The Curse of Being a High Achiever

In the June 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review, “The Paradox of Excellence,” Thomas J. DeLong and Sara DeLong explain how and why high achievers often undermine their leadership by being afraid to show their limitations. Here are some behaviors that, although they may help someone to achieve success, can also get in the way.

To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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The classic high achiever is:

Driven to get results. Achievers don’t let anything stop them. But they can get so caught up in tasks that providing transparency to colleagues or helping others feels like a waste of valuable time.

A doer. Achievers believe, often rightly, that nobody can do it as well as they can. That can make them poor delegators—or micromanagers.

Highly motivated. Achievers take all aspects of their jobs seriously. But that means they often fail to distinguish between the urgent and the merely important.

Craving of positive feedback. Achievers care intensely about how others view their work—but they tend to ignore positive feedback and obsess over criticism.

Competitive. An appetite for competition is healthy, but achievers obsessively compare themselves with others, which can lead to a chronic sense of insufficiency, false calibrations, and ultimately career missteps.

Passionate about work. Intense highs can give way to crippling lows. For achievers, it’s a fine line between triumph and agony.

A safe risk taker. Achievers aren’t likely to recklessly bet the company on a risky move, but they may shy away from the unknown.

Guilt-ridden. Achievers are driven to produce, but no matter how much they accomplish, they feel like they aren’t doing enough.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Thomas J. DeLong is the Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School and the author of Flying Without a Net (Harvard Business Press, 2011).

His daughter Sara DeLong is a psychiatrist in private practice and community mental health in San Francisco and an assistant clinical professor at UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry.

Beware of the 3 Double-Edged Traits of High-Achievers

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

Being a high-achiever can be rewarding, but many smart, ambitious professionals are still less satisfied than they should be. This is because many of the behaviors that help you succeed can also get in your way.

Watch out for these two-sided traits:

1. Driven to get results. High-achievers can get so caught up in tasks that they fail to provide transparency to colleagues or help others. Don’t forget to collaborate or you’ll feel alone.

2. Craving positive feedback. High-achievers care intensely about others’ opinions and tend to obsess over criticism, even when it’s included with positive feedback. Don’t let one constructive piece of input overshadow everything you hear.

3. Guilt-ridden. Guilt often motivates achievers to produce, but no matter how much they accomplish they still feel like they aren’t doing enough. Set realistic goals and take satisfaction in achieving them.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from “Managing Yourself: The Paradox of Excellence” by Thomas J. DeLong and Sara DeLong.

To read that article and join the discussion, please click here.

 

 

How to Break the High Achiever Cycle

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

If you’re a high-achiever, it can be difficult to grow professionally. You have a successful image to preserve, so instead of embracing risk, you may lock yourself into a familiar routine.

Here are three ways to break that cycle:

1. Use your support network. High achievers are very independent. But, everyone needs help. Ask people around you what skills they think you need to reach the next level.

2. Be vulnerable. Open yourself up to new learning experiences that make you feel uncertain at best and incompetent at worst. Remember that those feelings are temporary and a prelude to greater professional ability.

3. Admit to small failures. Practice acknowledging uncertainty or confessing mistakes with people close
to you.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from “Managing Yourself: The Paradox of Excellence” by Thomas J. DeLong and Sara DeLong.

To read that article and join the discussion, please click here.

Harvard Business Review on Finding & Keeping the Best People: A book review by Bob Morris

Harvard Business Review on Finding & Keeping the Best People
Various Contributors
Harvard Business Review Press (2011)

How to recruit, hire, onboard, and retain the workers who possess the character, talent, and skills your company needs

This is one of the volumes in a series of anthologies of articles that first appeared in HBR. In this instance, its nine articles focus on one or more components of a process by which to “win the race for talent” and then prevent “your company’s top talent from jumping ship as good replacements become harder to get.”

Having read all of the articles when they were published individually, I can personally attest to the brilliance of their authors’ (or co-authors’) insights and the eloquence with which they are expressed. Two substantial value-added benefits should also be noted: If all of the articles were purchased separately as reprints, the total cost would be at least $60-75; they are now conveniently bound in a single volume for a fraction of that cost.

Here in Dallas, there is a Farmers Market near the down area at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples. In that spirit, I now provide a brief excerpt that is indicative of the high quality of all nine articles:

In “How to Keep Your Top Talent,” Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt review a core set of ten best practices for identifying and managing emerging talent. Here are the first five:

“1. Explicitly test candidates in three dimensions: ability, engagement, and aspiration.

2. Emphasize future competencies needed (derived from enterprise-level growth plans) more heavily than current performance when you’re choosing your own employees for development.”

3. Manage the quantity and quality of high potentials at the corporate level, as a portfolio of scarce growth assets.

4. Forget the rote functional or business-unit rotations; place young leaders in intense assignments with precisely described development challenges.

5. Identify the riskiest, most challenging positions across the company, and assign them directly to rising stars.”

Other articles I especially enjoyed include Tamara J. Erickson and Lynda Gratton’s “What It Means to Work Here,” Timothy Butler and James Waldroop’s “Job Sculpting: The Art of Retaining Your Best People,” and “Let’s Hear It for B Players” co-authored by Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan.

If asked to select only one book that provides the most valuable material to supplement what is offered in this volume, it would be Bradford D. Smart’s Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People, Revised and Updated Edition, published by Portfolio/Penguin.

 

Thomas J. DeLong: An interview by Bob Morris

Thomas J. DeLong is the Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice in the Organizational Behavior area at the Harvard Business School. Before joining the Harvard Faculty, DeLong was Chief Development Officer and Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Group, Inc., where he was responsible for the firm’s human capital and focused on issues of organizational strategy and organizational change. 

At Harvard, Professor DeLong teaches MBA and executive courses focused on managing human capital, organizational behavior, leadership and career management. DeLong has served as course head for the required course on Leadership and Organizational Behavior. 

DeLong teaches globally in a myriad of executive programs as well as executive courses on campus. He consults with leading organizations on the process of making individual and organizational change.  His latest book, Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success, centers on the challenges of helping talented professionals who are resistant to change.
 He has also co-authored two Harvard Business Review articles, “Let’s Hear It for B Players” and “Why Mentoring Matters in a Hypercompetitive World”.  His forthcoming Harvard Business Review articles focus on why high achieving professionals often unwittingly sabotage their effort to excel.

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Morris: Before discussing Flying Without a Net, a few general questions. First, other than a family member, who has had the greatest impact on your personal growth?

DeLong:  Dr. Chase Peterson, former President of the University of Utah asked me to serve as a confidant and consultant very early in my career. He believed in my ideas. I thought I could accomplish just about anything because of the faith and confidence he had in me. I’m not convinced that I contributed all that much. However, as a 30 year old newly minted Ph.D, I could not have asked for a greater gift than the confidence he had in me.

Morris: Professional development?

Delong: Working as the first social scientist on Wall Street. I had no intention of leaving academia until I met John Mack in the early 90’s on an airplane when he was a newly appointed President of Morgan Stanley. Taking the theories on organizational behavior and change and applying them in a tough environment provided an intense on the job developmental process that couldn’t have been substituted through any sort of simulation or executive level course. It was the professional development experience of a lifetime.

Morris: Was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

DeLong: The key learning for me early on when I made an unusual career decision after leaving MIT was that I have the right to receive personal inspiration or insights into what I should do.  You can collect only so much data before you have to trust your intuition and do what may seem irrational to others. If you don’t trust your own instincts you  never develop the faith or confidence in your own judgment. Deciding to head west after my doctorate seemed irrational to others. Leaving BYU and heading to Wall Street and short circuiting a “fast track’ career in academia didn’t seem rational to some.

I worry about some of the Harvard Business  School students who have figured out how to please virtually everyone else but haven’t ever asked what they really want. They have been very successful yet less self aware that I would have expected. They are afraid to listen to themselves. Their own reflections, listening to their own heartbeats frighten them.  We need to figure out how to teach them to have more confidence in their own psychological journey so that they are aware of epiphanies when they happen. Too often they miss the opportunity or don’t look up to see the person who has entered their lives that could give them a new perspective or answer to a sought after answer.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education helped you to prepare for the work in which you are now actively involved?

DeLong: Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace both have emphasized the power of self-discipline.  Franzen’s Freedom teaches about the principle of discipline throughout the chapters.  Formal education teaches you the discipline to hunker down and be alone and cloister yourself away for a time and concentrate and focus. Faculty pushed me to question my assumptions. This process of refinement and reflection helped me frame my experiences in ways that I could wrestle with questions and data and experiences from different angles, from different perspectives. Bonner Ritchie, a former professor used to tell us that there is nothing more practical than a good theory. Being able to be facile in thinking and action comes about through the aging process of education along with experiences. I don’t know what I would have done without the refining process that education can provide.

Morris: In two of your books, When Professionals Have to Lead and Professional Services, you have much of value to share with leaders of both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Here’s my question: What are the most valuable lessons that leaders of for-profits can learn from the not-for-profit world?

Delong: First, that it’s not just about you. I worry that many for-profit leaders become decentisized over time due in part of their making. They have handlers and myriad assistants who meet every whim.  They feel a need to talk and give insights wherever they go. After a while they really do begin to see the world as a place that serves them rather than what they can do to make things better. I worry over time that leaders in for-profits listen less and talk more. They really do become enamored with themselves. They lose perspective.

On the other hand not-for profit leaders need to realize that they are running businesses, that their world is closer to for-profits than they can imagine. These two worlds are merging. Ten years ago at HBS we seemed to be careful to discuss not-for-profits as businesses. We were almost apologetic about discussing their institutions as businesses. Well we don’t apologize any more. As these two worlds converge we are going to have to not forget how they should be seen as different before we see them as integrated and very similar entities.

Morris: Please explain the title of one of your HBR articles, “Let’s Hear It for B Players.”

DeLong: My first sizable research effort before the latest work on individual change focused on the large number of professionals in organizations that are largely ignored. I realized that more and more organizations were created talent management systems that obsessed about the star performers or the underperformers. As I studied the diaries and journals of leaders I saw virtually no initiatives or processes in place that centered on those stalwarts or solid citizens in the organization who simply did good work and didn’t need constant feedback from those above. They data suggested that they needed less feedback, had more institutional knowledge, were more loyal and more secure in who they were as professionals. However, they were overlooked much of the time.

Out of 100’s of interviews with leaders of organizations, virtually none had programs that specifically focused on the care and feeding of this population. And what was surprising was that these professionals could be ignored for up to three to five years without any significant negative consequence.  But once cynicism set in and discouragement due to neglect set in, then the organization had a big problem. So I’ve come to be a huge supporter of those in the middle who deserve our attention and our recognition for how they serve organizations. Remember, they don’t ask for a lot. They just want a minimal amount of recognition.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Tom DeLong cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

http://bobmorris.biz/thomas-j-delong-an-interview-by-bob-morris

http://hbr.org/product/flying-without-a-net-turn-fear-of-change-into-fuel/an/10297-HBK-ENG

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/faculty/tdelong.html

http://www.managementconsultingnews.com/interviews/delong_interview.php

 

Flying Without a Net: A book review by Bob Morris

Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success
Thomas J. DeLong
Harvard Business Review Press (2011)

A new model for anxiety management by “high-need-for-achievement professionals”

In the Preface, Thomas J. DeLong observes, “The old model for high-need–for-achievement personalities was invulnerability – being opaque, emotionally detached, risk averse, and coldly analytical. This book will make the case for a new, vulnerable, model and offer directions for professionals who no longer know which way to turn.”  The new model that DeLong offers bears stunning resemblances to Robert Greenleaf’’s concepts of servant leadership and to others’ concepts of emotional intelligence, notably those of David Wechsler, Howard Gardner, and Daniel Goleman.

What DeLong contributes is a brilliant analysis of (a) why most people fear change, Chapters 1-2; (b) “the big three anxieties” (purpose, isolation, and significance), Chapters 3-5; (c) four “traps” that prevent change (busyness, comparing, blame, and worry, and finally, Chapters 6-9; and (d) what is needed to avoid or escape from the anxieties and traps by “turning fear of change into fuel for success,” Chapters 10-14.  To assist that process of personal change, he inserts through his narrative sets of direct questions or suggestions that comprise an accumulative self-assessment. In the first four chapters, for example, questions to

• Determine your willingness to do the right thing poorly (Page 34-35)
• Determine if your work is connected to a larger purpose (46)
• Raise your awareness of events that devalue you (52-53-35)
• Maintain awareness of feeling isolated (68-69)
• Determine if you’re caught in a “gravitational pull” of your own (78)

I was especially interested in what DeLong has to say about The Blame Trap. As I read his extensive discussion in Chapter Seven: How to Break Your Heart Every Time, I was reminded of Ernest Becker’s book, Denial of Death, in which he asserts that physical death is inevitable but it is possible to deny another form of death: that which occurs when we become wholly preoccupied with fulfilling others’ expectations of us.

Here’s what DeLong says about social relativity:

“It is the process of using external measures to determine how we think we are doing, of defining our successes by external criteria. This process begins early in life, and it is instilled in us by many factors. In fact, the process is so baked into everything we experience that it often feels like we have no control over the emotions that cause us to compare ourselves to others. It becomes a reflex rather than a calculated action. In certain cultures, the process of comparing impacts behavior all the time and in every way.”

This is especially true of those whom DeLong characterizes as “high-need-for-achievement professionals.” For them, Flying Without a Net really is a “must read.”

“How to break your heart every time” by falling victim to social relativity

Thomas J. DeLong

I have just read and will soon review Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success, written by Thomas J. DeLong and published by Harvard Business Review Press (June 14, 2011).

DeLong examines comparing or what is termed “social relativity” in the social sciences (i.e. calibrating one’s accomplishments in the context of how others do) and characterizes it as “the Achilles Heel of the driven, ambitious professional.” As I read his extensive discussion in Chapter Seven: How to Break Your Heart Every Time, I was reminded of Ernest Becker’s book, Denial of Death, in which he asserts that physical death is inevitable but it is possible to deny another form of death: that which occurs when we become wholly preoccupied with fulfilling others’ expectations of us.

Here’s what DeLong says about social relativity:

“It is the process of using external measures to determine how we think we are doing, of defining our successes by external criteria. This process begins early in life, and it is instilled in us by many factors. In fact, the process is so baked into everything we experience that it often feels like we have no control over the emotions that cause us to compare ourselves to others. It becomes a reflex rather than a calculated action. In certain cultures, the process of comparing impacts behavior all the time and in every way.”

This is especially true of those whom DeLong characterizes as “high-need-for-achievement professionals.” For them, Flying Without a Net really is a “must read.”

The Worrying Trap: How to avoid it or escape from it

Thomas J. DeLong

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Thomas J. DeLong for the Harvard Business Review blog’s “The Conversation” series. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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I come from a family of worriers. We sometimes joke that at the next family reunion we should organize the seating chart according to which anti-anxiety or antidepressant medication each person is currently taking. There would, of course, also be a table for people who are self-medicating with substances not prescribed by a doctor.

What are we all worrying about? Perhaps the more accurate question is: What aren’t we worrying about?

We live and work in an age when there is plenty to fret about for professionals in every field and at every level. This worrying becomes a trap, however, when we start seeing doom and gloom everywhere, when it colors our decision-making and behaviors, when it causes us to go into a shell or always respond in the same tried-and-true ways to avoid catalyzing our worst fears. We all worry. But we often worry needlessly, excessively, and counterproductively. While a moderate amount of worry may focus the mind, too much diminishes effectiveness and robs us of our ability to move outside our comfort zone (because there is even more to worry about outside of that zone!).

Someone once said that there are no small worries for people with big ambition, since every obstacle on the road to goals looms large. Driven professionals often struggle to differentiate small worries from big ones, because every problem is given equal, exaggerated weight. Think about what work worries assault you in the middle of the night and prevent you from going back to sleep. There are three things that you can do to keep yourself from falling into the worry trap:

[Here's the first. To read the complete article, please click here.]

Evaluate the relative significance of the things you’re worrying about. Don’t give a disproportionate amount of worry to small problems. “Box up” your small worries so that they don’t spread. Make a conscious effort to confine your fears and anxieties to the subject at hand. Keep reminding yourself that a problem in one area does not necessarily mean that there’s a problem in another area. Stay focused on the specific issue.

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Thomas J. DeLong is the Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice in the Organizational Behavior area at Harvard Business School and the author of Flying Without a Net. His research focuses on the challenges facing individuals and organizations in the process of change.

When Professionals Have to Lead: A book review by Bob Morris

When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance
Thomas J. DeLong, John J. Gabarro, and Robert J. Lees
Harvard Business Press (2007)

Note: I recently re-read several books that were published a while ago. Here is my review of When Professionals Have to Lead.

In this volume, Thomas DeLong, John Gabarro, and Robert Lees present what they characterize as “an integrated leadership model” that is designed to “stimulate thinking and facilitate changes that high-performing firm leaders want to enact.” Although their focus is on the professional service firm (PSF), all of the information and counsel in this book can also be of substantial value to other kinds of organizations. In fact, decision-makers in those (e.g. manufacturers) must also offer professional service of the highest quality, especially now when competing in what has become, as Thomas Friedman describes it, a “flat world.”

Here are two brief excerpts that suggest the thrust and flavor of the co-authors’ insights and writing style.

“The integrated leadership model is incomplete if any one of the four core behaviors is left out. The model is powerful only if leaders set direction, get commitment to the direction, execute, and by their actions set personal examples as leaders.” (Page 42)

“For many partners and other senior professionals, on-the-spot corrective feedback, coaching, and mentoring are not seen [by the high-need-for- achievement personality] as central to the task trajectory of getting a project, deal, or matter done, so these aspects of leadership are ignored. We call this self-feeding dynamic the `PSF Paradox’ [in that] because they too are high-achievement personalities, senior professionals are not disposed to give junior professionals what they need to stay motivated or develop – even though they too had the same needs early in their career.” (Pages 163-164)

With regard to the last excerpt provided, I am reminded of what recent research conducted by the Gallup Organization revealed: only 25% of employees are engaged in their jobs, 55% of them are just going through the motions, and 20% of them are working against their employers’ interests. How could it be otherwise when senior professionals are unwilling and/or unable to provide corrective feedback, coaching, and mentoring to junior professionals in the same firm?

To their great credit, after carefully identifying the “what” of effective leadership in personal service firms, DeLong, Gabarro, and Lees focus most of their attention on how to achieve and then sustain high-impact performance, especially now when leaders in PSFs face unprecedented challenges in a global marketplace and are engaged in a constant battle against disconnection. Integrated leaders are “connectors” who “create a safety net to catch those professionals who may be ready to leave the system or who are not [sufficiently] engaged in the enterprise.”