

but to the strength

with which they are pursued!

Walter Schmidt, 2016

www.rushhour-of-life.com

This book can offer you help in self-help. Almost 250 billion euros, which the state spends directly or indirectly on family support every year, are sufficient. It is time for people like us to learn to lead a good family life with our own strength. This book shows you a possible way.

The economy and the church have discovered how important this way is in balancing family and career. The author wishes to thank the Vereinigung der Bayerischen Wirtschaft (Bavarian Business Association, VBW) and the Archdiocese of Munich for the support of the German book publication.

Preface

The topic of this book is a key issue of our time. Combining work and family life is a practical challenge which many people find to be very nerve-consuming every day. Women in particular are often torn between the demands imposed on them as professionals and managers in business life and as mothers, wives and daughters who have parents to care for.

To a significant extent, people label the options which remain available to them in this tense relationship with negative terms. Those who apply the qualifications that they state not only in their workplace, but also want to develop further accordingly, quickly get a reputation as a “bad mother”. On the other hand, those who want to spend several years dedicated to the upbringing of their children, are quickly labelled with the term “cricket on the hearth”.

Behind these labels are standards which society as a whole applies to individual couples in the “rush hour of life”. These standards are undergoing a new kind of sharpening, caused by demographic change. After all, our ageing society requires women to be both professionals and mothers to the young in order to remain sustainable. With this demographic dilemma, we require good solutions and new ideas, and are also developing these at the Bavarian Business Association (vbw).

In his book, Dr Walter Schmidt touches on an aspect which has (surprisingly) hitherto remained fully underexposed in discussion of the question of reconciling work and family. While, according to the State, accompanying financial or structural measures are quickly called for, it is rarer for one to ask how Dr Schmidt is doing, which individual options affected parties actually have and could develop. In this domain, as well, it is worth assessing the logic of the social market economy in a subsidiary fashion i.e. from the smallest unit.

This is proven by the results that are contained in this book, which shows not only feasible methods in the tense arena of work and family life. Major chances and development potentials (both for individual couples and for companies) are also worked out here – assuming the reconciliation of work and family life actually succeeds.

I hope that this extremely exciting book will be read by many, and that many people who play a part in our economy will apply the suggestions in this book in practice.

Professor Randolf Rodenstock

Honorary president of vbw – Bavarian Business Association

Managing partner of Optische Werke

G. Rodenstock GmbH & Co. KG

Inhalt

Preface

Prologue

A Complex Net of Conflicts

Men and Women in the Rush Hour of Life

The Conflict of Objectives: Professional Success and Creating a Harmonious Family Life

Upheaval of Values and Living Conditions

The Area of Tension between Career and Family

The Conflict of Objectives, its Characteristics, Consequences and Possible Escape Routes

Analysis of the Conflict

Causes and Motives

Possible Causes of Conflict

The Inner Attitude to Family and Marriage

Career and Character

» Power as an Internal and External Driving Force

» Career as a Personal and Social Challenge

» Character as a System of Value, Measuring and Control

Conclusion: The Conflict can only be resolved by consideration of the other party’s motives

Conflict Resolution based on Salutogenic Model by Antonovsky

The Salutogenic Model

The Sense of Coherence

How the Sense of Coherence changes in Course of Life and how it can be applied to our Target Group

Influencing the Sense of Coherence by psychotherapeutic Measures

Conclusion: The salutogenic model is a promising method to solve the conflict

Looking for Individual Resources

Control of Emotions

Searching for Meaningfulness

Self-respect, Identity, Self-protection

Conclusion: The Sense of Coherence is Decisive

Co-evolution of Family and Career by Changing the Sense of Coherence of Interacting Individuals

Basics of Family Ethics

“Person” as a term establishing family ethics

Ethical and Sociological Metamorphoses of the Family

Coping Strategies for the Family

Self-realization and variety of roles

Open discussion of the Dilemma and sensitive Dealing with the Conflict by Family Members

Mutual Evolution of Couples; Personal Resources

» The partner‘s map: to know, to recognize, to understand

» Emotional Attachment, Feelings and Love

» Emotional Intelligence and Competence

» Family as a School of Feelings

» Creating of a Common World

» Conclusion: Resistance resources can be enlarged

Changing Behaviour in the Relationship; Resources Input

» Founding a Dyadic Construct System

» Developing of Convergence Controlled by Behaviour

» Perceiving, accepting, influencing and differentiating the behaviour in partnerships

» Generation of Common Flow Experience

» Closeness and Distance

» Control of Commitment

» Conclusion: a common inner world should be created

Recognizing and Monitoring of Control Mechanisms: Resilience, Transaction, Coherence

Development of Culture of Constructive Controversy

Basics of Corporate Ethics

Pervasion of the family by the society – a paradigm change

Coping Strategies at Work

Scope of Requirements on Executive Managers and Their Character Properties

Servant Leadership – Managers’ Development as Personality Development

» Conceptional Basics of Servant Leadership

» The Dilemma of Management

» The New Attitude of Servant Leadership

» The New Type of Manager – Basic Trust instead of Primal Fear

History of the Future: Solution Approaches between Individualizing and Collectivizing

Searching for Meaning and Identity at Work and in the Family as Holistic Co-Evolution Process

The Impatient Society

Conflict between Character and Experience

Developing the Sense of Coherence in Groups

Group Consciousness and Group Vibes

The Social Setting

Cooperative Leadership at Work

Concept Feasibility Prerequisites

The Role of Individual in Cooperative Leadership

Servant Leadership in Families – a Serving Family Leader

Salutogenic Work-Life Balance

Self-Management and Relationship Management

Salutogenic Health Management

Conclusion: Future development of the salutogenic model makes the rush hour of life controllable

Summary and Forecast

Annex

Bibliography

List of tables

1 Prologue

“A view of societies in other cultures offers no model at all for the struggle for equality of opportunity of men and women in our society. Our model of marriage is actually not the standard for the world. This means that types of life together in other societies can look fundamentally different from here – that is to say, less focused on couples. Our type of relationship, as we know them, is a special case and not the general reality around the world. It‘s an exception.“1

Our couple-focused society includes about 800 million people in Europe and North America. The struggle between men and women in particular takes place here. What determines the behaviour of these people, and how do they pass on their behaviour to the next generation?

“There are inevitabilities of cooperation and conflicts, both generally between individuals, genders and generations, but also between genes and cultural behavioural programs. Programs are not only saved and reproduced in the genes, but also in brains. They succeed not only through gametes, but also through tradition in new carrier individuals; these do not expand through reproduction, but through convincing; which also requires a completely different behaviour of individuals than what is required by genetic programs for their expansion. So it‘s no surprise that culture does not always favour reproduction. Every incorrect behaviour, i.e. one that does not serve the expansion of the program, is automatically eliminated. In evolution, this happens if the successful program can be passed on to future generations and there develops behaviour that promises corresponding success under certain environmental conditions. In principle, it does not matter how the program reaches the next generation. We will have to get used to the image that the individual person displays as an executive body for several behavioural programs that often work against each other, which are still here today because their carriers successfully programmed them in the past. These programs sometimes go against ancient genetic programs. They are “unnatural“ like contraception and birth control. The welfare state is also unnatural, which is unstable in its evolution because it almost essentially exploited and undermined by egoistical tendencies of individuals.“2

The behaviour of the couple-focused society, which we address here, is also passed on through procreation and convincing. We build on the genetic circumstances of humans today and try to find out how we can change the behaviour of people in the relationship between men and women through convincing, training and mutual influence. We are searching for the secret that successful people are influenced by a different behaviour than that of less successful people.

“The biographies of successful people often strikingly show that the goal was not career in itself, but that tasks given to somebody were able to be successfully completed. The successful people had a pervasive, lasting, but dynamic feeling of trust that their internal and external environment can be predicted and that there is a high probability that things will develop as you can reasonably expect them to.“3

1 Laubscher, M., Frau und Mann – Geschlechterdifferenzierung in Natur und Menschenwelt, in Schubert, V (Publisher), Eos Verlag Erzabtei St. Ottilien, pp. 93–94.

2 Wickler, W., extract from the preface to the German edition of “Das egoistische Gen“ by Dawkins R., Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2008, pp. 20–21.

3 Antonovsky, A., Health, Stress and Coping, New Perspectives on Mental and Physical Well-Being, Jossey-Bass Publisher, San Francisco, 1985.

2 A Complex Net of Conflicts

Nowadays, there are two points of orientation in the cohabitation between men and women, which are felt today as equal value: career and family, or, as said in Bründel’s words: profession and relationship. Both of these items lead to happiness and satisfaction, provided that they are in a well-balanced correlation to each other. However, social reality reveals an imbalance, since men and women approach these points of orientation very differently. While men primarily tend to think and act job-related, women tend to primarily feel responsible for family and partnership. The number of women working in leading positions is still significantly smaller in comparison to men. In Germany, it varies between 7 and 14 % and in the United States, between 22 and 26 %, depending on the branch, age and level of position.4 However, women’s perception of their role in society is changing. Thus, men’s role, which seems to be well-balanced, no longer exists as such. A change in men and women’s understanding of their social roles has led to these roles interfering with each other. This trend is partially amplified and accelerated by exogenous transformations in economy and work, i.e. in the fields that men have dominated up until now. Unemployment destabilizes the traditionally organized employment system, in which men work on a regular basis outside of their homes. One’s life story and one’s organization of individual phases of life have become uncertain. Consequently, a diversity of goal conflicts has arisen. This is no longer a mere one-dimensional conflict between career and family orientation, but a complex multidimensional net of conflicts. During different stages of life, this net of conflicts will change its characteristics and coerce men and women to re-structure their relationships.

4 Only in the below-30 age class, there is a similar number of men and women in leading positions. On the contrary, women between 30 and 45 years old only make a 14 % share in leading positions. Scientific works are known for verifying more or less abstract theories through empirical investigation and conclusion. Federal Statistical Office, focus on: Frauen in Deutschland, 2006, p. 28.

3 Men and Women in the Rush Hour of Life

Scientific works commonly have a more or less abstract theory that is verified by empirical investigations and conclusions. In the present lecture, we use a reversed approach: first, empiricism and then, the theory. The author is an international executive search consultant. He and his team interviewed over 15,000 young executives from 1981 to 2009, i.e., a period of 28 years. In such structured interviews, not only the conflict between family and career planning was researched but also, the reasons, characteristics, possible solutions and approaches were discussed and recorded.

Through the transference of three scientifically based theorems, i.e.

“Salutogenesis” (A. Antonovsky)

“Servant Leadership” (R. Greenleaf)

“Co-evolution” (J. Willi)

to the empirical findings, practically usable and secured solutions and approaches were developed. Based on the changes in the behaviour of working and married partners, these approaches may lead to a partnership that is free of conflicts.

Occupation is defined as any type of employment conducing to income and earning money. In this context, there is no difference between being employed and a freelancer. However, earning money does not exclude expressive goals. Being interested in work contents and social contacts are also important in one’s occupation, besides the basic instrumental goal of gaining income. Unofficial and gratuitous employment is not considered in this context.

In the sense of Lüscher5, we do without the nominative use of the family-sociological concept. We consider a broader definition of family, which includes all types of cohabitation in a household comprising adults and children. Thus, it is not limited to a specific type of family, for example, the traditional one (father, mother and child). However, we essentially limit our consideration to the most common and socially focused way of life, which includes two adults and at least one child to care for. The definition of career that this study is based on has a broader sense than a mere employment-related term. The different stages in one’s life are the matter of discussion here. Luhmann’s6 definition of career which is used here, allows for the coequal recognition of family careers, in particular, parenthood and employment careers. The focal point of this discussion is “agreement career”. This term means the stage in one’s career in which gainful employment and parenthood – in particular, the responsibility for children who are not yet independent – overlap and should be matched.

The following sections will address the behaviour of men and women within their families and jobs, and will be geared towards young executives with five to ten years of work experience and children at pre-school and primary school age (core target group). In our context, “executives” means both employees and self-employed people, whose responsibilities exceed project- and issue-related tasks. They are in charge of motivation, targeting, further training, continual education and the control of results of a collective of employees, i.e., of a team. Executives make use of their professional expertise and social competence in order to accomplish the super-ordinate goals of a department, a business sector or a company, as well as to utilize their potential and to maintain their power. Competition inside a peer group, paired with the expectations of the superior, causes an employee to feel pressure to succeed like a young businessman competing with other companies.

In a family, due to the obligation to provide care, education and support for a child, both parents feel an emotional and material pressure. This reaches its peak between the third and fourteenth year in a child’s life. This “double load” by work and family in the emotional respect is nowadays still borne by the woman to the greater extent. The financial load is borne by both parents together or primarily by the man. Both men and women are in the middle of the rush hour of life.

5 Lüscher, K., Die postmoderne Familie: familiale Strategien und Familienpolitik in einer Übergangszeit, Konstanz, 1988, pp. 15–38.

6 Luhmann, N., Copierte Existenz und Karriere zur Herstellung von Individualität, Frankfurt, 1994, pp. 199–200.

4 The Conflict of Objectives: Professional Success and Creating a Harmonious Family Life

Upheaval of Values and Living Conditions

Conflicts are part of our human identity.7 They arise between all people who are in regular interaction with each other, disregarding legal conflicts. There are vocational conflicts with bosses, employees or colleagues and, in particular, people who you actually love and appreciate the most such as a spouse, children and friends. All conflicts have one thing in common: they arise when our expectations cannot be met, regardless of whether we expect something from ourselves or from others. Non-compliance with expectations is called frustration (futile expectations).

To a large extent, expectations and goals determine the way that people act. It is in men’s nature that a person is not viable without goals – one gets depressive and prone to suicide. An accomplished goal leads to a feeling of success. Successes make humans active and actional beings. Activity may take place on a purely intellectual level, a quasi activity of thoughts. Therefore, a person always strives for success, i.e. for accomplishment of his/her goals. The stronger the person’s identification with his personal goals and the more unrestricted his acceptance of these goals is – seeing them as meaningful and necessary – the greater his likelihood is to achieve these goals. Corell discovered that 82 % of employees in Germany do not really “match” with their professional ambitions but rather, have built up a “cognitive dissonance” between objective target and identification.8 They pursue their profession without a “primary” motivation but with a “work-to-rule” attitude. These professionals strive to fulfil their tasks, not because they expect to accomplish their goals, but because of secondary benefits, for example, money and occupational advancement.

The latter seems to be problematic since they have no primary motivation. It should be pointed out that the employer often does not clearly see their primary and secondary motivation, since an increasing number of employed people “learned to camouflage” their lack of primary motivation by hustling and bustling.

We have to realize that, among members of many occupational groups, actual goals of life relocate into non-occupational fields, i.e., leisure, hobbies and travelling. This implies that the majority of people develop expectations in fields that are irrelevant to their careers. Hence, successes are experienced more and more outside of one’s job. At the same time, experiences of frustration at their workplaces grow and grow. As such, occupation is increasingly seen as a means to an end.

This negative trend in the development of the attitude of most German employees becomes stronger due to the linkage to other human behavioural patterns. People’s expectations in one field grow as much as their expectations in other fields have been met. The wealthier a person, the more he expects. One would think that the more expectations fulfilled, the happier and more expectation-free people would be. However, in reality, this is not the case. Frustration grows to the same extent as the standard of living increases. Moreover, according to Corell9, not merely the improving standards of living but the entire mental/intellectual development causes us to continuously expect more. For instance, due to progressive emancipation from all kinds of paternalism, we are becoming more self-reliant, mature and responsible. Thus, we boisterously demand for more self-realization by making others take a step back to allow us to take a step forward. The mindset of previous generations – that blows of fate must be endured and taken as an ordeal – is no longer familiar to us. It conforms to today’s concept of humankind to live in the notion that we shape our own destiny, i.e., we can “make” our life. While people continue to expect more, clashes between our fellow citizens and us are becoming inevitable, as they are also focused on their individual expansion. The more people live in a tightening space, the bigger the rubbing surface. The means of communication that are available in the modern world allow us to enter close relationships with lots of people. Consequently, the level of frustration we are exposed rises.

Additionally, as we are obviously becoming more this-worldly in our attitude and have swamped out most of our relation to transcendence, the tolerance of frustration decreases incessantly, whereas the risk of frustration increases. As a result, we are getting involved in an increasing number of conflicts that we cannot manage without difficulties because we are no longer willing to accept them.

Society’s solution to divide the work between spouses according to traditional gender-specific roles is becoming less and less effective. A growing number of young executives that are available to the “West-oriented” industrial and service society consists of men and women, who take responsibility for both, the financial wealth of the family and looking after the children, either as individuals or dual-career couples.10

With respect to quality of life (material comfort, opportunities for individual development and disposal of their own time), today’s society, in principle, broadly accepts gender equality as equal opportunities for men and women. Finally, however, this cannot be achieved without adequate social structuring of the relations between employment and parenthood. In market-based societies, opportunities in life primarily come from accessing gainful employment. As long as motherhood prevents or, at least, massively hinders women from gaining this access, gender equality cannot be achieved.11 Hence, another area of conflict opens up between family as a private matter and the collective public interest in the family. However, this conflict will not be the focus of the present research.

Based on economic, social and cultural indicators, the following analysis will discuss why the relationship between gainful employment and family is considered not only as an individual and familial area of conflict but also, as an organizational one. The starting point of this reasoning is based on an unbroken male and a rising female employment orientation, in particular among women with qualified education.12

7 Conflict [lat., confligere “beat, smash“], antagonism, quarrel, fight [between persons, countries, or others]; also inner antagonism of motives, desires or intentions. Social conflict: clash of interests and disputes of various intensity and violence between persons, groups, organizations, societies, countries or groups of states resulting from that. Conflict contents are controversies on values, goals of life, status, power or distribution fights. About the origination of conflicts, there are different theories: The biologically-oriented behaviour research often assumes human biological basic instincts, which do not vary. This theory postulates a general potential of aggression and sees conflicts as a “natural” social fact. In the view of social psychology and sociology, conflicts are caused by contrariness between a person’s mental drives/motivations and standards/requirements of the society order. Alternatively, the reason of conflicts can be contradictions in the structure of obligatory behavioural standards itself (socially structured conflict). Meyer, 1992, Vol. 12, p. 89 f.

8 Corell, W., Psychologie für Beruf und Familie, 18th edition, mvg Verlag, Heidelberg, 2007, p. 13.

9 Corell, W., p. 14.

10 Ornstein, S., Making Sense of Careers, in: Journal of Management, Los Angeles, 1993, pp. 243–267.

11 Auer, M., Vereinbarungskarrieren, Eine karrieretheoretische Analyse des Verhältnisses von Erwerbsarbeit und Elternschaft, Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Hampp, Munich, 2000, p. 44.

12 Bosch, G., Zukunft der Erwerbsarbeit, Frankfurt, New York, 1998, pp. 13–55.

The Area of Tension between Career and Family

Despite a general decrease in employed people’s working-motivation, making a career is still a life goal for most people. Especially for ambitious young executives, it is a self-purpose that is not questioned. Successful people (men and women) gain recognition, satisfaction in work, higher-than-average income and power over other people and resources. On the one hand, at work, an executive is expected to constantly produce new ideas and be resilient, unsentimental and tough. On the other hand, in his private life, the same person should be tender, loving and sensitive, and should have enough time for the family. In addition, he is expected to reduce his emotional needs because the emotional care and tenderness of his female partner is mostly focused on the children.

The executives should generate peak performance in the two worlds, despite the fact that, in many fields, these worlds have different rules. For example, the important criteria of one world could have a negative effect in the other one.13

The tension between career and family is strengthened by the need for occupational labour mobility. Globalisation, in the sense of Beck’s14 “Enträumlichung” (deterritorialization) of social relationships, and the fact that entrepreneurial activities are no longer tied to a certain location, have led to an increasing need for mobility in occupations. One asks: how much mobility can family life cope with? The investigations of Schneider, Limmer and Ruckdeschel15 point to people’s pursuit of a balance between longevity and change, and between reliability and renewal. On the one hand, a decreed longevity has a paralysing effect. However, if longevity does not exist and if there is no way to establish longevity, disorientation will be the result. Most people want to live in a relationship and not alone. For many people, the partner relationship is the essential supporting pillar of life. Life satisfaction, which is shown in all relevant sociological studies, is primarily determined by satisfaction in a partnership and with family, not by success at work. According to Thadden16, in today’s world, there is a remarkable movement against the availability of executives in the labour market. Even if you believe that the entire coordinate system of the conflict areas changes, it remains clear that it does not reduce the potential for conflicts between profession and family. These conflicts are only deferred. As long as the financial protection of the family is guaranteed by earning money at work and not largely provided by the state, the potential for conflicts persists. Even in the utopian case – if the state will fund the family entirely in the future – the area of maintaining power outside the family remains the driving force for a professional career.

Other issues, like power and social recognition, will be discussed later.

Finally, we can say that mobility, professional career and family development are closely related in terms of interdependence. A high willingness to be professionally mobile promotes one’s professional career. However, a high intensity occupational mobility prevents the family-orientation. Family ties reduce the willingness to be professionally mobile and, consequently, the chance to reach a higher level in the professional hierarchy.

13 Czwalina, J., Walker, A., Karriere ohne Sinn, Gräfelfing, 1998, p. 18.

14 Beck, U., Was ist Globalisierung?, Frankfurt, 1997, p. 97.

15 Schneider, N., Limmer, R., Ruckdeschel, K., Familie und Beruf in der mobilen Gesellschaft, Frankfurt, 2002, p. 205.

16 Thadden, E., Gesucht: Fachkraft mit Familiensinn, in: Die Zeit, 45, Dossier, 2008.

The Conflict of Objectives, its Characteristics, Consequences and Possible Escape Routes

The conflict of objectives between the professional advancement of an executive and their family orientation is distinguished by the high requirements of both sides. One side causes pressure to perform and the other side causes emotional pressure. All of the attributes that distinguish a great executive will make private living together more and more complicated. Often, the executive cannot escape from the requirements of both areas, hence they feel unable to cope with the double burden. The non-employed spouse usually knows nothing or too little about the partner’s professional burdens. The executive’s advancement comes along with the decline in family life. The more success he/she has in his profession, the more he uses his home as a “family hotel” that is managed by his partner.

The concentration on professional success renounces the development of one’s personality and causes a fear of abandonment. The executive’s fear of abandonment and his/her vulnerability is clearly higher than an employee without leadership responsibility. The further advances the executive makes at work, the more his quality of family life declines. In the family context, this not only means being deprived of love by the partner but also, sexual failure. Ernst Bornemann explains: “All investigations made by my colleagues and me have the same result: people who are primary focused on money, power and authority, fared badly in sexual life. Men, who can really satisfy a woman, have a type of character that totally differs from men who mainly aspire to professional success. In the higher, eventually also in the lower management levels, there are often fights to the finish. Consequently, men do the same even in bed. The switch between the particular professional requirements, like the daily pressure to always be the best during the daytime, and the ability to be capable of loving without any competition in the night-time is not always easy for men. This is a really big problem for people of the higher social class.“17

Young executives are increasingly trying to get out of the double burden of family life and professional success by making priorities. They either make family life the priority by giving up their next career step or they have a career without any happiness in their family life. To express this in a negative sense: some people accept the disruption of family, the separation and the divorce because they have professional success. Others accept professional stagnation, being sneered at and even unemployment, because they take responsibility for their family.18 If you access this escape-route over one’s whole career, you notice that some forward-looking executives try to escape from the area of conflict by concentrating on their career for one period of life and by tending to more family-orientation in the following period of life. In our investigated target audience (young executives with children of preschool or primary school age), this route of escape mainly exists as “the light at the end of the tunnel” and not as the current way of escaping. In our target audience, the area of tension increases from day to day (or, as Bornemann says, from day to night). Neither partner tries to bring one world in-line with the other. So, the distance between them grows. The wife, who is not in employment, begins to understand the vocational world of the husband less and less. The husband underestimates the duties of his wife and hardly understands her needs and preferences.

For many people, to focus on one side (job or family) means to fall out of the model of success of the other. As a result, both worlds break down. This breakdown is accelerated by the search for a compensation of losses on both sides. The man tries to compensate for the lack of affection, or becomes a “workaholic”. The female partner seeks refuge in other relationships and tries to seek affirmation in hobbies or by concentrating on the household and children. The consequences are foreseeable. Due to the increasing requirements of executives, managers’ fears and crises of identity will also increase. As such, the women become isolated and alone, become a single parent and divorce, unless they find their self-fulfilment in the world of work. In the best case, we find some superficial and non-binding relationships between two “social-partners”.19

Today, we call the consequences of the increasing requirements on executives the “burnout syndrome”. In 1996, the University Hospital in Geneva carried out a study with male heart-attack-patients aged between 32 and 45 years. They did not have congenital tendencies to heart attacks but suffered from tensions in their profession and private lives. The study shows that it is not only ambitious careerists in their mid-40s and mid-50s who are especially endangered to “burnout” in their work. None of them were capable of taking leisure and being calm and relaxed – they tried to escape into their professional hyperactivities.

According to Burisch20, we distinguish three types of “burnout”. The first type is a real burnout of the people that self-made their stress – “self-burning people”. Such people do not want to say “no” to their own restlessness. The second type is “wear-out-people”. These are victims of pressure from the outside and cannot say “no” to others. In the USA, there is also an ironic expression, known as the “rust-out”. This is a type of person who wants to be wretched without ever being burned out. Until this situation comes to a head, a process of escalation takes place. A burnout does not suddenly happen at once. There is often a longer chain of frustrating expectations, failed action plans and absent rewards in the executive’s profession and family.

Already during his career ascension, the executive realizes that his idyllic vision of a family as a haven of calmness and peace is far from the reality. As well as pressure at his workplace, the executive begins to feel under pressure by his family’s expectations of understanding and showing them affection, of collaborating and solving problems, which he no longer feels able to do. In a family, the working husband is called more and more into question. The respect that is given to a “hard-worker” decreases.

The partner who does not go to work tries to come to terms with the unsatisfied expectations in different ways, depending on their temper. Mentally independent, self-conscious and well-educated women make the best of this by enjoying prosperity and time for their children, as well as creating their own private relationships. It seems that only the modest and reserved women define themselves only by their men. In better cases, they suffer in silence. In the worst case, they search for the missing satisfaction by: having sexual relationships outside of their partnership, being on medication, abusing alcohol or abstruse searching for their “Higher Self”. The partner who is employed but does not want his career to be his whole life is tempted to enter the same escape-routes. Where mutual recognition is missing, the executives and their female partners search for solutions to fill their inner emptiness and to escape from their crises.

The young wives and mothers of our target audience are bred to be more self-confident, regardless of whether they go to work or not. Mostly, they are no longer ready to obey the subordinating role of men. The more that they are alert and educated, the less they accept men’s authority.

17 Bornemann, E., Die Zukunft der Liebe, Fischer Taschenbuch, 1997, p. 87.

18 Czwalina, J., Walker, A., Karriere ohne Sinn, Gräfelfing, 1998, p. 20.

19 Czwalina, J., Walker, A., p. 22.

20 Burisch, M., Das Burn-out-Syndrom, Heidelberg, 1994, p. 121.

Analysis of the Conflict

Causes and Motives

We have ascertained that if our expectations of ourselves or of others are not met, both family- and job-related conflicts arise. We have defined such expectations as the kind of goals that largely determine our behaviour. An accomplished goal leads to a feeling of success. Corell refers to this feeling as “fuel for our soul”. It makes humans become active beings. Their activities can also be mental ones.21 Therefore, a person always strives for success, i.e. for accomplishment of their goals. Frustration arises when expectations cannot be fulfilled because we have been expecting something in vain (frustra) or, at least, we expected more than we are able to accomplish within our professional and private environment.

Insight into good and bad in itself is not enough to be able to decide for the good; there must also be reasons for the good that you identify with. This leads to the ethical strength of the will, which expresses our perseverance and determination; if this leads to success, our motivations are strengthened. People‘s perseverance is a function of motivation and previous experience of success.

Werner Corell

“Psychology for Career and Family“, p. 48

In the view of today’s value systems, we are becoming more self-reliant due to the progressive emancipation from paternalism and the wish for self-realization. As such, the demands of our respective environments are increasing. Women have increasingly emancipated themselves from paternalism. Spouses are relieved from complete dependency on each other. Children are also relieved from regimentation by teachers and educators. This is because the authority of teachers and educators no longer derives from their official position or their responsibility for children. Employees in a company no longer feel bound to their superiors. An increasing number of employees expect a higher level of participation and co-management and personal acknowledgement in their job. Meanwhile, these employees are becoming more reluctant to act under orders and commands or do the work just to make a living from it.22 The communication process between young executives and their superiors, and young executives and their subordinate employees, causes an increasing level of frustration among young (mostly middle-level) executives. They cannot refuse to obey the orders that are given by their superiors and demand subordination from their employees at the same time. Consequently, existing hierarchies are starting to dissolve.

Due to a declining positive motivation for suffering in our increasingly secularized society, the human capacity for suffering is decreasing dramatically. As a result, individuals’ tolerance of frustration is diminishing to the same extent. Consequently, more and more often, we get into conflicts both at our work and professional life and in the family, as well as in the area of conflicts between these two fields (profession and family). As we do not want to accept these conflicts, we can no longer overcome them without difficulties.

Possible Causes of Conflict

In the conflict scenario presented here, there are several causes of conflict in one conflict situation, which can overlap, reinforce and also replace each other both in the starting point and in the duration. The literature points to numerous attempts at the classification of conflicts, which ultimately have not led to a convincing and final clarification of their relationships. For this reason, the reader should not expect this scientific work to define a system of causes of conflict that will satisfy all requirements.

We limit ourselves to concise definition of those causes of conflict that we consider relevant to the conflict of objectives between family and career orientation, and for the time being in alphabetical order without assessing the significance of the causes of conflict:

Conflicts of values23 occur when counterparts want to carry out the reconcilable action plans, because they assign a different value to the results and consequences of their action plans.

Distance conflicts24 indicate different distance requirements of the partners during the development of a relationship.

Development conflicts25 occur if different development speeds, directions and intensities in a relationship lead to different interests.

Leadership conflicts26 are defined as conflicts in leadership by formal or informal leadership and insider relationships.

Gender role conflict27 indicates the conflict between different rights, responsibilities and general behavioural norms of men and women in society.

Group conflicts28 according to Schwarz, these also include competitive and rival conflicts (in companies and in families), affiliation conflicts, leadership, maturation and replacement conflicts. According to Dessler, these also include line-and-staff conflicts.

Power conflicts29 – with asymmetric power distribution. Certain decisions can be enforced against the will of the subordinate, even if they are in the right. According to Dahrendorf30 power conflicts relate to inequality of status, i.e. the unequal distribution of legitimate power in social organisations (= companies and families).

Hierarchical conflicts31 – indicated as conflicts between persons in different hierarchical leadership levels, which can be traced to differences in information, objectives, values, standards and loyalty.

Identity conflicts32 occur in the function of individuality in a couple or group relationship (family). To what extent does an individual have to give up their identity to preserve the identity of the other party.

Conflicts of interest33 – arise if irreconcilable interests block targeted action and force painful or improper compromises.

Interpersonal conflicts34 – conflicts between different ambitions of two or more people.

Intrapersonal conflicts35 according to Deutsch36, also known as intrapsychic conflicts – are conflicts between different ambitions within the same person.

Communication conflicts37: misunderstandings occur if different bases or acts of communication prevent correct transfer or interpretation of information.

Competitive and rival conflicts38 occur in competition for status positions, if several people are seeking the same position.

Latent conflicts39 – unlike open conflicts, these indicate a conflict scenario in which the cause of the conflict is kept secret or is not known to the persons concerned. Conflicts are latent for as long as the persons concerned do not attempt to bring a conflict that is already known into the open.

Couple conflicts: Schwarz40 understands these to include a group of identity, distance, transaction and role conflicts described here.

Dessler41 considers conflict situations to be role conflicts if an individual or group is integrated into one or several groups that have different and irreconcilable objectives and values.

Substitution conflicts42 indicate a shift of the actual conflict to another superficial conflict cause. Solving a substitution conflict does increase the awareness of conflict of the persons concerned, but it is not sufficient to solve the underlying conflict.

Territorial conflicts43 restrictions to expansion or responsibility with regard to sphere of life or influence leads to conflict with the demands of someone else who is focused on their own sphere of life or influence.

Transaction conflicts, according to Schwarz44, indicate the asymmetric communication between persons, e.g. where children are treated as adults if they are „misused“ as referees in their parents‘ conflicts. Adults being treated as children also represents a transaction conflict.

Distribution conflicts in our thematic relationship are not conflicts resulting from the distribution of goods and financial resources. According to Rüttinger45, these indicate conflicts that result when counterparts consider the value of a result or area of responsibility to be equally high, but they cannot achieve this result or take on this area of responsibility at the same time because they cannot allocate themselves to both simultaneously.

Perception conflicts indicate that two people perceive an issue differently. One looks more to the opportunities and advantages of an issue from a positive, optimistic attitude, the other looks more to the risks and disadvantages from a negative, pessimistic attitude.

Conflicts of objectives: conflicts are considered irreconcilable if each objective requires the whole or a least the majority of the available time in order to achieve the objective. The basic conflict in the orientation between career and family is a conflict of objectives in this sense.

The 15,000 interviews with young executives conducted by the author and his partners in the period between 1981 and 2009 confirm the listed conflict types and causes in practice. Apart from the fundamental conflict of objectives, none of the causes of conflict occur in pure culture. These are always a distinct networking of numerous different causes. If you follow-up on the weighting of the causes of conflict over the investigated period of 28 years of social development, you come to the result presented in the following table.

The attempt to separate the causes of conflict into family and career seems to be theoretical at first glance, because the conflict is described here, occurs precisely in the interaction between family and career related behaviour and actions. However, the empirical investigations showed that increasing and/or decreasing „conflict gestation“ in the area of family and/or in the career have a direct influence on the area of tension between career and family. On the one hand, this is because the conflict capacity, i.e. the volume of personal conflicts that can be processed, is limited. A releasing of pressure in one of the areas of conflict allows increased conflict in another area. Conversely, increased stress in one conflict area generally causes a reduction in the ability to resolve conflicts in another area of conflict. On the other hand, the weighting of causes of conflict has been significantly displaced. With increased autonomy in time and income of your objectives, and parallel shifting values to greater individual self-determination, regardless of gender, development, identity, distribution and perception conflicts have led to a disproportionate increase in the resulting conflict group of couple conflicts.

Table 1: Weighting of causes of conflict during the period from 1981 to 2009 (+ increasing / - decreasing / o none or not conform to the system)

A systematic analysis of these conflicts and how they are dealt with requires looking into people’s motivations for actions and action control. We have asserted that humans are beings with motives and aspirations. We are permanently “dissatisfied”, as Corell46 says, and are constantly striving forward. We only manage to satisfy all of our needs either very late or never at all. As soon as you have accomplished a goal, a new goal already starts moving into the foreground and thus, keeps you active. However, constant activity makes people rather easy to lead and amenable. In this case, we should appeal to the particular motive that is of the utmost urgency for the person that we want to lead and persuade.

To further explore people’s motivations for the actions behind their conflicts, we will examine the possible sources of their motivations. The motives that apply to all people who are living within a comparable culture and civilization are referred to as basic motives, as they basically exist as a matter of principle. They do not need to be of the same intensity and can vary and alternate. Inside the psychological historical frame, we can determine two fundamental concepts. The first one is the motivational-psychological monism. This assumes that there should be a sole basic motive that all other effective motives derive from. The second one is the motivational-psychological pluralism. This says that there should be multiple motives that drive and control us alternately or at the same time.47

The main proponent of classical monism is Sigmund Freud.48 According to his structural model, action control is affected by the subliminal (by “ID”), conscious free will of decision (by “EGO”) or social standards (by “SUPER-EGO”). In numerous case studies, he demonstrated that all of his patients’ motivations are still mostly libidinous and sexual nature. Freud and many of his pupils traced people’s actions back to their libidinous basic motives, from which their mental efforts can also be derived through sublimation. We have largely overcome the sexual taboos that were once assumed by Freud. In today’s society, these are replaced by new taboos preventing us from saying and doing what we want. Such a new taboo is the expansion of an individual’s power at the expense of others. Alfred Adler49 has pointed out that our striving for power and prestige is the basic motive that drives our actions. He allocated a compensatory function to this striving: the more disesteemed one feels, the stronger one’s quest for recognition and superiority over others is, even though one may exceed the limits of “political correctness”. According to Adler, excessive ambitions and exaggerated striving for professional success can be seen as a compensation for once being defeated and a desire to restore the individual psychological balance.

According to the doctrine of the psychological pluralism of motivation, humans are not only influenced by motives. We also have several mutually affected tendencies and incentives. Maslow50 assumes several motives, which only take effect if the basic needs of life are satisfied first. According to today’s prevailing opinion of the motivational psychologists, it seems to be more plausible to assume several motivations instead of variations of a sole motive. Contrary to Maslow, Corell51 ascertains that the motivation of self-preservation obviously does not need to always be satisfied first before other psychological motivations get a chance. In Corell’s opinion, the conception of “self-preservation first” is refuted by the fact that humans are capable of committing suicide. If self-preservation were the absolutely highest and most important motive, a human would not be able to kill himself. So, we have to assume that various pluralistic conceptualized motivations equally or simultaneously take effect on us. One day one of these motivations comes to the fore, another day, another of them. Without starting a theoretical discussion about how many motivations actually exist, we will follow the five “basic motivations”, which Corell showed in his multi-dimensional motivations-model. This is because these motivations can be clearly defined and validated both in the professional and private environment.

The Five Basic Motivations by Corell

Social recognition

The first of the five basic motivations is the individual‘s quest for social recognition within one or more groups. This is a quest for prestige and superiority, for status and validity – similar to how Adler designated it with his concept of striving for validity. If someone follows this motivation over everything else, then their behaviour will be particularly ambitious and industrious as they aim to imitate the respective „Alpha person“, who is regarded as the leader of the group. A person who seeks social recognition has not yet achieved this to the extent that they planned. They are the upwardly mobile one with an urge to move further up the corporate hierarchy. They are especially common in our target group of younger executives. But a person motivated by recognition directs their efforts towards every group that they belong to – not just in their professional environment, but also their family / private environment. They will be concerned with casting themselves in the best light in any given group, and gaining recognition therein. As for the defeats that they have to deal with as part of their urge for acceptance in a group, they usually try to conceal them vis-à-vis other groups, so as not to lose recognition amongst them. We are familiar of cases of people concealing the loss of their job vis-à-vis their family, or at least their circle of friends, for longer periods of time, or who have concealed the breakup of their marriage vis-à-vis colleagues and superiors. In a society in which State benefits and voluntary ones (in a business setting) are linked to family status (e.g. child support, corporate accommodation etc.) and professional success is marked by status symbols (e.g. company cars, computers, mobile phones), concealment of defeats to the end of social recognition tends to be only short-term. On the other side, it must be noted that people who are predominantly motivated by recognition are expected to perform and to be bound to their respective group, which will exemplify to them the desired form of behaviour as a means for gaining prestige. People motivated in this way adopt the expected form of behaviour relatively uncritically and quickly. The share of younger executives who are motivated by recognition is significantly higher compared to the total population, and is increasing further.

Certainty and protection

In contrast to extroverted people who are motivated by recognition, the security-motivated person strives for unobtrusiveness, health and economy. They avoid non-transparent risks, unplanned efforts and even blame, and they are opposed to changes – they are mostly even fearful of them. When dealing with such people, one should offer things that are proven, and avoid new things. Both in professional life and in family life, one can motivate this kind of „skeptics“ to adopt a specific kind of behaviour only with patience and in small steps, and that’s only if it’s possible to make it clear to them that there are no incalculable risks associated with it. The increased need for security in Germany’s business companies is reflected by increased fear of job loss, illness or loss of one’s partner. The skeptics are still a minority in our target group of younger executives, but the need for security will grow in this social group as well in the coming generation, and will ever more frequently clash with the need for social recognition.

Trust

This basic need refers to one’s fundamental human striving for other people that they want to rely on, and from whom they can expect trusting affection. Those motivated by these motivations strive neither for social recognition nor for security, but for closeness to other people to whom they can be a trusted caregiver. If one partner in a marriage is motivated primarily by this, it will be easy for the other partner to lead a harmonious marriage, as the former partner totally adjusts to the other, going along with their ideas by making them their own. Such people are referred to as „wake partners“ or „slipstream partners“ in literature (usually perjoratively) – they clearly want nothing for themselves, instead always preferring to be altruistic for others. If two partners with such a basic motivation get married, there will be the risk of them trying to create a „perfect world“, convincing themselves that their other partner is all they need and separating themselves from their social environment (both professional and private). American literature describes this scenario as „cocooning“ of pairs, often together with their children. Given that both partners in a relationship often don’t develop at the same speed and in the same direction, and one often has more contacts outside of the cocoon than the other, such islands of harmony don’t usually last long. Generally speaking, the trust motivation scenario is decreasing in the population of Germany. However, an increase in selfish lifestyles leads to decreasing fidelity of executives to a company and to increasing instability of partner relationships within a family.

Self esteem