The
lessons from the suicides at Zurich Insurance
It
is natural to believe that your life is charmed and to flounder when
you find you are fallible
John
Gapper
YESTERDAY by: John
Gapper
Every suicide is
intensely sad — a despairing act of self-harm that leaves a legacy
of guilt and sorrow for the victim’s family, friends and
colleagues. That of Martin Senn, chief executive of Zurich Insurance
until last December, is doubly resonant because it follows the
suicide of Pierre Wauthier, Zurich’s chief financial officer, three
years ago.
Senn, who killed
himself at his Klosters holiday home last Friday, is said to have
struggled to adjust to being no longer the boss of a Swiss
multinational. He agreed to step down after Zurich failed to acquire
the UK insurer RSA last year, and faced problems in the US and China.
The company is now restructuring and cutting costs.
My reaction to his
death is influenced by having suffered an episode of depression a
decade ago. “Suffered” is the correct word, as anyone who has
been through the experience can testify. “Episode” is the term
employed by psychiatrists, as if it forms part of a rather painful
soap opera. Luckily, my pilot episode did not turn into a series.
It made me alert to
the malaise, though. When I hear of senior executives resigning or
taking a break from their work because they are experiencing
“sleeplessness”, “burnout”, “exhaustion”, or some other
corporate euphemism for anxiety and depression, I recall what it
taught me.
One lesson is the
common nature of mood disorder in the boardroom. It is tempting to
view the Zurich Insurance suicides as a unique and alien tragedy,
akin to the “virgin suicides” in the 1993 novel by Jeffrey
Eugenides — the story of five sisters who kill themselves, narrated
by a chorus of admirers.
But even the
official estimates suggest that every board of directors is likely to
contain at least one person with an experience of depression. In
2014, 7 per cent of US adults reported having a major episode in the
past year; 16 per cent are diagnosed with depression at least once in
their lifetimes.
This may be an
underestimate for directors and executives, if anecdote is reliable.
I know several who went through depression without admitting it,
including a partner in a City of London firm and one government
minister. Then there was a FTSE 100 chief executive who was
charismatic at work but lay in a darkened room at home.
Therein lies a
second lesson: rising to great heights in your career, as did Senn
and Wauthier, may mean you are more vulnerable. Depression is not an
elite disorder — it is widespread and many aspects of the lives of
the less privileged and lower paid can precipitate mental illness.
But exceptional achievement carries its own peculiar risks.
Workaholism is among
them. Wauthier’s widow recalled that, “Usually he had seven
hours’ sleep and the rest of the time it was BlackBerry in one
hand, laptop in the other”, and that he was under heavy pressure.
That is not unusual in a job like his, or at professional services
firms that charge so much they are at clients’ beck and call.
One recent study of
Norwegian employees found that the “workaholics”of the sample had
higher levels of anxiety and depression. Thirty-four per cent of them
met the medical criteria for anxiety, compared with 12 per cent of
those who did not overwork.
Cause and effect are
not clear — do you become anxious by overworking, or do anxious
people overwork? Anxiety can be adaptive, as psychiatrists would
phrase it, up to a point: it helps people to achieve professional
success. But it also makes them subject to hazard.
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High-flyers risk the
fate of Icarus, the original high-flyer of the Greek myth, whose
wings came apart when he flew too close to the sun. Some attain
middle age without facing serious setbacks in life — they studied
at elite schools and universities and have flourished in professions.
When they finally encounter failure, it is a terrible shock.
After such success,
it is natural to believe your life is charmed, and to flounder when
you abruptly discover that you are as fallible as everyone else.
Enoch Powell, the British politician, observed that all political
lives end in failure. That is equally true of business lives: most of
those who reach the top of the professional pyramid as chief
executive do not stay there long.
Some accept this but
it triggers in others a biological reaction that causes depression.
The distress is often temporary, though. A setback does not end a
career; an episode need not become a series. Depression can be
chronic but midlife crises are often one-offs.
More companies now
recognise these truths and are better prepared to support employees
in difficulty. The stigma has lessened although the number of those
who choose not to speak up shows that it lingers. That worsens the
pain and risks catastrophe.
“How is your
mood?” psychiatrists tend to ask patients affected by depression.
Bad then but good now, is my answer. This is why the Zurich Insurance
suicides are so sad. What feels hopeless at one moment later fades
into history. Life can recover and fulfilment return, if you stick
around.
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