The Two-Step Dance Of The High-Achiever

by Jill Williams, May 1, 2018

Why The Very Bright, Highly Competitive And Competent High-Achiever Needs Help

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”.

If someone is avoiding exposure, let’s call this “B”, are they avoiding growth? We’ll call this “C”. 

To be clear:

“A” is light shining on reality that allows what is real to grow.

“B” is avoiding exposure.

“C” is avoiding growth.

So let’s get back to it:

If A + B = C, then it’s likely high-achievers are not growing.

Why? Because high-achievers tend to avoid 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, therefore “C”.

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, they begin to flounder. What does this mean? It means they do not have the skillset to handle snags.

Step-one breaks down and Step-two has begun, or has begun again.

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 that meetup 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 snagged. They get 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. More like growth.

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 help. Without help, they will remain in Guarded Relationships™ and they will not know Growth Relationships™.

High-achievers will work hard, but they will guard everything. 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?

As a high-achieving individual, I can say that I believe we truly fear losing not a competition, but ourselves. 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 like me, locking us up and limiting our potential.

Even when a high-achiever works up the courage to begin 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 grow.

The high-achiever has to choose to want more. 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 things to be different. 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 can help them discover more with permission to be real along the way.

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 their communities and families.

When they sustainably offer themselves and their achiever design, dancing without the burden of their fears, dancing through the burden of their fears, seeing failure as the feedback that it is, the very intelligent, highly competitive and competent high-achievers will grow and step out of the dance to keep climbing toward their potential. They will experience more growth and less guard in their life and leadership. And we will all be better for it.

Our BTR Leadership Series is designed specifically to help you step out of this two-step dance by taking two different, less traveled steps to grow:

1. Safely step into the spotlight by courageously committing to meet with a structured and supportive micro leadership group made up of people you trust to equip yourself with tools to help you lead with confidence, purpose, connection, and joy!

2. Productively work 1:1 with a professional coach to help you achieve the outcomes you want.

Copyright 2018, 2022 Jill Williams 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