What if you could interview the 8 most authentic leaders you’ve either personally worked with (or referred to by other authentic leaders)? I did that, and with their permission, I’m sharing the results in a 4-part series. For context: you can read more on the interview methodology and how I define authenticity.
Today we focus on the second interview question: What are the traits, characteristics, or qualities of high achievers?
(The first interview question is: what drives high achievers? You can read the article here.)
In general, the traits of high achievers are split between two categories: a deep knowing of themselves (their gifts and their limitations) and the development of strong relational skills across different dimensions.
The key point is that being smart and talented is not sufficient to be a consistent high achiever in the long term. The ability to develop relationships in different ways is key to get others to be on board with your project, goal, or vision is key, especially as one gets promoted to more senior roles and responsibilities.
Authentic high achievers have a strong self responsibility based on self awareness, confidence, and humility AND developed the ability to get others to swim in the direction that they want to go towards.
Characteristic: Know thyself on a deep level
- Deep understanding of own capabilities and strengths. High achievers are realistic about their true capabilities, especially as one becomes older and/or more experienced and/or more accomplished, and become more confident about what they are good at and not good at.
- Adaptability and flexibility fuels the ability to transition successfully from different career stages. Most people are hired into roles that require technical skills, or at least the ability to learn the specific skills whether it is doing polymerase chain reaction in a lab, creating compelling PowerPoint presentations, or code effectively and efficiently. However as one is promoted, even if they are promoted based on technical skills, they now need to manage people or projects, which requires different skills and people may not have the training to manage others.
So the ability to successfully navigate from individual contributor to manager of people to leader of managers is key to being a high achiever. In order to do so, high achievers need to learn new skills and give up certain activities in order to be more strategic. This includes the ability to navigate new social environments and cultures.
- Having high standards for self– while one does not have to be best at everything to be a high achiever, one has to have sufficient threshold in most areas and excel in specific ones. For example: if one is a triathlete, one does not have to be amazing at swimming, running, and biking. However, one does have to be sufficiently skilled at all three tasks and amazing in at least 1 in order to consistently perform well in triathlons.
It is also important to be good at something you enjoy in order to have long term success. While it is possible to excel at things we don’t like, it is not sustainable in the longer term.
Characteristic: Adapted at developing various relational skills
- Getting things done through relationshipsbecause no one person can get to a high level by themselves. For example: CEOs tend to have deep networks and relationships to help them achieve.
- Ability to ask for help is pivotal because no one person can be an expert in every field. One interviewee shared a story: a group of new hires at a prestigious consulting firm was being shown around on their first day. They got to meet different team members, managers, and departments including some who specialized in specific fields. At the end they were given a task of having 24 hours to come up with research on a specific obscure topic that no one had any idea about. Most of the new hires spent all night doing research, crunching numbers, and organizing the information. One new hire just retraced their steps to the specialists they met, requested a meeting, and was able to get the task done in a few hours. Asking for help and not muscling through was a key ingredient to their subsequent success.
- Nurturing of othersfrees up the time and bandwidth to take on more challenging roles, new skills, and create an ability to get things done through other people instead of taking on everything themselves. While it is possible to achieve as a micromanager – where one prescribes to a specific way of doing things, micromanagers miss out on the satisfaction of supporting the accomplishments of others. It is also possible to be a high achiever as an “expert” which is more of a solo endeavor and does not necessarily rely on the nurturing of others and their accomplishments
- Openness to feedback and continuous learning– this includes the willingness to receive feedback from others even when it is difficult, knowing what questions to ask, and the confidence to make decisions without all of the information, for it is not possible to have all the right information.
So there you have it: the traits that drive consistent long term success in authentic high achiever consists of a deep knowing of themselves and the ability to cultivate different relationships that drives success.
Next week we will look at the responses to the 3rd interview question: not all high achievers are authentic, so what makes some high achievers authentic?
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Do you know an authentic high achiever you wish I’d interviewed? Message me their name! I would love to invite them into a bigger study.
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[…] PPS: The second interview question is: What are the traits, characteristics, or qualities of high achievers? You can read the article here. […]
[…] PPS: The second interview question is: What are the traits, characteristics, or qualities of high achievers? You can read the article here. […]