Case Study Working & Coping in a Workplace Bear Pit

I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate during my career to have been on the receiving end of some of the best and some of the most implicitly dysfunction management cultures ones ever likely to encounter. Because of that it's my considered opinion that workplace bear pits burn people out and switch highly capable people off which in reality is morally indefensible and hence clearly not in any smart businesses medium or long term business interests.

As a young man with perhaps an incongruently defined view of who I was and what I was able to do in any given professional situation. I like many who have gone before me, allowed myself though financial pressures, career progression pressures, career sustainability pressures and general circumstantial pressures to be forced into participating in business cultures that I neither agreed with nor that resonated with my own personal and professional value judgements. Today however I’m in a much more fortunate position in that; I’m implicitly self assured about my own personal and professional capabilities and am therefore more than comfortable expressing with clarity and/or the necessary degree of authority, just what I’m prepared to accept and what I’m not prepared to accept in any given business or social situations.

However let me be very clear here; when I refer to a bear pit mentality I do not want anyone to confuse that with strong assertive management where deadlines are set, where standards must be met, but the individual is always respected. Because that’s not a bear pit mentality in anyway shape or form its simply a strong, coherent, structured, accountable yet supportive management style and the complete opposite to the bear pit psyche which is simply a business model based around control via cruel abuse.

Nevertheless if we are incredibly unlucky we could find ourselves working within a bear pit mentality, where creativity and openness are stifled at all cost simply because the culture generated within a bear pit mentality is merely one of the vindictive, disruptive and self protectionist intent where the reassignment of blame is a paramount preoccupation at all possible costs. But why you may ask do such situations arise? Well in answer they are nothing more than a derivative of fundamentally flawed personal and business psychologies. You see; it’s not overtly confrontational to suggest that it is the people and not a businesses management cultures that define who, what and how a business conducts business. Simply because in many instances it is often a single individual or group of mind sets that define, engender and drive a management culture within any given business dynamic. Yet in the majority of instances one often discovers where the bear bit mentality exists that this strategic management intent is a derivative of personal prejudices and weaknesses and not from a place of sound business intellect.

You see; bear pits do not generate a state of connective business resonance, because at best they fuel only short term personal or business goals. However bear pits do switch off the very best of our people within our business and therein become the preserve of only the most deviant of any businesses people. Therefore if anyone finds themselves working in a workplace bear pit mentality and finds that they have limited opportunity to correct the same, my only advise is to explore that position from a personal well being perspective and if it doesn’t resonate with your own personal ethics then its important that you make some career directional changes. With 30+ years experience behind me now I’m able to quickly gauge when participating in initial discussions with representation from my clients, just how they and their various leads conduct business within any given business process or function, including whether or not they revel in any puerile bear pit mentalities. An initial evaluation process that derives from a personal dislike of the bear pit mentality and those who would choose to conduct business that way. Thereafter I will always apply my own anti bear pit psychology techniques to individual bear pit mentalities but only where I feel my efforts will add value to my own personal and professional undertakings.

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