Do you have overly ambitious tendencies that can lead to workaholism?
Do you seek fame and being the best at all costs?
Do you have a burning desire to impress others with your efficiency and effectiveness?
Are you overly concerned about your image and what others think of you?
Does achieving results make you lose sight of your emotions, deeper feelings and interests?
Does your focus on external success adversely affect your relationships and make you disconnected with your significant other?
Does your competitive nature sometimes lead you to arrogance and contempt for others?
If your answers to most of these questions is yes, you may have what Shirzad Chamine refers to as a hyper-achiever saboteur in his Positive Intelligence book (2012). People with a hyper-achiever personality tend to be driven, success-oriented, pragmatic, self-starters and often image conscious. They need to feel successful and valuable through their achievements, challenges met, obstacles overcome. They strive to develop their talents and capabilities and so may come across as competent, energetic, hard-working and committed.
Whilst these personality traits are often encouraged in certain cultures, they can be problematic when accomplishment is the condition for self-love, self-acceptance, and ultimately self-identity.
People who have a hyper-achiever temperament can lose touch with their authentic selves early in childhood, for example if their school performance was the condition for acceptance and love from others, perhaps from an ambitious and intelligent mother with an underprivileged background who wanted her son or daughter to succeed. When the child grows as an adult, their hyper-achiever saboteur becomes a fearsome beast, allowing only brief celebrations of achievement because the focus is constantly on the next performance.
In their quest to be productive, achieve success and avoid failure, these people neglect important relationships and may feel empty inside. In order to see themselves as successful, they may go on starvation diets, be driven to exhaustion by workout programs, or indulge in excessive cosmetic surgery. At their worst, they can be overly competitive, narcissistic and vindictive.
At work, these individuals tend to work within a very rigid framework with little space for non-work-related activities and for time off. They may take too much caffeine or other substances and often succumb to workaholism. If problems occur, and they always do, their self-identity is at risk. When stressed, people with a hyper-achiever saboteur may develop performance-related anxiety and waste a lot mental and emotional energy. They become alienated from their true selves with their extreme focus on thinking and action.
People leaders with a hyper-achiever personality may keep their direct reports at safe distance and struggle to generate loyalty from them, with a leadership style that is neither inclusive nor inspiring. If people intuitively sense that they are only serving their boss’s goals, in the long run their hyper-achiever boss will achieve less and not more.
How strong is the hyper-achiever in you?
What’s the biggest impact of the hyper-achiever saboteur on your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.