I’ve spent the last 20 years coaching leaders on how to increase their impact at work. Most successful leaders don’t find their careers stalling because they’re not capable of doing their jobs. They start faltering because of HOW they’re doing said job. For successful people there’s a dynamic tension between the things that make us successful – confidence, ownership, optimism and persistence – and the things that cause us to trip up – arrogance, self-delusion, winning too much and the inability to let go.
Unfortunately, once we’ve leant too far into the ‘dark side’ of those success factors, these negative behaviours get cemented into the minds of those around us. If you’ve been given feedback on a particular negative behaviour, the most important thing you must do is change those perceptions in addition to actually changing the behaviour. Trying to go it alone, won’t work. Engage the people around you whose opinions matter to make sure you’re on track and to make sure they’re seeing all that new behaviour and not the old stuff.
Who has a negative perception of you that you’d like to change?
