The Dark Side of Devotion

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness.”

Ever heard of vocational awe? Librarian Fobazi Ettarh coined it. Here’s the overview:

People in service professions – teachers, nurses, hospice workers – usually feel a profound calling to their work. A deep sense of duty; some may even call it destiny. 

The danger with something so pure is that it can lead people to accept insufficient pay and unfair working conditions. Bosses have been known to weaponize that sense of duty to exploit their team and extract more for less. 

Through this lens, meaning-making in the workplace, when bosses lead it, can be a veiled ploy to create more vocational awe, more psychological leverage over good people who care.

In this frame, vocational awe is a vulnerability in the system, a tool for domination, and a way for people in power to gain more of it. 

But it’s important to draw a distinction here: There’s vocational awe. Then there’s the abuse of vocational awe.

They are as different as love and love-bombing, mentoring someone and manipulating them, communicating strategically and being propagandistic. 

One is a good thing. The other is a corruption of the good thing. 

So why does this corruption happen and how can we stop it? 

The problem begins when employers treat their team’s devotion as a resource they’re entitled to consume rather than a responsibility they’re obligated to honor.

It’s easy to see why this happens when you think about it from the employer’s perspective. Say you’re a leader who’s been given a year to raise the stock price, or you’re out. Which team would you rather have? A team of checked-out, feet-dragging clock-watchers, or a bunch of hell-yeah crazies who see themselves as crucial members of a winning team on an important mission? Which team is more likely to get the ball in the basket?

Soon motivation turns into manipulation. And pep talks turn into propaganda. 

Next thing you know, you have a team devoted to the mission, but so burnt out from lack of sleep and social life that they can barely keep their eyes open long enough to respond to your email. 

Funny how they end up looking eerily similar to the people who spend 9 to 5 in jobs they hate.

In trying to extract more from their devotion, you’ve managed to extract it right out of them.

What a disappointing tragedy. You had something most leaders would kill for: people who genuinely gave a damn. And you treated it like diamonds to be mined and sold to the highest bidder instead of treasure worth protecting. 

If you’re a leader lucky enough to have people who believe deeply in what they’re doing, your job isn’t to squeeze every last drop out of that belief. It’s to build an organization worthy of it.