Summary: What if the stress you feel at work isn’t really about work at all? Most leadership advice focuses on strategy, productivity, and communication skills. Yet beneath every email thread, every tense meeting, and every performance review lives something older…habits learned long before you ever had a job. Home and work are more alike than we care to admit. The office is simply the family wearing business casual.
Dear Dr. Sylvia,
You are so right. My boss is just like my mother. Demanding and dramatic.
I have never been able to talk with my mother, and now, this guy is her in a business suit.
Should I quit and find a better place with a kinder person at the helm?
Just for your information. This is the second time I have had my mother as my boss. Last workplace, I handed in my resignation. If I do that here, what are the odds another job will continue to recreate this unhappy mess?
Signed, Miserable
If Work Feels Emotional, Here’s Why
Dear Miserable,
You hit the nail on the head! This is why so many employees, like you, are miserable at work.
Think about it…
Bosses are the new parents: figures of authority who approve, correct, and sometimes disappoint.
Co-workers are modern-day siblings: allies one minute, rivals the next.
Salaries feel like grown-up allowances: proof that we’ve been “good enough.”
Performance improvement plans resemble time-outs: sit here, reflect on what you did, and come back better.
Furthermore, once you see these parallels, the workplace stops looking like a spreadsheet and starts looking like a living family system.
Why the Office Feels So Personal
Have you ever overreacted to a simple comment from your manager? Or felt oddly jealous when a colleague got praised? Those reactions aren’t coming from the quarterly goals—they’re echoes from the kitchen tables of our childhoods.
Family is where we first learned:
- How to handle conflict
- Whether it was safe to speak up
- How to win approval
- What failure meant
We bring those lessons to work like invisible lunchboxes. The problem is, most of them are out of date.
A leader may intend to give constructive feedback, yet an employee hears, “You’re not good enough,” because that’s what criticism meant at home. A co-worker may simply be direct, yet we experience them as the bossy older sibling who always got their way.
No wonder organizations feel emotional. They are.
The Hidden Family Roles We Reenact at Work
In families, everyone plays a part. At work, the cast list looks strangely familiar.
The Super-Achiever – the child who earned love through grades becomes the adult who can’t stop overworking.
The Pleaser – once rewarded for being agreeable, now avoids necessary conflict.
The Rebel – still fighting authority figures disguised as corporate policies.
The Rescuer – the colleague who does everyone else’s job and wonders why they’re exhausted.
These patterns (the top 13 are in my book) helped us survive as we grew up. But in the workplace, they can limit careers, damage teams, and keep leaders stuck.
When a company rolls out a performance improvement plan, it’s meant to be developmental. Yet many employees experience it exactly like a childhood time-out—shameful, isolating, proof they are “bad.” The nervous system doesn’t know the difference between a disappointed parent and a disappointed manager.
Leadership Is Family Therapy with Better Coffee
Great leaders eventually discover they aren’t just running projects—they’re running emotional ecosystems.
Teams thrive when leaders understand:
- Authority triggers childhood memories.
A calm, confident boss can still feel like the critical parent of old. - Competition mirrors sibling rivalry.
Two high performers may fight not over resources, but over belonging. - Recognition replaces allowance.
Paychecks matter, but respect and appreciation matter more. - Feedback must feel safe.
Otherwise, the brain hears danger instead of development.
When leaders grasp these truths, culture shifts from blame to curiosity. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with them?” we ask, “What pattern is showing up?”
Rewriting the Old Script
You can’t fire your inner family. However, you can update its operating system.
1. Notice Your Triggers
Before reacting to a boss or colleague, ask:
Who does this person remind me of?
The answer is often more historical than professional.
2. Translate Workplace Moments
Feedback = information, not judgment
Deadlines = structure, not punishment
Authority = role, not worth
3. Create New Adult Choices
The child had limited options. The adult has many.
- Speak rather than stew
- Collaborate rather than compete
- Set boundaries rather than please
4. Leaders, Design “Safe Stress”
Stretch people without shaming them. Challenge without humiliating. A performance plan should feel like coaching, not a time-out chair in corporate form.
The Organization as a Second Family
Companies spend millions on strategy and technology while ignoring the emotional blueprint employees bring through the door each morning.
Yet when leaders address the family-to-work connection, remarkable things happen:
- Conflict becomes conversation
- Engagement replaces fear
- Creativity returns
- Turnover drops
- Trust grows faster than any KPI
The office will never be purely rational because humans aren’t. We are walking biographies with job titles.
A New Kind of Leadership
Imagine a workplace where:
- Bosses lead, like smart and wise, mentors instead of unpredictable parents
- Co-workers collaborate instead of competing for “favorite child” status
- Salaries reflect value without defining worth
- Improvement plans feel like growth plans, not grown-up time-outs
That organization doesn’t require more spreadsheets. It requires more awareness.
Your career is not separate from your childhood—it’s the next chapter of it. When we understand that truth, work becomes more than a place to earn a living. It becomes a place to complete old stories rather than repeat them.
And that, my friend, is where real leadership begins.
To your success,
Sylvia Lafair
PS. Want a signed hardcover copy of Don’t Bring It To Work? Only pay for shipping. Send an email to sylvia@ceoptions.com.
