26 September 2006
Successful Intentions Newsletter
Hi ,
How's your livelihood? Are you on track? Or is that crashing noise in the background the sound of your career derailing?!
Off the Rails
These days there are so many ways for you to get bumped off the tracks. Globalization, deregulation, consolidation, and acquisition, all create new and highly complex environments. Your organization's receptivity to change and external market forces also help to explain why your career might be in danger of crashing. But these factors by themselves don't explain the near epidemic of career shortfalls and failures. What's going on, and how can you protect yourself?
Life Stages
It turns out successful career progression has a lot to do with how well you transition through the life stages of adult development, most notably midlife (approximately ages 38 to 50). This is a time of confronting the discrepancies between the dreams of adolescence and the realities of current achievements or failures. Midlife is a critical step towards a higher level of self-knowledge, a greater acceptance of strengths and weaknesses, and an increased tolerance and resilience towards others.
One way to think about life stages is in terms of your beliefs about your identity. Ellen Van Velsor and Wilfred Drath from the Center for Creative Leadership suggest there are three consecutive developmental stages that affect leadership and career progression:
- The self-reading belief that "identity can be understood by reading it in the way important other people respond",
- The self-authoring belief that "one creates one's own identity according to self-generated standards", and finally a higher state:
- The self-revising belief that "while being the author of an identity, one is responsible for continuously re-creating it in alignment with one's environment"
In a sample of managers and teachers, they found 36% were transitioning from self-reading to self-authoring, and 48% were in the self-authoring developmental position. Only 1% were transitioning from self-authoring to self-revising. This transition typically occurs through midlife and beyond, leading to the development of wisdom, although not all are able to master the change.
However, Life stages are not necessarily linear. Regression - reverting back to earlier, less mature behaviour - seems to be pretty widespread in commercial organizations! Defensive behaviours represent a resistance to following a path of progressive adult development.
Turning to the Dark Side
Does this mean you're principally responsible for your own career derailment? Mostly, yes! Personality characteristics can cause dysfunctional behaviours that negatively impact teams, relationships and performance. The most commonly reported flaws are insensitivity and a grandiose self-image often reflected in the belief that the normal rules do not apply. What were previously strengths become weaknesses, leading to blind spots, arrogance, and the poor handling of bad luck.
The "dark side" of your interpersonal style comes out when you're under stress, when you don't care how you're evaluated, or when you think no one's watching. What seemed a benign flaw at one level of development can become lethal with a change in context.
For example, what was once energy and enthusiasm can turn into inappropriate anger and outbursts, leading to others beginning to avoid you. Being entertaining, flirtatious, and engaging can morph into overly dramatic attention seeking behaviours. And hard-working, self-sacrificing strengths can lead to being over controlling, rigid, and micromanaging.
According to Robert Hogan of Hogan Assessment Systems there are three groups of personality factors implicated in career derailment:
- Intimidation: gaining security by threatening people and scaring them away.
- Flirtation and seduction: winning recognition with self-promotion and charm.
- Ingratiation: ensuring approval by being loyal and becoming indispensable.
Your risk of running off the rails depends on how much of these factors you are presently exhibiting in your interpersonal style.
Back on Track
OK, , so what can you do to protect yourself? Firstly, there's no getting away from a commitment to lifelong learning. And - here's where the advertising plug comes in - there's no better way to facilitate the development of wisdom performance in your career than with a trusted executive coach!
But you can also go a long way to "staying on track no matter what" through developing a realistic self-awareness of both your strengths and limitations. And by seeking to best answer the question, "who do I choose to be?" in every situation.
Keep your intentions clear,
Peter Webb
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