The Tenacious Top Talents ?
Organizations – Past, Present and Future are driven by high performing teams.
The high performing teams are in fact built by high performing individuals or the top talents. These talent are untouched, unnerved by the situation prevailing inside the organization. The sole purpose is to perform and achieve the next orbit of success for themselves, for team and for the organization. But is this the real story around them. I doubt.
I have worked for two great organizations and the more I have interacted with these kind of talents the more I am sure they are fighting their own exhaustive battle. Every day they fight both internally and externally to stay motivated & confident and bag that all important results which is synonym to their performance. Let’s see and try to relate if the same points resonates with us or people we know who are the top most corner of the performance & potential box.
The Pursuit of Excellence: (Internal Battle)
It starts young and fast. The DNA is molded right from the day the person puts his first foot on the ground to walk. The benchmarks are set by someone else in family or parents, later in schools/colleges and finally inside the corporate corridors. You have to do this to been seen as that, is the common carrot or ultimate reward which is thrown out regularly. This causes him/her to start seeking excellence in every single step to achieve the result which will bring the ultimate glory. There is no harm in running for excellence but the day it start getting into something as an enslavement or fixation is where the problem arises. As they say “too much analyzes leads to paralyses”. This kills the breeding ground of stretch ability and flexibility in term of new solutions. The risk taking abilities is routinely brought down which has an impact on the actual desired results. Look anywhere and you will find that today’s market condition is driven by speed of innovation and on flexibility of continuous improvement. This pursuit of excellence derails the result’s tempo to many extent.
The Analogy Paradox: (External Battle)
It is always easy for everyone to compare an apple to orange. The case is no different for the high performer. They are compared time and again with the other best in the business. Every small move in term of any decision is silently and vehemently observed and recorded. Every action is neatly placed and talked about how the other best talent would have gone ahead with this. The bad news is that there is no coming out of this trap anytime in future and soon it becomes hardwired to their brains to be cautious while making decision as the comparison scales are out there and high. This becomes a chink in their armor and howsoever confident the fa?ade is from the outside, there is deep sense of anxiety and insecurity that gets mentally kicked in every time they are out there to perform. Only the mentally tough survive once they realize everyone is facing the same injustice of their hard work and talent.
Being Lucky instead of Talented: (External Battle)
When you are ambitious and yearn to reach the top of the game. There is no denying the fact that luck do play a pivotal role. But with no talent and hard work it is tough to survive even though you capture the heights you intended to. People forget the fact that, could be he/she was lucky to be at that position. But if he/she has survived there for long now it means he/she had the better substitute of talent instead of just plain luck. The dilemma for them is real and time and again they have to fight this notion of biasedness’. They are talked about as a parasite who regularly feed on other’s performance to get their brownie points and later when the reward comes they don’t share the same with everyone in the team. Their ideas are frequently challenged, achievements are written off and are painted a picture of someone who knows the art of swindling people for their own benefit, brand enhancement. This is never a comfortable feeling for them when you know that swathe of people around you are hoping that you fail in any of the important assignment. Whatever little skill and competency deficiency these talents have are next brought on the forefront to celebrate how eternally their run of success was purely on luck. This does have an impact on them and surely the mentally tough survive.
On the Wrong side of Winning: (Internal Battle)
The art of winning should be a righteous habit. As the guru say there is a way to win. The win or the accomplishment should bring joy, peace, satisfaction and happiness to you. You have learned an art of overcoming that specific challenges and in future this will just be a zilch in front of the next challenge which you are set to conquer. But is this the perfect winning template for many high performers. The answer is plain simple no, life for them is a race and whatever strategy they chose to help them overcome that specific challenge is short lived. They need to invest again a lot of energy and mental strength to overcome the same challenge the next time and thus their winning ways are not any more sustainable. They should stop and evaluate the thing they did right and wrong to strengthen the way of perfect wins. Instead once a specific goals is achieved they jump on the next bandwagon of challenges and keep riding till the time there is a burnout, sometimes at early phases of career. This accomplishments are majority of time empty and there is always an iota of self-doubt associated with every wins.