Self-Stereotyping Can Damage Your Career

Sometimes managers are just too damn self-aware. We all think about how we come across to people, but often trap ourselves in our own self-stereotypes.

For example. Your boss has a reputation as a perfectionist. Your boss is perfectly aware of this reputation and has bought into it. Every project submitted to him must be done over, and redone again. It's never good enough the first or second time -- even if it is good enough.

Your boss, and you as his employee, are being hurt by his self-stereotype.

Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, writing on Harvard Business Publishing, terms this destructive self behavior the excessive need to be yourself.

"If we buy into our behavior definition of "me," which most humans do, we can learn to excuse almost any annoying action by saying, "That's just the way I am!"

Hey, I'm always late to meetings. That's just the way I am! Yes, I'm detail oriented. Micromanaging is just the way I am! I go easy on my employees at performance review time. My employees are like family, that's just the way I manage!

The problem is that these false sense of selves hamper our performance and thus our career advancement. Treating your subordinates as friends, for example, retards their development and makes the organization less smart.

Goldsmith offers a great touching stone for evaluating your own behavior at work. The next time you catch yourself resisting change and thinking "that's just the way I am," rethink who "me" actually is.

(Image by littledan77, CC 2.0)