It made me mad. When I was a kid, why didn't my dad wear his cardigan sweater around the house during the evenings, sharing wisdom in a reflective way? He wore a flannel shirt and he occasionally yelled. Ward never did. My mother didn't wear earrings and look wonderful when my father came home with a briefcase in his hands. Why did the Beav get the perfect family, while the rest of us were dealt reality?

Studies vary in how dysfunction is defined, and estimates range from 25 percent to 95 percent of families being dysfunctional. It seems we are all at least a bit dysfunctional, because we are groups of human beings who naturally come with frailties and shadow-side behaviors.

If you think families are challenged, consider the exponential effect of bringing together hundreds of people under the same roof with all their individual shadow sides and wounded child backgrounds with the associated behaviors. Then add the tension of asking them to do more with less, faster with fewer, and better than ever. Poof! We have the business environment.

However, we continue to want to work with the Cleavers. We want rational, healthy people who appreciate us and support us in who we are.

Instead, we end up with a neurotic boss, a paranoid office mate, and a codependent secretary. It doesn't help to move to another company, because unless things are really unusual where we are, chances are it is as bad someplace else.

If we can't run, then all we can do is look at ourselves. We need to look at what we can do to create a more sane atmosphere. It feels like herding cats: We want everybody going in the same direction, and when we get one or two, the rest of the cats are off doing their own thing. One thing is for sure: We can't change other people's behaviors. We can only change the way we approach them and hope they choose to change their own behaviors.
So, what can we do at whatever level we are at, to make the workplace enjoyable and sane?

Know and Admit Your Own Warts

I had an interview with an individual more than 15 years ago who had been referred to me and later recruited me. In the interview he said, "Listen, I've got warts. So do you. Within a month of working together, we will fully know what each other's weaknesses and warts are. Why don't you share yours and I'll share mine and that way we can avoid having surprises?" It was a brilliant approach that created a wonderful rapport and realness to the interview.

I have used what I learned from him in hundreds of interviews I've conducted. In all that time, I hired only one person who told me she didn't have warts. She was also the only person I ever fired. Although having frailties is unpleasant, not owning them and not working on them is disastrous.

Embrace Your Shadow

Carl Jung's work on shadow-side behavior is one of the most powerful psychological principles I've discovered. What is shadow behavior? When we get repeatedly angry about a certain behavior in another person, it usually tells us more about what we don't like about ourselves. For instance, if I get angry about others not being competent, it means that I really hate the incompetent parts of myself. Jung's work, combined with the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory can lead us to understand what our typical shadow sides are.

Once we better understand what our shadows are, we can confront them. We can laugh at ourselves when we go into our shadow behavior, as opposed to wearing anger and continuing to wrap more tightly into it. It allows us to move on more quickly. If you don't know what your shadow is, ask a family member.

Set Boundaries and Confront Directly

If you feel a welling up in the chest from anger, sadness, or hurt, your natural response will be to vent it on somebody other than the person who caused that hurt. Some people spend years in the breakroom complaining about a coworker, but they never confront the person directly. We need to let people know what our boundaries are and, in a face-to-face, nonthreatening way, tell them what they did and how it made us feel. Being indirect and gossiping is immature and hurtful.

"Leave it to Beaver" to live in utopia. For the rest of us, we simply need to refine our skills of dealing with natural workplace dysfunction. Bringing our own dysfunctions to the table openly and confronting others in a nonjudgmental way will at least get us invited to the Cleaver's for lunch.