US department of labor has ranked 873 most stressful jobs in the country by grading each occupation from activities without stress, marking them with zero value, and overwhelmingly stressful positions ending up at value of 100. Financial jobs, not surprisingly, have scored quite high: stress level of investment fund managers is at 90, treasurers and controllers – 88, securities and commodities sales agents – 85. Is there a chance for an asset manager to have a balanced mental relationship with markets and millions of dollars entrusted to him?
Let’s try to imagine that irritating stimuli investment management jobs firstly, can have, secondly, could bring up to the surface of the mind hidden unpleasant emotions and thoughts.
He is better than you!
Very common and helpful practice in asset management business is the comparison of the managed funds with competitors and benchmarks. It’s a great and logical approach for all sides of the value chain: customers can easier choose between different asset managers; asset managers and their supervisors can evaluate and assess the quality of the performance more realistically; supervisors could track and review market participants in comparable structure.
However, in practice, a constant comparison often tends to step over the thin line between practical benefits and anxiety accompanied by compulsive obsession. Big part of this destructive mutation is brought by changes in timing. Meaning, increased urgency to perform better than competitors in extremely short periods of time. Specially it becomes popular when markets are very volatile, as it was last year, in 2022. The rush for fund managers to beat trackable benchmarks no longer put the emphasis on evaluation of performance for long periods (performance over 10 years) of time. Assessments of the data are done on monthly or even weekly basis.
This type of growing pressure can frustrate and anger investment managers by enforced rise of hopelessness and inferiority feelings. Just the strong self-confidence can be a suitable antidote to withstand the squeeze, nevertheless it’s not working indefinitely.
Breaking news
On daily basis we are having less and less “regular” type news. Everything nowadays becomes breaking, most urgent, and top priority. Due to mass media efforts to alert us on any news, the information flow is highlighted so extensively, that our perception is constantly overstimulated in a wrong way. On the one side we are becoming more indifferent, on the other side our constant irritability no longer is capable to keep us prepared for good and adequate decisions. Natural sharpness and effectiveness of concentration lose its efficiency due to a chronic over usage.
Our mental defense system is simply stressed too much and for too long. This boundless attitude on daily basis on fund managers work agenda can easily spread into all parts of personal life. That eventually, with the force of boomerang, it will return to work environment more vivid and damaging.
I’m so important that everything what it is happening depend on me
Not necessarily all the time but above-mentioned stimuli could lead to the distortion of a healthier personal relationship with responsibility or could challenge already fragile relationship with it. The responsibility, to my opinion, is a very tricky concept in psychology. People who generally take big loads of responsibilities for other people, organizations, kids, and everything what comes to their hands, can be very far away from willingness to take responsibility for them self and the parts of their personalities that they are not familiar with or have distant relationships with these parts.
Recently I had an interesting conversation with an ex-fund manager. Who has shared his distressing experience related with asset management decisions that he made or regrets for the decisions that he didn’t take. He was carrying not only the responsibility of the decisions he was making for the fund but also the phantasies of all possible alternative costs. Imagination was revaluating these costs generally extensively. This burden spread all over the place: work, falling apart relationships, sleepless nights, deteriorating health. The persona of fund manager possessed all other pictures of his personality. Obviously one attitude to all aspects of life was not only unsuitable but also unbearable for living with.
The situation for him began to change into more calm state just after quitting the job. However, this might be not the only path to follow. Confronting your own responsibility might take all bunch of different individual actions maybe suitable just for only one individual. And all paths are good, if it leads to a healthier attitude towards your responsibilities and comfort to be after you have closed office doors.
Golden standard
Irritants of constant comparability, urgency, alertness, responsibility quickly become a heavy backpack even for mentally stable person. The wide range of triggers and unpleasant emotions spreads all over the place. One of the solutions reducing the contact with them is to put on a perfectionistic approach. Which at one hand helps to deal with anxiety, on the other puts us into even more misfunctioning positions and creates even more tensions in all kinds of relationships.
It’s hard to keep a healthy and adequate level of responsibility. Strong effects of insecurities very quickly deploy the responsibility as a tool to fight with all possible feelings that are sharing even tiny levels of uncertainty. Then the control function could possess us quite quickly. “Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism” – Carl Gustav Jung.
Theoretically it’s relatively easy to detect the complexes that we are influenced or possessed by compared to the reality of integration and acknowledgment of them. Harder and more demanding path of emotional integrity is required to feel more comfortable and safer working in the asset management related field. Keeping in mind and exploring internal emotional stimuli could lead us to a more fulfilling and lighter being.