Everyone has an Achilles' heel - a weakness that can lead to the downfall of even the most powerful warrior. Have you identified yours? If not, you may face a career stall or even derailment.
"The way people fail in their careers is very generic and transfers across industries," says James Waldroop, a business psychologist and creator of Career Leader, an Internet career assessment program based in Brookline, Mass. Identify the behaviors that hold you back and it's possible to address them, he says.
Waldroop and Harvard University business professor Timothy Butler have studied bad habits that paralyze employees for almost two decades. Bad habits include never feeling good enough, doing too much, avoiding conflict, lacking a sense of boundaries, letting fear drive you, functioning as emotionally tone deaf and lacking a sense of direction and purpose. These behaviors arise from an individual's genes and from environmental influences, such as family, friends and colleagues.
To recover from bad habits calls for a three-part plan, says Butler: you must admit it's a bad habit, plan to advance differently and learn new patterns of behavior. "Walk your talk," he says. "Rewire your brain."
A tight labor market makes it even more important for individuals to assess their shortcoming and examine their major behavioral patterns.
"The diagnosis is easy. The hard part is really working on eliminating those bad habits," he says. In extreme cases, one might consider seeking psychological help. In others, coaching or consulting with career professionals or a supervisor may be enough.
To facilitate assessment, they have assembled the habits into six difficult personality types, some of which could have multiple bad habits.
• The hero always pushes himself too hard to do too much.
• The meritocrat believes that the best ideas can and will be determined objectively.
• The bulldozer runs over others in a quest for power.
• The pessimist focuses on the downside of every change.
• The rebel fights authority and convention.
• The homerun hitter tries to do too much too soon.
Among the worst habits is negative self-esteem, which leads to not feeling good enough or fearing like a failure.
"Building a career on a foundation of poor self-esteem is equivalent to erecting a skyscraper on sandy soil," Waldroop explains.
Don't let poor self-esteem undermine your professional confidence. The goal should be to act effectively while accepting personal shortcomings and life disappointments, Waldroop says.
Avoid thinking that outcomes could have been different - "If only I had..." Trying to take on too much - typical behavior of heroes and homerun hitters - also demonstrates a lack of self-esteem.
"These groups of people worry that they won't get ahead, that their strenuous efforts to reach the top go unappreciated," he explains. Pessimists are also motivated primarily by a fear being wrong or inadequate.
Below are three transformative changes that can eliminate an Achilles heels:
Understand the world from the perspective of other people. This change embraces seeing the world from other perspectives. A well-developed sense of empathy helps deal with peers, subordinates, managers, customers and competitors. A meritocract would find peace if only they understood that compromises are often necessary to reach solutions.
Recognize when and how to use power. Waldroop explains that people confuse using power with abusing it and they avoid it altogether. Others, like bulldozers, use power in unnecessary ways. The best is to find a comfort zone in relation to power.
Come to terms with authority. Some people defy their supervisors as often as possible, while others grow too deferential. One doesn't need to stop questioning and thinking independently. But a rebel might channel his energy into constructive criticism rather than complaints.
