You may be a top performer (and not even realize it)

Consider this, friends: you may be worth more than your work history suggests.

Actually, let me say it another way.

If you've always been a high performer, there's actually a good reason to believe you've been underpaid in every position you've ever held. Especially if you're one of millions who in the past few years has realized you may have some sort of imposter syndrome.

Why?

For many, performance isn't just about results. It's also about loyalty, cultural contributions in the workplace, wearing your employer's brand as a proud evangelist, and sticking with the team through challenges that might send others packing. Along with results, this is a valuable set of traits in an employee. But if you're not the type who pounds your chest with every win, your humility may be hurting you.

This all creates a situation RIPE for abuse for high performers who struggle with confidence.

You know the type. The colleague you worked with at some other job whom you've been trying and trying to recruit to new opportunities, but for some inexplicable reason, they just won't leave. Their anchor is down, their value is established in their own mind, and the fear of change is just too much to warrant its pursuit.

Few things are more demoralizing to a professional than being surrounded by low performers and a business that is unwilling or unable to harness its most talented team members.

But this tendency flies in the face of workforce trends, and it is incompatible with the workforce of the future.

Across every industry, it seems, it's easier to get more pay and a better title by leaving your employer than by working internally toward promotions. Loyal performers buck this trend, but more often than not, they're the ones paying the price. You can develop tunnel vision, where you actually *can't imagine* anything else, possibly because your employer has trained you to devalue your skills, and possibly because you actually don't know your own value. Because you've been in the same place for long enough to lose objectivity.

After all, your loyalty is a gift to your employer that will come back to you in immeasurable ways, right? Well ... probably not. The days of pensions and other loyalty-rewarding mechanisms are gone, and with "right to work" laws in 27 states ensuring you can be fired for any reason, at any time, without explanation, your reasons for rewarding your employer with free loyalty diminish by the year.

Even worse, many employers have become exceedingly good at suppressing discussions of pay inequality, boxing up employees based on their functions, and pacifying the restless with lip-service title promotions (where you get a new title without a raise commensurate to your value), peer awards, and other trivialities.

After all, why would you leave your job for a 40% raise elsewhere when your boss just surprised you with candy and a paper award on your 14-year anniversary?

Considering you have a limited number of working years in your life, and your quality of life in retirement depends entirely on what you can earn prior to it, you've got compelling reasons to look out for yourself, and few reasons to trust your employer will gain a new magical ability to see you in a new light, the perennial top performer who rarely asks for a raise and who never utters the dreaded phrase "I've received another offer."

My request to you is this: first, decide if you consider yourself a top performer.

And please, walk with me for a minute here. For myriad reasons, your ability to assess your own performance may be limited. With that in mind, here's a good checklist. And I've got a few questions to help:

1. Are you passionate about your craft?

If you're constantly pursuing personal and professional improvement, even when it's not assigned or expected from you, you're already 50% of the way to top performer status.

2. Does your work seem to come easy to you?

If your native genius is aligned with your job role, your work will seem easy to you. Unfortunately, this may lead you to making the grave mistake of confusing your high performance with being overpaid for your role, which only suppresses your self-worth and thus discourages you from going to bat for yourself. Allow yourself to consider that it's your unique talent that makes your work seem easy and not because you're doing work better suited to a machine or a talented monkey.

3. Do you find yourself continually frustrated with your organization's fear of change?

This is a big one. If your ideas are routinely met with resistance you can't understand, you may be a top performer stuck in an organization incapable of working at your speed. And if you find yourself caring more about your company's success than its leaders, that's a prime signal you need to flee to greener pastures.

4. Are you often pushing to disrupt your organization or industry?

Top performers are unafraid of change, and unafraid of making difficult decisions. Because they've learned the best stuff lies on the other side of innovation.

5. Do you regularly make positive contributions to all aspects of your workplace culture?

Not just business outcomes, but cultural contributions, volunteerism, brand evangelism, etc. Poor performers see these as distractions. Top performers understand the holistic nature of performance.

If your answer is "yes" to all of these questions, chances are you're a top performer buried in a mediocre environment that will not only suppress your career growth, it'll take a toll on your mental health, too. Few things are more demoralizing to a professional than being surrounded by low performers and a business that is unwilling or unable to harness its most talented team members.

So do yourself a big favor. If you're in this undesirable situation, go full Marie Kondo on your current position. Thank it for its role in your career, thank your peers for existing, and put it behind you. Your mental health, and your future employer, will thank you.