Ambition & The Company You Keep

In this difficult labor market for knowledge workers the secret is out: To get somewhere, actually anywhere, you have to establish, nurture and grow your networks. 

Sure, high intelligence, likability and hard work can catapult you into a good job or even the title of principal or partner. But to have juice you will have to leverage and keep leveraging your contacts. Pete or Sally not only has you attend a key conference. They introduce you all around. You return home with new business and those to call when you need them.

The former head of Jones Day's Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania office Mickey Pohl and the long-term chair of Paul, Weiss Brad Karp are known to be well-connected. Pohl's beloved signature is the ready quip. Karp's is "calm and charm."  Both sure do get around.

But, of course, there's a but. 

The three-season series on streaming platform Tubi "The Following" unleashes the peril which can overtake you from the company you keep. Former FBI agent Ryan Hardy is called back to duty. It's to hunt cult leader and serial killer Joe Carroll. 

Carroll, a master at sizing up humans, sees in Hardy parts of himself. The game is to make Hardy aware of his own darkness. How that gets done is seducing Hardy into more and more encounters with him, right up to just before his execution. Spoiler Alert. Of course, Hardy mutates into a killer. Like Carroll it's with a supposedly noble cause.

Instead of continuing to castigate Larry Summers for his association with Jeffrey Epstein, it might be more useful for society to probe how that kind of close relationship can accelerate a moral, social and spiritual downward trajectory. Not that Summers seemed to be a Mister Rogers prior to making contact. But a seminal issue is: What happened, if anything, after bonding with Epstein? 

At the end of the 1990s researchers in Italy uncovered the science behind what our mothers, the Roman Catholic Church and high school guidance counselors warned us: Steer clear of "bad companions." 

Mirror neurons, it was uncovered, are the mechanisms through which we affect each other, cell by cell. That extends beyond humans to other mammals such as monkeys. Yes, monkey see, monkey do. The current buzz phrase for that is: toxic relationships. The old-line one was: The Devil made me do it. 

Think about it. Did those high-paid executives and sports leaders who lost it all through inappropriate relationships network with others who did that? So, they assumed they also had the right to indulge and to assume they could get away with it? 

And how about the ethos cultivated in Ivy academic institutions by those privileged to get in? Do they, including Harvard Business School unemployed alum, recognize it's currently a turnoff to more and more employers? 

In my intuitive coaching/tarot readings I encourage networkers to monitor the influence their contacts may be having on them. Some of that might be moving the needle toward more success. And some of it could open to the doors to career collapse, loss of health, prison and suicide. We are the company we keep.

Thrown off your game, maybe the first time since you started working? You made all the right moves and then the world moved in another direction.

Intuitive Coaching. Special expertise with transitions, reskilling and aging. Psychic/tarot readings, upon request. Complimentary consultation with Jane Genova (Text 203-468-8579, janegenova374@gmail.com). Yes, test out the chemistry. Zero risk.