For those of you who watched any of the Olympics, you might have seen Snoop Dogg swimming with Michael Phelps (“Will someone please get me some oxygen!”), or holding the Olympic Torch, or trying to throw a javelin. Snoop Dogg, you see, was the NBC Goodwill Ambassador to the Games. What fun he seemed to be having! What fun to watch Snoop in his authentic merriment.
He said, “I had fun just being Snoop Dogg. That’s what I know how to do best. I got paid [$499,000 per day] for being me.”
Hmmmm. That caused me to wonder how many of us only seek out jobs that pay us for being who we are, for being treated with kindness and respect, and jobs that help us enrich our creativity.
Thankfully there were decades when teaching my own inventions (Buying Facilitation®, Facilitative Questions™, the HOW of change) that I earned money for being me, times I lived anxiety-free, filled with the joy of sharing all that I am, being highly creative, and being respected for my input and ideas. In fact, the more I represented the real ‘me’, the more money I made.
But in much of my earlier life I got paid for being someone others needed me to be, or what was expected of me; times I gave up my values to earn money because I needed to feed a family. Whenever I did so I felt dirty and disrespected myself. I certainly wasn’t being creative, or the inventor of brain-change models that I morphed into when being my best self.
MY CLIENT CURED ME
My breakthrough came when I agreed to train groups in Sydney and Paris for a large sum of money. Didn’t take me long to realize how demanding and disrespectful my client Jim was. Often I would get off the phone and scream from anger and hurt. Afraid to rock the boat too much, I managed to occasionally say “You know, Jim, sometimes when you say things like that it hurts me.” Sorry, he’d say. And do it again the next week. I hated us both.
It came to a head on a conference call with one of his vendors, something I did not want to do because these folks used a mainstream sales model and would resent being asked to change. “Please,” he said. “As a favor to me. I want them to learn Buying Facilitation® with the rest of us so we’re all using the same tools.”
I went into the call with the best intentions. It didn’t take long before they realized I was offering something different from what they were doing and became mean and confrontational. I kept making light of it, telling them I heard them, and yes, it was different. But this only upped their disrespect. Jim watched as they attacked me and said nothing. Personally, I would never have continued a call like this, but I stayed on because it was a high-income job, and I’d promised. And I kept expecting him to intervene.
Eventually I began crying. Jim said nothing, then said he had to go, leaving me on Zoom with these abusers. Shortly after he left the call I told them I felt disrespected and had to get off. I immediately emailed Jim to call me, telling him I was hurt and angry. “You’ll get over it,” he replied. He never called.
And then I knew: my well-being, my self-respect, my values and identity, were worth more than the big bucks he was paying me. I quit the job with him, and never again worked for anyone who disrespected me. I didn’t get a new client for a while, but I used that time to write a new book – something that gave me joy, that I wouldn’t have had time to do while working for Jim; something I wouldn’t have had the clarity to create while not being my best self.
WHAT IS OUR BOTTOM LINE?
The question for us all is how long we put something else – money, ego, social status – above our own self-respect. When I did work for KPMG years ago, the partners would often work through the night. When colleagues came in the next morning they’d say: “You must have worked all night. You’re wearing the same clothes.” And the groggy guy would proudly say, “Yup!” It was a status thing. They all did it. And almost every one of them was on their second marriage at least, half of them on their third.
I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve trained who secretly share how unhappy they are in their jobs. I did a survey for a large pharmaceutical company recently to find out why they had high numbers of resignations. I interviewed 30 middle managers; many of whom cried during the interview:
“I used to bring them well-conceived and presented ideas and innovative solutions to fix some of the problems. I was given 5 minutes and a Thank You! I did this 3 times before I realized they did nothing with my ideas. I stopped caring. I now come in exactly on time instead of early like I used to, and leave exactly on time, not stay late when I should. If they weren’t paying me so much more than the rest of the industry pays, I would have left long ago. I’m miserable, and certainly not giving them my best self because they don’t want it. I’m happy to say I’m getting good results while job hunting now. I won’t earn as much money, but I’ll have my self-respect.”
I wrote this up in my report to them and offered my own personal viewpoints on steps they could take to address this. Last I heard, they had done nothing with the ideas in the report. The employees continue to quit.
Certainly sometimes it’s imperative to work in bad situations, like those nasty jobs I took while working my way through college, or when I needed money and worked two low-paying jobs to feed my young family.
But I deeply believe, when possible, we must take jobs that maintain our self-respect or we lose the only thing we have: ourselves. (Frankly, I find it appalling that employers don’t respect their employees, don’t cherish their ideas or maintain safe learning environments.)
So Snoop Dogg is my hero. He gets paid for being who he is. May we all do the same.
_________________________________
Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.