Watch workaholics when they’re off the job, and a big truth plays out before your eyes: Keeping ever available is a mixed blessing.

For those addicted to their jobs, devices such as the BlackBerry transcend mere tool status. They’re prime enablers.

Not that there aren’t endless ways for workaholics to sneak out of real life and into their jobs. Bryan Robinson, a retired University of North Carolina psychology professor and author, said he used to step away from family beach outings to jot down notes for his research – on addiction.

In time, he realized that he, too, was an addict – a work junkie. So he did what you might expect: He became one of the world’s authorities on the unnatural and unhealthful attraction to work.

He calls it “the best-dressed addiction.” And in this age of ever-present electronic connectivity, it’s easy to become hooked.

Robinson’s latest book, “Chained to the Desk,” available Nov. 5 in paperback from New York University Press, makes the point emphatically. “We have such easy links between job and home,” he said, that career can easily overpower family life.

Social scientists like Robinson and Richard Boyatzis, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University and also an academic researcher and popular author, think the world should better understand workaholism.

It’s a pathology. It hurts those afflicted, as well as their families, friends and colleagues. And it does no service to the organizations they work for, whether government, corporation or Parent Teacher Association.

Politicians and corporate executives boastfully call themselves workaholics to suggest devotion to constituents and shareholders. But Robinson says his internationally acclaimed addiction studies led him to quite a different sense of this “obsessive focus on work,” as he calls it.

It has dark consequences. Another author and student of workaholism, Diane Fassell, links work obsession to sleep disorders, heart attacks and strokes.

A California nonprofit, Workaholics Anonymous, modeled after the organization aimed at alcohol addiction, has its own 12-step process for coping, relying heavily on “a higher power,” its Web site (www.workaholics-anonymous.org) indicates.

Organizations don’t benefit from workaholics. Boyatzis, who explored the topic for his 2005 book, “Resident Leadership,” studied how the chronic stress of many managers pushes them into a spiraling syndrome of long hours, frantic effort and increasing incompetence.

“They feel uneasy and don’t know what’s going on around them,” he said. They work harder and, hence, alienate their family, friends and social contacts. They “slide into dissonance.”

A consequence, Boyatzis found, is a neurological breakdown that keeps them from learning, from observing well, from performing the jobs that addict them.

“The cycle fools a lot of people,” he said. “They become like gamblers; they do it even though they know they’re losing.”

In short, there’s a growing awareness that workaholism is a disease infecting highly motivated people. It deserves treatment, not applause.

But wait. Can we really consider a commitment to hard work a disease?

“It’s much more complicated than that,” Robinson said in a phone conversation from his office in Asheville, N.C. “Workaholism is certainly more a pathology than a benefit to people.”

Commitment to work can still be a virtue – and a benefit – if it stands in balance with the rest of one’s life. It is the obsessive commitment to work that can yield grave results for not only the afflicted, but also others:

Workaholics’ business addiction can be a health destroyer. It may generate stress, unhealthy eating habits, weariness from lack of sleep and too much nervous time in the office. Healthful exercise is out of the question.

Undue attention to career often interferes with the family lives of the afflicted. Spouses and children may suffer neglect, even emotional abuse.

Ironic though it may seem, workaholics often don’t do all that well at their jobs, even though they sacrifice personal lives to its demands. “They expect too much from others, interfere with their duties and worry themselves to distraction,” Robinson said.

Still, the notion that workaholism is admirable “permeates our culture,” he said. When he began his studies of uncommonly fierce involvement in jobs and careers, “no one had really looked at it from the standpoint that it might be a detriment. Most thought it was a good thing.”

What he found was that workaholics are victims, as are addicts to alcohol, drugs, gambling.

“It creates problems with productivity, including absenteeism and low morale among fellow workers. Workaholics have trouble delegating. They look over people’s shoulders. They suffer burnout.”

There’s hope for those hooked on work, including managers who lose touch with the world around them.

Dealing with work addiction certainly isn’t easy, though, according to Boyatzis, who often teaches business courses in Case’s department of organizational behavior.

In his research, Boyatzis has found that seven or eight out of 10 people in management may not be adding value to their organizations. Many of those exhibit symptoms of workaholism that detach them from families and healthy social lives.

These managers think that “they just need to work harder, and they can get more done.” But it’s not true. “You need a coach,” Boyatzis said. “It can be a friend, a colleague, a spouse. Probably best a therapist” who can convincingly identify the spiraling nature of stress and workaholism and bring the sufferer back to reality.

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WHAT TO WATCH FOR

These 12 symptoms are prominent signs of workaholism:

Rarely delegating or asking for help.

Showing impatience at others’ work.

Often doing two, three or more tasks at the same time.

Committing to work; biting off more than one can chew.

Feeling guilty, lost when not at work.

Focusing on results, not the task.

Focusing on planning, ignoring the here and now.

Continuing to work after others quit.

Imposing pressure-filled deadlines.

Seldom relaxing.

Attending more to work than to relationships.

Lacking hobbies, social interests.

– Drawn from “Chained to the Desk,” by Bryan E. Robinson

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THE SEVEN QUALITIES OF OPTIMAL PERFORMERS

In his most recent book, “Chained to the Desk,” psychologist Bryan Robinson lists these features of “optimal performers in the workplace.” They add up to seven qualities of those who do not manifest workaholism but have a healthy sense of the role of work in their lives:

Good collaborators and delegators.

Socially involved.

Enjoy the process as well as the outcome of work.

Motivated by their own needs and creative contributions.

Look beyond the goal toward a more whole picture.

Take creative risks beyond usual bounds.

Self-correct and learn from mistakes.

PH END BENTAYOU

(Frank Bentayou is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. He can be contacted at fbentayou(at)plaind.com.)

2007-10-23-WORKAHOLICS

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