group rules, walking off, suffering, and your career

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Group Rules, Walking Off, Suffering, And Your Career

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When I Was Growing Up I Lived A Few Doors Down From A Very Observant Catholic Family They had strong opinions about what is right and what is wrong. There was a son around my age, who I liked to play with now and then, but his parents eventually banned me from fraternizing with him. The reason was that, after being warned by his parents a few times not to do so, I forgot and shouted “Jesus Christ!” during some play episode. The first time I had done this, I had received a very stern lecture about using Jesus’ name in vain. The next time I was sent home and my mother was spoken to. The final time this happened, I was banned.

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I Always Puzzled Over This Episode When I Was Growing Up A part of me found this somewhat humorous, even at a young age; at the same time I felt hurt and even fascinated as to why my neighbors had judged my conduct as so outrageous and wrong. As I have grown older, I have watched with the fascination of a sociologist visiting a far away land, many similar incidents involving different groups of people. For example, my wife has many friends who are Persian, and generally speaking, under the moral code of this group of people, a woman is still expected to be a virgin when she gets married. If the woman gets a reputation for not being a virgin, her own people may shun her, and she may have a difficult, if not impossible time finding a husband in the Persian community.

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Every group has a series of expectations that its members are expected to meet. Different societies around the world have different expectations for their members, which are usually based on a concept of what is right or wrong, what is moral or immoral and so forth. Group members who do not adhere to these ethics are considered personae non gratae, and are shunned by the group.

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My Neighbors Who Had Strong Opinions About The Use Of Jesus’ Name, Were Protecting Their Group If every Catholic out there went around using Jesus’ name in an inappropriate way, this behavior would project a message of a lack of respect for Jesus, which would undermine the group and its defined belief system. Similarly, if all Persian women were very promiscuous, then historically this would be viewed as undermining the solidarity of the family, and the cultural preference for families to come together to form alliances in marriage. I am not agreeing or disagreeing with any of these examples in one way or another. I am just illustrating how various common principles and rules can provide cohesion and solidarity within a group.

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If Every Person In A Given Group Were To Start Violating These Various Principles And Rules, The Group Would Disintegrate This is why various groups have maintained, and have often strictly enforced their own respective codes amongst their members. For example, for many generations, the worst thing that a Jewish person could do in the eyes of his or her family would be to marry a non-Jew. Jews have survived for over 4,000 years largely due to a very strict social code relating to marrying outside of the Jewish faith.

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Countries Are Bound By Certain Constitutions And Rules Of Behavior For example, the right to bear arms, the right to free speech and other principles are part of the American order. These rules define what America is, so naturally our courts and politicians uphold and enforce them quite seriously. If we did not have these rules and did not enforce them through law, the identity of the United States would be drastically different.

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Group rules also exist within companies and organizations. An example of a group rule is one that my company, BCG Attorney Search, has had in place for quite some time. We always require our recruiters to draft long and in-depth cover letters about the candidates they are representing. This serves many functions: It ensures that the recruiters educate themselves in great depth about their candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. It invests the recruiters in their candidates. It gives the law firms very good information with which to evaluate the candidates. We then require our recruiters to send out the letters that they write by mail, email and fax to the law firms that seem to be a good fit for their candidates. The most important thing about all of this is that we ensure that the law firm receives the information.

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At BCG Attorney Search, These Procedures Are Important In That They Define Our Recruiters And Our Strategy As A Group Our recruiters provide a high level of service, and it is a company code to always provide this level of service to each candidate we are servicing. This is how we do business. Nevertheless, one of the persistent problems we have had is that there are recruiters from time to time who will attempt to write very short cover letters (or no cover letters at all), and will simply email out résumés with no introduction. This violates our moral code. The company will always discover and eventually come down on recruiters who do this, but nonetheless this is something the company always has to look out for.

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When the company discovers someone is not following procedure, a manager usually speaks to the person. At this point, the person will most often attempt to justify why he or she is not following procedures. The person may say the procedure is unnecessary. The person may say there is a problem with the database, and that they actually are doing the procedure properly. The person may say the procedure prevents him from getting a candidate’s résumé to law firms before other recruiters. Thus, writing the detailed cover letter is disadvantageous. Or the recruiter may begin to discredit the messenger, and start attacking the manager or me behind his/her or my back–or even publicly. This is a very common thing for people to do once they have been caught violating the rules of the group. When someone does something wrong, which is against the interest of the group, there usually follows an effort to minimize the importance of the person who creates and/or enforces the rules of the group. Companies and organizations are continually under this sort of pressure.

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The Catholic Church Is Against Abortion And Homosexuality This is part of a moral code that the Church perceives as important to the survival of the group: The Church wants its members to have more children, who will also be Catholic. These new Catholics will give money to Catholic groups and charities, and will further the survival of the group. From the standpoint of self-preservation, it is no surprise that Catholics are against abortion. However, we have seen how this stance against abortion plays out. Those religious leaders who are against abortion are subject to brutal attacks from outside of their group.

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All Sorts Of People- Mostly Other Catholics, Attack The Church For Its Beliefs Priests are singled out and discredited as being homosexuals and pedophiles. This is made to appear to be the rule rather than the exception. Other efforts are made to discredit the church. While it seems that there are plenty of priests out there who are indeed pedophiles, I would bet that the incidence of this is not much different from that of the general population. Priests are people too, and are therefore likely to suffer from similar predilections. However, in an attempt to lessen the guilt people may have for violating the rules of the group (via homosexuality, abortions and so forth), they attack the priests and the religious establishment. I.E., if all Catholic priests are homosexuals who sexually violate young boys, then how bad can getting an abortion be?

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As Unfortunate As It Is, I Have Had To Fire Numerous People In The Past For Violating Company Policy Many of these rules relate to doing work a certain way and at a certain level of quality. The people who have violated these rules generally try to justify their behavior or to retaliate by criticizing me on blogs, to other employees and so forth. If we lessen the authority of the person or group whose rules we have violated this will often make us feel justified for what we have done.

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One Of My Favorite Things To Do Is Watch True-Life Police And Detective Shows Such As Forensic Files What is so interesting about all of these detective stories is that the people who commit the crimes are always caught and they are usually caught for stupid reasons. Many of the stories are about murders. Whenever I watch these stories I am continually amazed that most criminals, even the most intelligent ones, make so many mistakes. It is almost as if every criminal wants, on some level, to be caught. The criminal shoots someone and then fails to get rid of the gun. The criminal kills someone and leaves the body where it is likely to be found. It is as if the criminal sets himself up to be caught, and to call attention to his noncompliance with acceptable social norms.

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Whenever You See Someone Leave A Group Or Job Without Notice… Or a relationship without notice, it is likely that the person has done something wrong to the employer, the group, or the other person. It is as if the person is protecting the other person or the group from his or her negative actions. Several times in the past I have had employees who I treated very well, suddenly walk off the job for seemingly no reason. Later I would often learn that the person was working for a competitor on the side while employed by us, or had stolen from the company, or worse.

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There Is A Story I Once Heard About A Man Who Stole A Great Deal From A King The man was brought to the castle and he expected that he would be executed; instead, the man was given a job working for the king. At the end of the year, the man was called before the king and was told that he was doing a good job. He was then promoted. For many years the same process repeated itself. Each year that the man was promoted he felt worse, knowing he had stolen from the king. As he gained more respect and authority, the man eventually became the king’s chief advisor. He could no longer take the guilt, and he told the king: “This is not fair. I have stolen from you, and do not deserve everything you have given me.”

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The king looked at the man and said: “Yes you do deserve this. Every day you have suffered as I have treated you better and better. Had I executed you, your suffering would have been momentary. Had I imprisoned you, you would have adapted and learned not to suffer. Therefore this was the harshest punishment I could have given you.” The idea of this story is that when we violate what a group, or relationship stands for, we suffer and this suffering makes us want to leave. We are not worthy.

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In your career and life you need to follow the rules of your group. If you do not want to follow the rules of the group, then you can choose not be part of the group. Most of the anger that you experience in your life is most likely due to you violating the rules of various groups that you have associated with. Choose groups and jobs with rules that you can follow. You will suffer less, and will cause others the least amount of harm when you accept the rules of the group.