12/19/2025

Hi David,

I hope you are doing well.

I wanted you to see a recent article I posted on Medium.com about human leadership and corporate culture. So many of my executive coaching clients tell me they are either miserable or exhausted all the time at work, or both.

May you experience dignity, purpose, and beauty this week in your work and life,

David Sachsenmaier, PCC | Executive Coach
SynterPoint Coaching, LLC
719-646-9690 | dsachs@synterpoint.com | synterpoint.com

Why Do I Feel Like a Machine at Work

“I just feel like a machine, a tiny cog in a big wheel at my company.” As an executive coach, I hear these words so often. And each time, I hear the hollow words, the aching soul that simply longs to feel like they are part of an organization that is more human. But what does that mean, more human? With the current pace of life, endless complexities and demands placed upon companies by the stock market, competition, government regulations and a global pandemic, there is so much pressure to produce, to perform, to beat out the competition. If you stand still, the competition will “eat your lunch,” people say.

Make money and get along

As we prepare to enter the second quarter of 2021 and year two of a global pandemic, what have we lost in our corporate cultures that causes so many talented, highly trained and credentialed people to feel like they are nothing more than a machine? How did we get to this place in corporate America? In western corporate life? Is this current corporate culture what baby boomer leadership has left us as their legacy?

I remember when I started my first job out of college in the 1980s with a degree in international business and a minor in French, one of the owners of the company said to me, “Sachsenmaier, all you need to do here is two things. Make money and get along!” Well at one level, this septuagenarian was giving me some pretty basic, simple wisdom from his own decades of work life. And yet as soon as he said these words, I walked back to my office and thought to myself, “something is grossly missing in that command.” Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for that company, I was on a quest for a more meaningful corporate existence and culture, so after a few years of that, it was time to move on in the vocational journey. I packed my bags to begin a decades-long search for a corporate life, culture and existence that somehow awaken and deepen something in me as a human being. I did not want to just be a highly paid corporate machine.

Desperately seeking human corporate culture

After almost 40 years of corporate and vocational journey and searching, I am slowly coming to the realization that, although I never had words for it before now, I have been seeking a more human corporate culture. For many of you reading this article, you may be asking “what does that mean?” Others of you may be saying, "Yes, that is what I am looking for too." So, what do I mean by a more human corporate culture? Ironically, the simple, basic elements that cause human beings to thrive away from work, in families, marriages and friendships, are some of the same things that make people thrive and feel like they can thrive at work.

NEWS FLASH!! — I am the same human being at home as I am at work.

For the sake of brevity here, I will mention only one vital aspect that creates and sustains thriving human corporate culture.

Freedom to be me

Authenticity — freedom for me to be my unique self and not to feel as though I have to live inside someone else’s box and expectations for who and how I should be at work. As soon as I begin to over accommodate and over adapt to other people’s expectations dictating to me who I am and how I am to behave, then I have entered into what I call role and soul deterioration. I am out of alignment with my true self. I am not centered and grounded in the fullness of what makes me uniquely me. I have left my home base so to speak. And when we don’t live and work from our home base, our lives, our very souls begin to wilt.

How did corporate Americans and westerners get so far afield in creating and molding work cultures, that very few are really thriving as human beings, but instead are living more like machines or corporate slaves? Perhaps as more and more millennials take the helm of leadership across our lands, we will pause, ask ourselves these hard questions, look deep inside our own corporate souls and be bold and courageous enough to stand up and choose a better path — a corporate path and culture that awakens transformative human leadership so work and life overflow with dignity, purpose and beauty.

If you want to connect and chat about what this article brings up for you, click here to email me.

If you want to connect and learn more about how coaching can support you and your company culture, click on Schedule a Conversation to grab a time on my calendar to have a Zoom chat.

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David Sachsenmaier, PCC | Executive Coach

David coaches leaders to awaken transformative human leadership so work and life overflow with dignity, purpose and beauty. SynterPoint Coaching offers one on one leadership coaching, team coaching and off-site retreats for individuals, teams and couples.

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