Featured
View Count: 2927
When I was growing up, I lived a few doors down from a very observant Catholic family that had strong opinions about what is right and what is wrong. There was a son around my age whom I liked to play with now and then, but his parents eventually banned me from fraternizing with him. The reason was that, after being warned by his parents a few times not to do so, I forgot and shouted “Jesus Christ!” during some game. The first time I had done this, I had received a very stern lecture about using Jesus’ name in vain. The next time I was sent home and my mother was spoken to. The final time this happened I was banned.
I always puzzled over this episode when I was growing up. A part of me found it somewhat humorous, even at a young age; at the same time I felt hurt and even fascinated as to why my neighbors had judged my conduct as so outrageous and wrong. As I have grown older, I have watched, with the fascination of a sociologist visiting a far away land, many similar incidents involving different groups of people.
For example, my wife has many friends who are Persian, and generally speaking, under the moral code of this group of people, a woman is still expected to be a virgin when she gets married. If the woman gets a reputation for not being a virgin, her own people may shun her, and she may have a difficult, if not impossible time finding a husband in the Persian community.
Every group has a series of ideals that its members are expected to meet. Different societies around the world have different expectations for their members, which are usually based on a concept of what is right or wrong, what is moral or immoral, and so forth. Group members who do not adhere to these ethics are considered personae non gratae and are shunned by the group.
What are these various ethics and rules? In most cases they consist of numerous verbal, nonverbal, and written agreements that bond the group and help to ensure its survival over time. Whenever a group of people gets together, its constituents create a series of agreements that establish which behaviors shall be deemed acceptable and which shall be deemed unacceptable. If people within the group do not follow these rules and instead choose to violate them, then the group cannot be cohesive and strong; therefore it may not survive.
My neighbors, who had strong opinions about the use of Jesus’ name, were protecting their group. If every Catholic out there went around using Jesus’ name in an inappropriate way, this behavior would project a message of a lack of respect for Jesus, which would undermine the group and its defined belief system. Similarly, if all Persian women were very promiscuous, then historically this would be viewed as undermining the solidarity of the family, and the cultural preference for families to come together to form alliances in marriage. I am not agreeing or disagreeing with these examples. I am just illustrating how various principles and rules can provide cohesion and solidarity within a group.
If every person in a given group were to start violating these various principles and rules, the group would inevitably disintegrate. This is why various groups have maintained and have often strictly enforced their own respective codes amongst their members. For example, for many generations the worst thing that a Jewish person could do in the eyes of his or her family would be to marry a non-Jew. Jews have survived for more than 4,000 years largely due to a very strict social code relating to marrying outside of the Jewish faith.
Countries are also bound by certain constitutions and rules of behavior. For example, the right to bear arms, the right to free speech, and other principles are part of the American order. These rules define what the United States is, so naturally our courts and politicians uphold and enforce them quite seriously. If we did not have these rules and did not enforce them through law, the identity of the United States would be drastically different.
The way people alienate themselves from their group is by violating the rules and expectations of the group. It is as simple as that. Many times these actions are very visible, such as someone marrying outside of their faith; other times they are less visible, such as a woman being secretly promiscuous, even though this behavior is harshly viewed by members of her faith or group. In most Western marriages today, it is widely accepted as a social contract that being married means that the husband and wife will not be intimately involved with others during their marriage. This is a social and moralistic sort of contract that exists. This code can be violated publicly, or it can be violated secretly; the point is that when adultery is committed, one or both members of the married couple have violated a rule that exists mainly to keep the marriage intact.
Group rules also exist within companies and organizations. An example of a group rule is one that my company, BCG Attorney Search, has had in place for quite some time. We require our recruiters to draft long and in-depth cover letters about the candidates they are representing. This serves many functions:
We then require our recruiters to send out the letters that they write by mail, e-mail, and fax to each law firm that seems to be a good fit for their candidates. The most important thing about all of this is that we ensure that the law firm receives the information. Different firms often have different procedures. Some will only respond to e-mails, as opposed to letters or faxes. At other firms, e-mails may be deleted. Of course, we always make sure to send a letter, because law firms tend to give mailed articles special consideration.
At BCG Attorney Search, these procedures are important in that they define our recruiters and our strategy as a group. Our recruiters provide a high level of service, and it is a company code to always provide this level of service to each candidate we are serving. This is how we do business. Nevertheless, one of the persistent problems we have had is that there are recruiters from time to time who will attempt to write very short cover letters (or no cover letters at all), and will simply e-mail résumés with no introduction. This violates our moral code. The company will always discover and eventually come down on recruiters who do this; it is something the company always has to look out for.
When the company discovers someone is not following procedure, a manager usually speaks to the person. At this point, the person will most often attempt to justify why he or she is not following procedures.
Or the recruiter may begin to discredit the messenger, and start attacking the manager or me behind our backs–or even publicly. This is a very common thing for people to do once they have been caught violating the rules of the group. When someone does something wrong, which is against the interest of the group, there usually follows an effort to minimize the importance of the person who creates and/or enforces the rules of the group. Companies and organizations are continually under this sort of pressure.
When you hear scathing and brutal criticism against a person or a group, generally this criticism has come about for deeper reasons that lie within the critic. The criticism is usually conceived once a person has violated a code–a contract that exists between the person and another person or an organization. The complaints are used as an attempt to justify the person’s own behavior.
The Catholic Church is against abortion and also homosexuality. This is part of a moral code that the church perceives as important to the survival of the group: The church wants its members to have more children, who will also be Catholic. These new Catholics will give money to Catholic groups and charities and will further the survival of the group. From the standpoint of self-preservation, it is no surprise that Catholics are against abortion. However, we have seen how this stance against abortion plays out. Those religious leaders who are against abortion are subject to brutal attacks from outside of their group.
All sorts of people–mostly other Catholics–attack the church for its beliefs. Priests are singled out and discredited as being homosexuals and pedophiles. This is made to appear to be the rule rather than the exception. Other efforts are made to discredit the church. While it seems that there are plenty of priests out there who are indeed pedophiles, I would bet that the incidence of this is not much different from that of the general population. Priests are people too, and are therefore likely to suffer from similar predilections. However, in an attempt to lessen the guilt people may have for violating the rules of the group (via homosexuality, abortions, and so forth), they attack the priests and the religious establishment: i.e., if all Catholic priests are homosexuals who sexually violate young boys, then how bad can getting an abortion be?
One of the interesting aspects of the story of Jesus’ execution is that Jesus had been very critical of merchants and others selling things inside the temple area because he believed this area should be a place of worship, not commerce. One wonders if the extremely critical nature of the rabbis and others toward Jesus was motivated out of their anger at his reaction to them profiting off of trade at the temple. To justify their actions perhaps they felt the need to discredit Jesus, and this discrediting ultimately led to his being crucified.
As unfortunate as it is, I have had to fire numerous people in the past for violating company policy. Many of these rules relate to doing work a certain way and at a certain level of quality. The people who have violated these rules generally try to justify their behavior or to retaliate by criticizing me on blogs, to other employees, and so forth. If we lessen the authority of the person or group whose rules we have violated, this will often make us feel justified for what we have done.
One of the most interesting things that I have seen is when people suddenly leave a job or a relationship. People will often sabotage or leave a group or relationship when they have done something wrong, something that is contrary to the moral code that exists between two individuals, or a group and an individual. The classic walking out on a relationship often occurs when one person in the relationship cheats on the other. I have seen this pattern repeat itself in relationships time and time again. A person cheats on his or her significant other and, after doing so, simply breaks off the relationship, citing explanations such as these:
All of these explanations are never the real reason. The person is being broken up with and generally invalidated because the partner violated the moral code of fidelity that had existed between the two people. Instead of walking out, the cheating party may choose to create problems and all sorts of conflicts in order to force the other person to walk out on the relationship. This is how these moral laws often play out in our lives. If we have violated a group norm, we either (1) break it off with the group, or (2) criticize the group or person so much that they break off the relationship with us.
One of my favorite things to do is watch true-life police and detective shows such as Forensic Files or Power Privilege and Justice. What is so interesting about these detective stories is that the people who commit the crimes are always caught and they are usually caught for stupid reasons. Many of the stories are about murders. Whenever I watch these stories, I am amazed that most criminals, even the most intelligent ones, make so many mistakes. It is almost as if every criminal wants, on some level, to be caught. The criminal shoots someone and then fails to get rid of the gun. The criminal kills someone and leaves the body where it is likely to be found. It is as if these criminals set themselves up to be caught, and to call attention to their noncompliance with acceptable social norms.
Whenever you see someone leave a group, job, or relationship without notice, it is likely that the person has done something wrong to the employer, the group, or the other person. It is as if the person is protecting the other individual or group from his or her negative actions. Several times in the past I have had employees whom I had treated very well, suddenly walk off the job for seemingly no reason. Later I would learn that the person was working for a competitor on the side while employed by us, or had stolen from the company, or worse.
There is a story I once heard about a man who stole a great deal from a king. The man was brought to the castle and he expected to be executed; instead, the man was given a job working for the king. At the end of the year, the man was called before the king and was told that he was doing a good job. He was then promoted. For many years the same process repeated itself. Each year that the man was promoted he felt worse, knowing he had stolen from the king.
As he gained more respect and authority, the man eventually became the king’s chief advisor. He could no longer take the guilt, and he told the king: “This is not fair. I have stolen from you, and do not deserve everything you have given me.”
The king looked at the man and said: “Yes, you do deserve this. Every day you have suffered as I have treated you better and better. Had I executed you, your suffering would have been momentary. Had I imprisoned you, you would have adapted and learned not to suffer. Therefore this was the harshest punishment I could have given you.”
The idea of this story is that when we violate what a group or relationship stands for, we suffer and this suffering makes us want to leave. We are not worthy.
In your career and life you need to follow the rules of your group. If you do not want to follow the rules of the group, then you can choose not be part of the group. Most of the anger that you experience in your life is most likely due to your violating the rules of various groups that you have associated with. Choose groups and jobs with rules that you can follow. You will suffer less and will cause others the least amount of harm when you accept the rules of the group.
THE LESSON
Groups formulate rules because they bond the members, and ensure the group’s survival over time. The groups establish agreements as to acceptable and unacceptable behavior; this also holds true for companies and organizations. Most of the anger and frustration in your life stems from violating the rules of the various groups of which you are a part, so you must choose groups with rules that you can follow. When you join a group with whose rules you agree and are compatible, you will suffer less and cause less harm to others.
About Harrison Barnes
Harrison Barnes is the Founder of BCG Attorney Search and a successful legal recruiter himself. Harrison is extremely committed to and passionate about the profession of legal placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned in a search and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has placed the leaders of the nation’s top law firms, and countless associates who have gone on to lead the nation’s top law firms. There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placements attract millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and retention efforts. His company LawCrossing has been ranked on the Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison Barnes’ bio.
About BCG Attorney Search
BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive that gets results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities that its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com.
Filed Under : Featured, Getting Ahead, Life Lessons
Tagged: career advice, career advice | a harrison barnes, group rules, how to find a job, job market, job seeker, legal recruiter, new job opportunities, persian community, rules of the group, walking off
Job Market
recent posts
In this article Harrison discusses the role of self-motivation and self management. Self-motivated and self managed people always perform well. In contrast people who are forced to follow massive amounts of procedures and rules can never perform. It is important that our rituals and sense of responsibility is internal, and something we learn to do naturally–not something we only do when it is imposed on us by people on the outside. The best people in every job are self- managed and responsible individuals. Also, the more self-managed people there are working for an organization, the stronger the organization generally is. Instead of creating problems in the workplace, you should seek out responsibilities, and ritualize your work routine. These responsibilities will drive you forward in your daily work, in your career, and in your life.
Your must always strive to create value for your organization, and your organization must in turn strive to add value to the world. Since value comes from teams of individuals rather than any single person, the best companies strive to maximize their staffs’ efficiency. You must also ensure that your company weeds out the employees who do not create value in favor of those who do, and that you belong to the latter group.
When you try to mask or suppress aspects of your personality, those traits will inevitably come to the fore anyway. You need to develop a comprehensive understanding of yourself, including your darker or deeply buried traits; once you know how your dark side limits and controls you, the better you will do in your life and career. Self-discovery will ultimately lead to inner peace, which in turn will enable you to more fully develop your goals.
The number one thing that makes people fail and not reach their potential is competition. If get into an area where there is not much competition and you genuinely have something to offer, you will succeed. Everyone is successful to the extent they are doing something others around them are not that provides value.
Creating a sense of urgency is one of the most important things you can do in your job search. Understand that your career is itself a commodity and you need to sell yourself, and your salesmanship will determine your career success. Creating a sense of urgency will always help you close your sale.
Companies necessarily seek to employ positive, forward-minded people. A firm’s success depends on their employees, and they seek people who will enhance them rather than merely contribute to the bottom line. People with positive natures, who contribute to a healthy social environment, prove essential to the growth and success of their employers.
You can never become too comfortable if you wish to be successful. Your success will largely depend on your ability to become dissatisfied with your current position. Successful people are never satisfied with the status quo, and constantly push beyond their comfort zone. When do you this and succeed, you set a new standard for normality in your life. Be continually dissatisfied, and always pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone.
Resourcefulness can make you better at everything you do, and separates the truly extraordinary people from the general herd. Do everything within your power to be resourceful in your job search, life, and career to give yourself the best possible chance of achieving your goals, and learn how to employ the resources currently at your disposal for maximum impact.
Adopting a positive attitude will always bring you closer to success, as nobody wants to be associated with a losing side. Everyone wants to associate with and hire winners, and avoids losers. Nothing is more important than maintaining a positive attitude, as many employers hire people based primarily on attitude; with the right attitude, everything else will fall into place. You must look like you are on the winning team, even if times are tough; nobody wants to hire a loser.
You can change your life forever by harnessing the power of persistence. Think about the people in your life, and whether they empower you or hinder you in achieving your goals. You must win at all costs, and persist until you succeed.
You will greatly benefit your career by helping and promoting your company’s expansion. A common belief is that expansion is fundamentally positive, and a lack of expansion is fundamentally negative. You must be on the side of expansion rather than contraction in every area of your life. All employers seek people who will help them expand, and the more your ability to contribute to this expansion will provide you increased job security and a greater likelihood of being hired.
Focus on what you are doing, not what others around you are doing. There are people to take action towards their goals, and then there people who sit on the sidelines and comment on the first group of people. People who are mostly interested in gossip and watching others usually lack the confidence and determination to take action themselves. The most successful people go account and accomplish things rather than sit back and watch others make things happen.
Anyone can be up when things are going well, but the real challenge comes when things are not. Do not look at problems, which are inevitable for any person or business, in a negative light; think of them instead as challenges, lessons, or opportunities. There is a silver lining to be found in every problem, and finding that silver lining will enable you to grow.
It is absolutely vital to be in control of your life and career. When you fail to control your life, someone else will step in to do so and fit your life into their plans. Understand that it is in others’ interests to establish control over your life and work, and instead exert control yourself over your life and the events around you.
In this article Harrison explains how you can do better in your career by selling. The most successful people are absolute masters at sales. Selling is among the most important career skills you can have. When you know how to sell something you can do exceptionally well wherever you go. Knowing how to sell something is a key to survival, advancement, fame, and fortune. Everything we do is about making a sale. Selling yourself is about showing others the value you can bring them. So package yourself to the best of your ability, always be at your best and sell yourself. Develop your sales skills and do not be afraid to sell anything. Whatever your goal in life, becoming an effective salesman will help you achieve it.
Your résumé is an extremely important document. There are entire books written about how to craft them. I have written at least one myself. There are scores of résumé consultants, companies, and others that will work on your résumé for a fee. Hiring one of these services can be useful and can improve your résumé. Nevertheless, most résumés can improve dramatically by following the below advice.
It is extremely important that you enjoy your job. Most people find themselves in jobs that they resent, and eventually make this resentment known by appearing disinterested and distracted. Success comes from being engaged in and grateful for your work. You can define your job according to your own vision; you can either choose to engage with your work, or avoid and despise what you do. People recognize and appreciate those who are enthusiastic about their work.
Do not be a dabbler, or someone who turns away in the face of stress; the secret to long-term happiness is to instead confront and push through these stress factors. Do not be discouraged by difficulties, but find ways to persist and deal with the stress. Confronting problems head-on is the key to improvement, and will take you much further than the dabblers who fail to approach their careers with commitment.
When faced with difficult times, you must develop the ability to transcend the trouble around you instead of giving up or assuming that nothing can be done about your situation. Keep your wits about you and take charge of the situation, and you will find yourself on track for constant improvement and career success.
In this article Harrison talks about releasing the lack that you feel, in order to reach your full potential. If a sense of lack dominates your thinking, it will affect your interaction with the world and how the world sees you. There are many areas of your life where you are coming from a position of lack. Your ability to release this lack and go forward with your life can create a tremendous sense of peace and more natural accomplishments in your world. The amount of lack that people see out there is profound and it has a massive impact on their lives. According to Harrison, the most successful people in the world see the world as a place of opportunity and not lack.
Determine whether you are a global or specific person. Most people are either too general or too specific in the way they treat information, and overly detail-oriented people risk losing sight of the bigger picture. General people are more comfortable in managerial positions, while detail-oriented people prefer everything to conform to a logical sequence. Understand which sort of person you are, and seek work that best harnesses your natural inclination.
Recent immigrants exemplify the benefits of willpower, passion, and excitement in the way that they work so much harder for their goals than the people who have been here for most or all of their lives. Like most Americans, you need to rekindle the spirit of your immigrant ancestors and become hungry for what you want. The entrepreneurial spirit that brought people to America has often faded over time; adopt the fire and work ethic of new immigrants in order to achieve your goals.
You must plant seeds in the minds of others, so that they will be more likely than otherwise to think of you when a future need arises. In planting seeds, you are making people aware of what you have to offer; you must make sure that you are ever present in the minds of your potential employers. Planting seeds is the most effective way to generate top-of-mind awareness, and ensure that the right people remember you at the appropriate time.
A recommendation from a powerful person can make a huge difference in your job search; a reference from an influential person makes a tremendous difference to a prospective employer, and thus can be a major advantage for you. When an important person whom the company trusts recommends you, you instantly qualify for positions that may previously have been unattainable. Make the absolute most of your connections with the powerful people in your life, because doing so can instantaneously change your career and life.
Maintaining a routine in both life and work is important to success. Not only do you need to establish a routine, you must make that routine demanding and push yourself to the limit. Budget a certain amount of time each week for networking, applying to jobs, brushing up your interview skills, and following up with employers. Such consistent effort on a daily basis will make a huge difference to your career success.
You can better market yourself by taking a stand against something. Peoples’ personal beliefs, including the things with which they do not agree, define who they are as people. Standing against something differentiates you from the crowd; when done in the correct manner, without disrespecting others’ opinions, such a stance can help you land your dream job.
To reach the goals to which you aspire, you must compare yourself with people superior to you for motivation. Most people prefer to look at life the way they wish it to be, rather than as it truly is. Move out of your comfort zones and face reality. Don’t seek out or compare yourself with the average people around you, as doing so will only mire you in mediocrity rather than push you forward.
In this article Harrison discusses what a good hiring manager should look for. Many people who make hiring decisions really do not know what they are doing. In fact, they often make mistakes when hiring. They put too much emphasis on skills and experience. But the single most important aspect of hiring is evaluating the person’s unique outlook on the world. If the person does not have a positive outlook on the world, he/she will bring down the morale of the other workers. The person will harm the company through the negative outlook. The key to success is having the power to stick it out in jobs and finding happiness wherever you are. Hiring people who do good work and are always able to find happiness should be the number one objective of hiring managers.
Don’t ever give up, and make the most of the tools at your disposal. Take chances and invest in your best skills, and persist in the face of unfortunate events. Have faith in your considerable work and capabilities, and use them to create value for others.
Things will not always go the way that you want them to go, so you must not be discouraged by adversity in your job hunt. When you persist and consistently put forth your best effort, things are much more likely to go in your favor. Also, you must resist others’ efforts to undermine your efforts and potential; focus instead on doing everything in your power to fight on and complete the task at hand.
Having a goal or vision will propel you towards greater career success and happiness. Without a purpose, you will find yourself depressed and ultimately fail to achieve your goals. Do not subscribe to the unrealistic problem that you should never have problems, but instead regard problems as part of your overall growth strategy.
Related Posts:
Harrison Barnes:
Getting Ahead:
The Role of Jobs in Today's World:
Career Advice:
© 2025 Harrisonbarnes All Rights Reserved
I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work :)
Although from a self preservation angle it’s a logical argument, I want to clarify that the Catholic Church isn’t against abortion in order to propagate more of its members; rather the pro-life stance has resulted from its unwavering recognition of the innate value of all human life, Catholic or not.
The idea of finding a job that you can live within the rules is a wonderful idea in a good economy but in today’s employment conditions, not so easy advice to follow.
If a society follows the ancient and old rules it confined itself with many social taboos.Free and radical thoughts are not accepted easily there.but one with open mind always has to strive hard to establish his feeling.anyway, nice article.
Harrison,
You should read Philippians 2, v 6-11. At death, you and every other human being will stand in judgment before the Lord Jesus Christ to account for his or her life. The Roman Catholic Church is the one and only source of truth in the world, as it is the institution established by Jesus Christ himself, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through the Son. Perhaps, you should do some introspection on this topic before it is too late; i.e., before you die. The Roman Catholic Church is not about money, as you so crassly stated it; its purpose is to save souls.
“He always had the nature of God, but he did not think that by force he should try to become equal with God. Instead of this, of his own free will he gave up all he had, and took the nature of a servant. He became like man and appeared in human likeness. He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death – his death on the cross.
“For this reason God raised him to the highest place above and gave him the name that is greater than any other name. And so, in honor of the name of Jesus all beings in heaven, on earth, and in the world below will fall on their knees, and all will openly proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Very well written article! I have really enjoyed reading it, gramatical and spelling mistakes are rare and content is interesting.
I Will bookmark this site for more interesting stories.
This is really a great article to read on. The interesting part is CATHOLICS AND BIRTH CONTROL.The Catholic Church, by attempting to impose its medieval dogma and deny Africans the protection of condoms, is quite happy to condemn millions to die of Aids. The Catholic Church wants millions of unwanted children to be born into poverty as they will be ripe for future Church recruitment.
This is a good article to read.It is very interesting to read this article.This is a good website for finding more good articles here.In our career and life we need to follow the rules of our group.Harrison Barnes give good career advice through this website.It is very useful for job seekers those who are not having enough ideas about career.
I agree with the other comments that the Catholic Church is pro-life because life begins at conception and abortion is murder. Not to make more money.
However, Harrison was right to fire his staff who deliberately refused to follow the rules. I worked for a local government and I would frequently observe staff members who deliberately refused to follow the rules. Instead of disciplining them, their managers would frequently flatter them because management promotions were based on popularity, not competence. This resulted in a completely chaotic working environment. These managers were very lucky to be working for the government, with a job that would always be there. If they were working in private industry, they would have run their company completely out of business.
This is a really good site post, I’m delighted I came across it. I’ll be back down the track to check out other posts.
This article is offensive. Please unsubscribe me.
Great blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it
from somewhere? A theme like yours with a few simple adjustements would really make my blog shine.
Please let me know where you got your theme. Kudos
Very interesting article. Thanks. I think Jesus was executed because it was all about control. Who was in control of the temple?