In this edited extract from Never Not Working, Malissa Clark looks at the effects of workaholism on others – at home and at work.
At Home
Sometimes, the most powerful examples of the negative effects of workaholism come from workaholics’ loved ones. In my research lab, we have interviewed more than 50 spouses of workaholics to gain an understanding of how workaholism affects families. Comparing these responses to the responses we received from the workaholics themselves makes it clear that workaholics underestimate the detrimental effects of their workaholism on their loved ones.
Chris realised the deep impact his workaholism had on his family by watching his son’s approach to work. His son, now in his twenties, has told him that he intends to take a completely different attitude toward work because he has seen Chris working all the time. “I’m not going to be like you,” he told Chris. He was going to enjoy his weekends and travel, using work to pay for his lifestyle, but that it would not be his life. Chris’s workaholism also took a toll on his marriage. Once, he left a seven-day vacation with his wife after day two to attend a conference.
Another spouse of a workaholic said something similar: “I know he’s never having an affair. He’s always at work [laugh]. I don’t know. I feel like if anything, we mostly fight about me wanting him to spend more time with us.” Interestingly, she then went on to try to rationalise what she clearly saw as troublesome behaviour: “So, I guess if we have to fight about something, it’s not a bad thing to be our main fight. You’re busy – you don’t get into trouble in that sense.” This is common as people try to support the person by looking for ways to explain the behaviour away or make it more palatable.
Here are a few snippets of what the loved ones of workaholics said when asked about how it affected their marriages and families. I’ve left them mostly unedited so you can sense the kind of frustration and grasping for answers they seem to be going through:
“It has definitely affected our romantic relationship. Because you get angry. You’re angry, so if you’re angry, you don’t want to be with someone intimately. Like it’s a catch-22, you do and you don’t. You’re so pissed off because they’re not here and the work has consumed them so much, but then when you are together, it creates arguments because he’s bringing up work still, so there is no silence. There is no silence for there to be any real intimacy or relationship because it’s created so many other issues.”
“I feel like the kids are being cheated out of their father. And I’m ultimately being cheated out of my husband.”
“[His workaholism] leaves me alone with our two children most of the time. I’m the one who is in charge of all the emotional workload, and all the workload, and it’s stressful and at times overwhelming.”
“I have cancelled two appointments to file for divorce. And we are heading to an intensive couples therapy in a few weeks as a last-ditch attempt to save this.”
“We have a 5-year-old and almost 1-year-old … They’re used to a life without their dad. My kids don’t really have a relationship with their dad. I hate to say that, but he’s not really been around pretty much for years … Like, they’ll talk to him like you would talk to anybody else on the street. They don’t have parent-child conversations.”
“She doesn’t see the kids a lot. My son is 5, and he recently said, “All dads do everything for all families,” which made me realise that he definitely notices that she’s not around.”
“He leaves on a Monday around 4am and comes back on Friday. Sometimes, the kids won’t even notice he was gone for five days. It’s hard to describe, but it’s almost like he is invisible to them now. They simply just don’t depend on him a lot. They will walk past him to ask me for things.”
“It’s so sad. You know, they’ll even say to me, ‘Gosh, Mom, it’s like we only have one parent.’ It hurts your soul. They’re so used to him being gone that when he does come to their game or school event, they’re shocked. They think something’s wrong.”
Notice in these quotes how workaholism doesn’t just affect the amount of time spent with family and loved ones, but it also affects the quality of interactions even when the workaholic is present, because they are still working in their heads. This also frequently results in others feeling sad or lonely.
At Work
The negative impact of workaholic behaviour also affects others around the workaholic in the workplace. In chapter 1, I discussed the research findings showing that workaholism did not result in increased productivity or performance; in fact, it can leave workers more burnt out and less engaged because they are not taking the time to recover from the time and energy they devote to their work. Adding to that, workaholism can also affect the performance of those who rely on or work with the workaholic. As desperate as some of the family members’ pleas above feel, these are people who ostensibly love or want to love the person who can’t detach themselves from work. Colleagues are less invested in the person but in some ways just as reliant on them. So when workaholism starts to affect relationships at work, it can be frustrating or even toxic to a team.
There are ways to spot typical indicators of potentially toxic workaholic behaviour in your organisation. Some of these behaviours could be signs of a burgeoning problem.
Never good enough
Perfectionist tendencies lead workaholics to spend too much time on tasks, which in turn affects others’ ability to do their jobs. Say Jamal needs to write part of a presentation for a team briefing. He spends three full workdays getting his five slides just right, preventing others from working on their portions of the presentation. What’s more, when he sees what others have done, he wants to redo their parts to match up with his in a way he finds acceptable. This is no problem for Jamal, who will constantly think about ways to make the presentation better and work extra hours to do it. But it hampers his teammates’ efforts and it’s overkill for the context. The presentation could have been good enough with a third of the work put in.
Just like workaholics tend to be perfectionistic when it comes to their own job performance, they also tend to hold others to these same standards. Thus, in the workaholic’s eyes, nothing is ever good enough. If that workaholic is a supervisor, this can lead to them holding up their employees to unrealistic standards.
Poor delegation
There’s a common perception among workaholics that they are the only ones who can adequately handle a problem or task, since they hold others’ work up to their unreasonably obsessive standards. As a result, they try to manage all responsibilities themselves. This also makes them feel good because it fills all their available time with work. Delegating does the exact opposite: it frees up their time, which is undesirable to them.
While this lack of delegation may feel good for the workaholic leader, it ends up backfiring and hurting the team. If a leader fails to delegate, this creates dependency instead of empowerment.
Good leaders provide their employees with opportunities for empowerment, where they can develop and showcase their skills and abilities.
Catastrophising
Because a workaholic often operates in fight-or-flight mode, their body is constantly in a state of crisis. Think about a time when you were really stressed out about something, and how it affected your demeanour. Maybe you found yourself overly critical of your spouse or children; maybe you were shorter with your colleagues or reacted in a more negative way than you should have to what in retrospect was a relatively benign comment. When we are in crisis mode, we tend to impose our crisis on those around us, particularly when we work with or lead others.
*****
Workaholism, it can be said, negatively affects work performance. Let me reiterate that workaholics are not the most productive workers (even though many of them will tell you they are). Time spent at work, or thinking about work, or being busy – these are poor indicators of quality of performance.
But ironically, although workaholism is not related to good performance, I have found in my research that it is related to managerial status.
For all of what we’ve just gone over – the bad health outcomes, the damaging effect on families, the difficulty working with colleagues – companies still reward workaholics with promotions because of what they seem to be. Organisations, just like people, misconstrue busyness as productivity. They reward the “first one in, last one out” despite the fact that we know those metrics mean little to good results.
They celebrate the always-working mindset even as it drives workers into sickness and depression.
Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture is Bad for Business – and How to Fix It, by Malissa Clark (Harvard Business Review Press, RRP $72 hb).
