When I Was Chief Engineer

There are have been several occasions over the working years that I have been supervisor or manager of the Facilities Department. It is always, potentially misleading to generalize from personal experience, due to subjective bias, but here goes:

Whenever I assume a leadership role in a business or government agency, as union steward, union president, Chief Engineer or Maintenance Supervisor, my greatest opposition came not from those working for me--there was plenty of that, but it was being resolved--but from union bosses and managers above me. Sometimes, they plotted together to be rid of me.

Let me intermit no more about this wild speculating from personal experience (My life experience compels me to reflect, detect patterns and then generalize about the human condition.): when a great soul like I am is thrust into a position of moderate authority in some workplace hierarchy, my mask of docile, placid ordinariness slips and it is hard for a strong personality like myself not to reveal himself in the pursuit of work completion, taking care of the facility, pleasing customers and supervising subordinate staff.

My timid, broken, authoritarian, conformist, sold-out managers are yes-people nonindividuators. When they view me doing an excellent job with all my enthusiasm, energy, loudness and fanaticism unleashed, it disturbs them to their core. They get together and say: "We hired a nut job. He is out of control and must be stopped at all costs. We will wreck the organization, drive it into the ground, and go bankrupt before we continue to leave in  place this scary, liberated individuator that is getting it done. He must be brought under control. We are mad, alarmed, shocked, jealous and afraid.

We are the leaders of the group, and we will fire him and hire a buttoned-down, lazy, obedient, lifeless Building Engineer with a positive attitude and who is a team player. We will get our bonuses. We will tank the corporation, but in its state of mediocrity, all will belong to one clique of nonindivuators up and down the hierarchies. We will enforce the power of powerless and nonperformace in this workplace; we will suppress the presence of the power of empowerment and living powerfully and over-achievement consistent with allowing, encouraging and rewarding valued individuators in our midst. We will never hire or liberate  individuators, releasing them to be the change agents driving the firm forward. We will weed them out. We will enforce peace and quiet here. May all the still employeed drift back to blissful, painless sleep. Shuffle along.