Familicide: The Ultimate Top Suck-Up

There are two approaches to how we handle our responsibilities as Tops whether in the family, the classroom, the team, the organization or the nation. In Approach A, our job is to be responsible for the system.  In Approach B, our job is to create a system that is responsible for itself. In Approach A, we suck up all responsibility to ourselves and away from other system members. In Approach B, we work at creating responsibility throughout the system including ourselves. Approach B encompasses A; Approach A does not encompass B.In these times of economic stress, there is an uptick in cases of familicide in which a father (usually) kills his wife and children and then himself. It is impossible to envision the depth of despair that leads to such action. In a fundamental sense, familicide is the ultimate in Approach A - Top Suck-up. The Top has taken on responsibility for the system (I have failed; I am ashamed), and, even more poignantly, he has taken on responsibility for the future of all family members; it is crystal clear to him that he is responsible for their futures. He has failed and he has no faith in their capacity to live through crisis, survive, and go on. Sometimes it takes the ultimate to shed light on the everyday. We regularly enter the Top world whether as new parents, new managers, or seasoned executives, and the powerful appeal of Approach A is always present with the unnecessary burden it places on us as we gradually disable other system members.

Crushed in the Middle

David B. Kellerman, top financial officer of Freddie Mac, hanged himself. This was a good man, committed, decent, hard-working. Maybe too decent, too good, too hard-working, too committed. He succumbed to the most intense middle crunch. He began working non-stop round the clock, sometimes pausing only to change clothes. He was caught between the competing pressures and priorities of regulators, investors, internal executives, lawmakers. Whatever action he took or planned to take might please some constituencies while sure to infuriate others. He told friends that it was impossible to appease everyone. Tragically, if that is the goal of a decent, humble man he is destined to fail.It is possible that there was no way to succeed in that crucible. Leaving was one option - suicide another form of leaving - was another. There is a familiar pattern that develops when one is in this middle crunch, and I don't presume to know if this was David Kellerman story, but I believe it is worth considering. The story goes something like this: When we are in the middle condition, trying to deal with conflicting needs, pressures, and priorities, the tendency is for us to slide in between others' issues and conflicts and make them our own. We become responsible for resolving their issues, and they hold us responsible for resolving their issues. We feel like we're a failure if we don't succeed, and they consider us a failure. It is easy for us in that middle condition to lose our independence of thought and action. All that matters is what other people want/demand. And our focus is on attempting to please them. The challenge in the middle place is first to understand that these are their issues, not ours. And further to understand that our job is not to please others but to do what we believe the system needs. We can take in all the inputs from others, all the time understanding that these are their issues, but ultimately it is our independent judgment that must prevail. Being in the middle is always a difficult condition to be in, and the more intense and conflictful the issues are the more difficult the condition. And the nicer we are and the more desirous we are of pleasing others, the more excruciating the condition and the more likely are we headed for failure.

When it comes to systemic knowledge, we enter the jungle of politics like naked babes. No one should ever enter organizational life without a deep understanding of middleness, how it can weaken us and diminish our contributions, and what it takes for us to withstand the pressure and do what we believe needs to be done.