According to Jennifer and Gianpiero Petriglieri, professors of organizational behavior at the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD¹), who have worked with future leaders for over twenty years, “you can’t shine under the spotlight of opportunity or the magnifying glass of expectations for long without burning out, except by putting certain safeguards in place”. There are three signs that will tell you when your employees are beginning to go into defensive mode and perceive things in a negative light.
Three warning signs
1. Don’t just use your talent, try to demonstrate it
Once you’ve entered the ” high-potential ” pool, the excitement of recognition may fade, while the succession of new expectations creates a constant pressure. To show that they keep their promises, these brilliant people constantly calculate when and how to use themselves. This was the case for Laura, who had given up a PhD in artificial intelligence for a strategic position in a company marketing consumer goods: she quickly fell into a spiral of burnout, caught up in her anxiety to show others – and herself – that she was up to the challenge. She was afraid the others wouldn’t dare tell her they didn’t think she was up to the job. This was far from being the case: used to seeing her handle everything, and quite happy to have her do so, her superiors and colleagues felt she needed little help.
⇒ The Skillspotting visionThe harm inherent in a partial release are obvious here: each presupposes what the other thinks, and in stressful situations, this deviation very often generates negative thoughts which hinder cooperation and therefore performance (see our article on the importance of compare your own world map with that of your interlocutor).
Although Laura, like many others, had learned not to give up when the going got tough and to never stop developing her skills, learning itself had become a means of asserting her talent. In the end, experiments that could extend her abilities but also reveal her weaknesses became synonymous with risks she couldn’t afford to take.
⇒ The ” rebellious ” side of her beginnings has turned into conformism, which has considerably diminished her ability to change “style” and pushed her to evolve more and more in a defensive mode.
Apter model
In the opinion of two INSEAD researchers, this is how special people become ordinary. And the pressure is even greater for minorities, who feel obliged to take on the role of role models: Laura felt she had to serve as an example to other women; instead of seeking to extend her expertise, she remained confined to the fields she knew well and in which she was successful.
⇒ At this point, we stop taking pleasure in our work: everything becomes calculation and preoccupation, which transforms the way we act and interact and ends up staging the dreaded reality. It’s the famous self-fulfilling prophecy…
2. The image we project takes precedence over the search for authenticity
⇒ The need for recognition is exacerbated when one is considered a “talent”, and it stifles the spontaneity and creativity associated with the playful, rebellious state of Apter’s model.
While many companies encourage their employees to give of themselves in their work, those labeled “high potentials” only show the aspects corresponding to the material side of their leadership, which reinforces their feeling of lacking authenticity. “In Maryse Dubouloy’s words: “The very resistant myth of excellence that often takes the place of the corporate ideal replaces their ideal of the self (…) Thus, the ransom of success, the price HPs have to pay, is the renunciation of their interiority and their desire. But this habit of showing only a part of themselves ends up limiting them. This is what the famous psychologist Alice Miller has called the ” drama of the gifted child “: in her work, she describes how curious, intelligent children are led to hide their feelings and bury their needs in order to stick to their parents’ expectations. In the same way, cutting themselves off from a part of themselves pushes talented people into a dead end: they no longer realize themselves, or they do so too incompletely. They find themselves dispossessed of their talents, which now belong to a “mother” organization that is both distant and demanding. “The behaviours and skills required to reach managerial positions (….) are becoming the benchmark for high potentials. Many of them end up excluding other possible skills,” laments Maryse Dubouloy.
⇒ These managers then no longer ask themselves how what they are can make them excellent leaders, how to mobilize their strengths to be successful leaders, nor how to build their own leadership style by adapting it to the situations encountered and the people involved.
3. Projection into an idealized future
For people who feel trapped by their company’s expectations and expect great rewards for enduring this captivity with dignity, the present loses all meaning. They begin to project themselves into a future that will bring to fruition what they dream of expressing, and will see their true personality emerge: what they will be becomes more important than what they are, and they imagine that any other choice will turn out to be better for them. Having lost interest in the present, they stop giving their best, and if they continue down this path, even changing jobs won’t help.
⇒ Indeed, many people think that climbing the ladder is the only way to advance their career; they’ve never had the opportunity to do so. take a step back and ask questions about their profound aspirationsat the risk of increasingly distant from themselves andaccept a job that doesn’t suit them.
TO BE CONTINUED…
→ In our third and final episode, you’ll discover how to break the curse…
Note
¹INSEAD: Institut européen d’administration des affaires, a private business school with three main campuses in Fontainebleau, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, and a member of Sorbonne Universités. His MBA was ranked No. 1 worldwide in 2016 by the Financial Times.
Sources :
– Jennifer Petriglieri / Gianpiero Petriglieri, The Talent Curse, Harvard Business Review, May-June 2017
– Savannah Horton, The Talent Curse: when your “future leader” label gets in the way of good work, Bowdoin Dayly Sun, April 20, 2017: http: //dailysun.bowdoin.edu/2017/04/the-talent-curse-when-your-future-leader-label-gets-in-the-way-of-good-work-harvard-business-review/
– Maryse Dubouloy, Les ” hauts potentiels ” et le ” faux-self “, in Le Journal des psychologues 2006/3 (n°236), p.22-26 : http://www.cairn.info/revue-le-journal-des-psychologues-2006-3-page-22.htm