How is it possible that a high-achieving individual would need help or better, that they would even ask for it?  Harvard Business School professor Thomas DeLong could tell you. He’s spent years researching the tendencies of what he calls high need for achievement individuals and has captured his research in his book, Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success.

In an article by Sarah Green published in the Harvard Business Review titled “The Hidden Demons of High Achievers”, she interviews Thomas DeLong. The name of the article is telling: high achievers have some hidden demons. It is these demons that make it possible for such accomplished individuals to need help, and it is highly likely these same demons make it difficult for them to ask for it.

According to DeLong, and obvious to most, high-achievers have a need to achieve and have a motor to match their need. This combination can result in some fantastic accomplishments. Not so obvious to most, however, is that this need to achieve also fuels some fantastic, and desirably hidden, fears. Of these fears, according to DeLong, the thing that frightens high need to achieve individuals the most is the fear of not appearing to be competent.

The fear of exposure.

And yet exposure promotes real growth. Let’s call this A. It is light shining on reality that allows what is real to grow. If someone is avoiding exposure, let’s call this B, are they avoiding growth? We’ll call this C.  If A + B = C here, then if A) exposure promotes real growth and B) a high-achiever is avoiding exposure to their current reality until they master it, manipulating their environment to avoid not doing something perfectly the first time in order to avoid looking bad or incompetent, does it mean C) they are not growing? If this is true, how does this equation manifest itself in the life of a typical high-achiever?

I propose it manifests in a two-step jig.

The jig begins with the general characteristics DeLong lists of such individuals. This list includes being exceptionally bright, competitive, impatient with self and others and successful. Exceptionally all of these. It also includes wanting feedback, mostly positive, and having an overloaded agenda. Of the characteristics, the one that may seem out of place as it relates to not growing is being bright. But, it takes big time smarts to manipulate masterfully. And high-achievers can work masterfully to manipulate their environment to avoid looking bad.

That is step-one manifestation of the two-step dance.

If step-one was sustainable, step-two wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t be writing about the two-step reason why the high-achiever needs a coach. As it is, step-two exists because perfection is not attainable and manipulation is not real, so step-one breaks down. Accordingly, step-two is the breakdown.

DeLong mentions that for high need for achievement individuals “when everything’s going fine, everything’s going fine”. Their controlled environment is undisturbed. But when they hit a snag in their efforts, produced by anything from a lack of skills to accomplish a task to their standard of quality to simply having too many tasks going at once, in my words, they begin to flounder. What does this mean? It means they do not have the skillset to handle snags.

Step-two has begun, or has reappeared.

High-achievers are successful for a reason. Their drive exists for a reason. Their accomplishments are on display for a reason. They don’t like to fail. So they work as hard at avoiding situations that would lead them to places of failure as they do to achieve in situations where they believe they can find success. They control their environment. But at some point, reality catches up – the one they’ve been specifically working to subvert – and at that point, they are no longer in control and they don’t know how to fail. They often don’t see failure as an option. They often deny failure is an option. They lean into what they do know, and they know control. Until control is somehow restored, they flounder in step-two. It could be days, months, years before they get back to step-one.

What does step-two floundering look like?

When their ability to control their environment fails they turn into themselves to grasp that thing that gives them rest, to grasp that control. DeLong describes that it can look like comparison. It can look like blaming others. Or it can look like blaming themselves as “they overreact and start to say very, very negative things to themselves about why did I choose this job, I’m failing at this, my home life isn’t what I wanted it to be”. I call this overreacting, comparing and blaming control because that is what it is. They refuse to accept a truth that exposes their inability to do something to their standards because they cannot face meeting their greatest fear. The belief that they cannot survive the meeting resides deep within their being. Who are they without their competence? So therefore, they overblow the whole thing and determine that they or someone or something else must have caused the limit. Control. Self-sabotage. Hiding. Giving-up.

And stuck. Stuck floundering. Stuck in step-two. Stuck in the dark and not learning how to fail in order to grow. Not learning how to accept that they have limits and most importantly, that their limits are not a mark on their worth. That the limits ultimately preserve and nurture things that are more than the task. More than the accomplishment. More like relationship.

In the avoiding of many of these life-limit learning opportunities, in the getting through them with as little harm done as possible before re-establishing control, high-achievers don’t learn how to be defeated, how to fail, how to be apart from their accomplishment, so when their environment eventually does defeat their efforts, they lack the resilience to take it in stride. They never learned it. Guilt walks in the door.  And they flounder.

Hard work and control can only go so far before reality catches up.

This is the two-step dance of the high-achiever. It’s why the very bright, highly competitive and competent high-achiever needs a coach. They will work hard, but a coach can help them work smart. And the beginning of working smart is being willing to ask for help. Yet, the very fears that drive their achievement and control are the fears that make it difficult for them to ask for help, because it makes them appear incompetent. Who are they without their competence, they think? Who are they to expose their need?

I believe high-achieving individuals truly fear losing not a competition, but themselves. This is a real fear driving a real lifestyle of achievement. A lifestyle that is by design, on purpose. But a fear that is an imposter. This hidden demon of fear does a fantastic job of paralyzing high-achievers, locking them up and limiting their powerful potential.

Even when a high-achiever works up the courage to begin to work on change, on addressing the snag in their life, with honest desire to walk through it well and discover that by design there truly is more to them than their achievement, DeLong believes that for a high-achiever, this change is difficult to achieve: “They have a very difficult time differentiating between urgent and important. For them, everything is urgent and everything is important. And once that happens, then these individuals often will focus on the task, will forget about relationships, will forget about the human capital dimension, or they’ll forget about the long-term goal. And then there’s a problem.”  As they begin to settle back into that restful place of control, of task accomplishment, their motivation to continue to address any alternative agenda toward change wanes, and they continue to dance the two-step.

They need help to stay focused.

For any change to stick, the high-achiever has to choose to rely on more than themselves. Even with all of their capabilities, they need community. They have to see the two-step dance, the hidden demons of their type. They have to believe they are not defined by their achievements but embrace that, still, they were made to achieve. And they have to want real change. They have to want to grow, own their own need for help, and find those who they can trust with the deepest part of themselves who have a skillset to help them discover and follow a goal, moving forward, following through, with permission to be real along the way. This is working smarter.

It is also the job description of a professional coach. Let me explain.

Coaching is in the business of exposure, of respectfully, non-judgmentally and confidentially shining the light on what is true in order for people to move to places where they want to be, or to discover where they didn’t realize they wanted to be.

High-achievers have spent endless effort working to achieve. Their ability and willingness to work hard benefits everyone around them, both professional and personal relationships. They are needed and of great value to our communities and families.

When they sustainably offer themselves and their achievement design, dancing without the burden of their fears, dancing through the burden of their fears, the very intelligent, highly competitive and competent high-achievers will not only work harder, they will work smarter. And we will all be better for it.

Bottom Line:
If you are a high-achiever, you are purposefully designed to achieve. I know.

What I don’t know is how you are to achieve – but you do.

And coaching can help you discover your solutions that are hidden inside, helping you determine and take authentic action, and thrive.

 

Article by Jill Williams of Springs Coaching, www.springscoaching.com

© Copyright Springs Coaching, 2018. All rights reserved.

 

Works Cited:

Green, S. (2011, May 26). The Hidden Demons of High Achievers. Retrieved May 1, 2018, from https://hbr.org/ideacast/2011/05/the-hidden-demons-of-high-achi.html