The birthday
Something happened on my 40th birthday in June 1998 that highlighted my two completely different types of friends and if I had been more self-aware, it would have signalled problems I might have a couple of years later at work. It was an issue of interpersonal boundaries being too strong or too weak.
Outside work, over a few years I had developed a set of friends most of whom were actors, musicians and other creative people. This started when I took a personal development course called The Mastery of Self-Expression, often called just ‘The Mastery’. The course was originally created in 1976 by an American actor named Dan Fauci who was looking for ways for actors to be more authentic on stage or screen. Originally the participants were all professional actors, but after it had been running at The Actors’ Institute in New York for a few years, other people started to take part for their own personal development. In the 1980s the course was brought over to London, Toronto and other cities around the world. There is more about the history of this amazing course here.
When I did the course in 1993, the Actors’ Institute in London had its own permanent office, with a small art gallery, a café and rooms for holding classes on acting, singing and the performing arts. It was a lovely space, except for the annoying lift that was always breaking down.
For me the course was an exciting revelation. It showed me many things about my own personality and desires that had not been clear to me before, including that I didn't have to be frightened of my own anger any more. Anger is an emotion that is full of energy and can be useful. You just need to be careful how you express it.
It also gave me, over the course of a long weekend, a new set of creative friends with whom I had shared the experience. I started to socialise with them and, for example, found myself at the Pitcher and Piano pub in central London, sharing a table with the cool and talented singer in the pub, who had been on the course. Another time I was invited to a party by two of the other musicians from the course, a male rock-god guitarist with long blonde hair and a guy who was a multi-instrumentalist member of the South African music scene in London. There was a lot of fabulous improvised music that evening. There was even a group of three women who I spent a lot of time with – just as friends though – let’s not get carried away!
I followed The Mastery with some courses on acting and improv and gradually expanded my little community of fun people to be around.
In 1998 I was by now feeling a little more comfortable with some of the junior colleagues at work. But I still found it difficult to be natural around the more senior people and didn’t know what to talk about even with the juniors. Should I be bringing more of myself to work somehow?
June arrived and I decided to have a proper birthday, as it was going to be my 40th, and to invite eight to ten people from work and the same number from my life outside work. I was concerned that they might not get on with each other. I need not have worried. Everyone I had invited from work turned up. Some were a little late, but they did all drop in. But my group of cool, creative friends didn’t turn up at all. Not one of them.
What was I to make of this? At work I was playing a role and had such strong boundaries that I didn’t get to know people well. Away from work I did the opposite and in my desire for meaningful connection, my boundaries were very unclear and the commitment of those people to the relationships I had with them was very light. I had easy, fun conversations with them that felt deep at the time, but how many would have come to my aid if I had needed support?
Relationships at work and away from work are different, but if we are striving for integrity (in the sense of being whole and complete) in both settings, getting a healthy balance between boundaries, which help us not to be absorbed into other charismatic people, and some emotional intimacy, in which we can share empathy and warmth, is essential I think to good mental health.
My birthday showed, in hindsight, that I wasn’t getting it right with either set of relationships. At work, playing a role and pretending to be someone else is exhausting. Conversely, having feeble boundaries with our friends and acquaintances risks co-dependency and all sorts of destructive psychological games springing up, of which we might not be aware. I don't have the answer, I'm afraid. But how do we get this balance right?
Does any of this strike a chord with you? I would be interested to know whether you think about your boundaries with your friends and colleagues. How much of yourself do you bring to work each day?
Next week I’m going back to the stories about projects at Roland Berger and the time I had to go all the way to Heathrow airport for a cloak-and-dagger secret meeting.