If you think of yourself as “ambitious,” “multidimensional,” or a “high-energy person” and have long-term focus and self-discipline, you may be what we call a high achiever. This article describes your most outstanding personality traits and how they land in the workplace. If you often come across as overwhelming, threatening, or impatient, you will find specific advice to strengthen your communication, work relationships, and career development. You can apply those tips as well to your personal life. Do you want to be promoted to a manager position, or are you managing high achievers yourself? Learn more on How to Manage High Achievers in the workplace.
- Personality of high achievers
- High achievers and their relationships at work
- Career advice for high achievers
- How can executive coaching help high achievers thrive?
Personality of high achievers
What is a high achiever?
A high achiever is a person who delivers on high standards consistently, and in all realms of life. They may consider themselves ambitious, enthusiastic, highly energetic, or career-oriented.
They don´t get easily offended when others call them workaholics. They know their ambition comes with a high level of resilience and extremely fast, effective, and robust delivery.
High achievers are ambitious in all realms of life.
High achievers strive to operate with high standards of quality and results both at home and in the boardroom. They are enthusiastic, often strategic, structured, punctual, and well-organized.
Above all, they are goal-oriented, perfectionists, and tough on themselves. They're driven by challenges and long for them in all areas of life.
Let 's see how.
Quick Quiz: Are you a high achiever?
Use this checklist to determine the density of traits, both positive and negative, you recognize in yourself. This quiz is not a diagnosis, but identifying your most common features will help you connect the dots and understand how they determine how you think, relate, and operate in your work and personal life.
High achievers: general personality traits
| POSITIVE | NEGATIVE | Career-focused Ambitious Enthusiastic Goal oriented Strivers Deliverers Organizers Provide and indicate directions to others High expectations Inspirational Motivating Identify opportunities others can’t/don´t see Great at working under pressure and stress Make quick decisions in crises Bold and courageous under pressure Experts that prepare and analyze Empathic on their terms |
They can be “heavy” on family as career is their focus Dispersed focus: lots of goals or projects at once Overwhelming to others Self-sabotaging Procrastinators Biggest self-critics High expectations for themselves and others (at work, in relationships, or in sports) Impostor syndrome Not easy to trust others Don’t take time for praise, celebration, or rest Work over holidays Give straightforward feedback Come across as “brutal” Perceived as superficial Considered often non-emphatic leaders Lacking work-life balance |
What drives a high achiever at work?
- High achievers drive on challenges. Challenges apply to all spheres of life: personal and professional. That's how they motivate themselves and how you can motivate them best.
- High achievers are high standards people. These high-energy people are persistent as hell. They move step by step, fighting until they meet their goal. They don't take things superficially. On the contrary, they dive deep and are highly professional.
However, they are also perfectionists, so that they might be overwhelming for others. - High achievers often suffer from impostor syndrome. High achievers fail when they go to the extreme and are obsessed with goals. That happens often in the face of comparison, insufficiency, and impostor syndrome, leading to enormous suffering.
When they obsess with challenges that aren't their own to equal others, they lose focus and orientation, taking themselves to the edge of burnout. Once they meet a challenge, they throw themselves into the next one, incapable of stopping or pausing.
High achieving is a behavior, not a blessing nor a judgment.
There's no such thing as "non-high achievers." What exists are people who are more focused on tasks who thrive in the field of execution, and we usually call them high achievers. High achievers typically prioritize their career goals over other realms of life.
I also know high achievers who operate the other way around and prioritize their fulfillment and inner growth in the same ferocious way. The latest usually have more empathic traits; both are perfect for balancing each other.
Their constant drive can be overwhelming and certainly is for their friends and family.
High achievers and their relationships at work
There's a difference between how high achievers perceive themselves and how they land on others.
How high achievers come across at work.
If you want to avoid clashes and get your teams thriving, understanding the difference is crucial to both employees and managers:
- High achievers come across as superficial: they are not. They're ambitious and highly focused on their challenges, but in their pursuit, they dive deep even if you can't see - or they don't show.
- High achievers come across as overwhelming. They keep going till they mark the standard or result. Family and colleagues often complain about them not being able to stop. They will, on their time.
- High achievers are considered non-empathic leaders. In their forward motion - colleagues will call it an obsession - they seem unsupportive to others. They can give little to no room for celebration and provide direct feedback - often called "brutal".
High achievers have empathy: they decide with whom to use it and when.
They consider others and understand they can't do things alone. But if they prioritize, they will always prioritize the task and the goal. They lead the company with high-level standards, multiple objectives, and a high speed of execution by perfection.
For others, they might be too much. Be aware.
How to speak to your colleagues and boss if you are a high achiever?
Your vision and energy are among your most wanted traits. However, you must actively involve your boss and colleagues in the opportunity creation, delivery, and implementation process to be engaging.
Listen to what they have to say, and:
- Speak respectfully: Speaking with respect is essential regardless of your position or the person you are speaking with. Use a professional tone, avoid negative language or personal attacks, and listen actively to the other person's perspective.
- Be clear and concise: High achievers can sometimes be passionate and enthusiastic about their work, but it's essential to communicate your ideas concisely and slowly. Avoid rambling or going off tangents; focus on the key points you want to convey.
- Show gratitude and appreciation: If a colleague or boss helps you with a project or provides feedback, show gratitude and appreciation. A simple "thank you" can go a long way in building positive relationships and fostering a collaborative work environment.
- Ask proactively for feedback: High achievers can sometimes be defensive or resistant to feedback, but it's important to be open and receptive to constructive criticism. Listen actively, ask clarifying questions, and focus on improving based on the feedback you receive.
High achievers can be hard to follow.
That's because their minds are fast. They are thrilled by their ideas and rumble in different directions, unaware of the energy others have to invest in following them or staying on track.
In conversation with others, slow down to:
- Pause: Take time to listen to others
- Understand: What are their ideas and proposals? What do they feel and need?
- Propose: What do you propose to create opportunities based on their needs?
Self-leadership is the magic weapon of any high achiever.
As proof of self-leadership, let your managers and colleagues know the conditions you need to thrive best. I'm aware this advice will freak you out. For us, asking for support and feedback or being outspoken about our needs demonstrates weakness. So tough (and vulnerable) are we.
Many of us seek recognition and appreciation in tortuous ways, unnecessarily making relationships with colleagues and managers difficult.
The best way around this is to develop your self-leadership skills
I advise you to dive deep into your personality and intrinsic motivators and work on your communication and emotional intelligence skills.
Actionable: Requesting support from your management.
As a starting point, you can use the following ideas to let your managers know your needs. You operate best when managers:
- Trigger you with challenges: Professional challenges (a new strategy, management, or people-related project); or personal challenges (managing your energy, personal time and mental health).
- Provide clear expectations and goals: This helps you to stay focused and motivated.
- Provide a collaborative work environment: You perform best where I can bounce ideas off others and work together towards a goal.
- Recognize and celebrate achievements: This helps you to feel motivated.
- Offer opportunities for professional development: You´re interested in improving my skills and knowledge.
- Give constructive, specific, and actionable feedback: You can take this as a chance for growth.
- Encourage work-time balance: You can benefit from health programs and flexible schedules to prevent burnout and learn to pause, relax and rest.
The best thing your managers can do for you is to create the conditions for you to stay focused on the action, the advancement, and the progression toward your goal.
Career advice for high achievers
How to team with others as a high achiever?
You must understand that collaborating will be more productive in the long run as a high achiever than a solo performance. Does this come as a surprise?
Here are five golden partnerships you can seek when creating a team or integrating yourself into one:
- High-emotionally intelligent people: These people will understand how you thrive, what empowers you, and the range of freedom you need to contribute simultaneously with your expertise in various tasks and projects. High-engager managers and team members will give you wings!
- Analytical nitty-gritty minds: Yes, these people will be your best allies to prevent you from falling into blind spots, skipping critical data, or rushing into action before proper analysis.
- Straight-forward communicators: People who are clear-minded and have zero problems stating their priorities, process, expectations, and standards. They will do miracles to help you focus, complete tasks, and know when enough is enough to move to the following task without getting trapped in your perfectionism.
- Engagers and amplifiers: People who understand your vision, contribution, and where you're heading in your fast-forward motion. They will get elevated with your high energy and use it for themselves and to support others (something you may be less interested in doing yourself constantly).
- Supporters: Supporters will also help you perform better in projects by allowing you to focus, patiently reminding instructions, and checking with you between projects.
Getting to know yourself is the smartest investment
As a high achiever myself, I partner in my team and with external collaborators who:
- Understand what I'm after and my high-speed way of working.
- Bounce off ideas and stimulate me.
- Check-in with me and remind me of goals and processes during projects.
- Check-in with others on their performance and needs.
- Recognize my contribution to their work through my expertise, guidance, and high energy.
- Take my praise for their contribution - also if I stated concisely.
- Make sure I celebrate upon accomplishment.
- Encourage my work-life balance (by booking "workations" and flight tickets). :-)
Please dedicate time and resources to figure yourself out. The PCM personality test can help you identify your traits and how to turn them into strengths, wrapped into a specific action plan and individual coaching guidance.
What are the top job recommendations for high achievers?
As an executive search consultant, I will recommend you as a high achiever to focus on this selection and understand why:
- Multidimensional roles are significant for high achievers. Being part of just one department, project, or team is a bit of a killer for you. You thrive where you can simultaneously participate in various groups, projects, and tasks, sharing your knowledge and expertise.
- High-stress jobs. Those are the jobs where they'll have to make quick decisions to solve difficult situations under pressure. Because their thinking and action are sharp under pressure, they can excel, surmount themselves, and find deep satisfaction in these positions.
- Motivating others to move forward is the second thing they're very good at, and why they should focus on a position where they have the chance to inspire others.
- Leadership roles where they can identify growth opportunities for the company, themselves and their staff.
Understand well your intrinsic motivation
That means your why and the conditions in which you perform best. You´ll thrive when you find or create the freedom to make independent decisions and feel empowered to contribute individually.
High achievers will perform very well as experts, team leaders, directors of global units, and also in regional roles because:
- They have the versatility
- They are outstanding if they have an enormous scope of responsibility
- They are great C-Level executive managers.
As a manager, knowing the nuances of how to support high achievers at work so everyone feels at ease and stays engaged and motivated is crucial.
How can executive coaching help high achievers thrive?
For a high achiever, the most important thing is to be aware of themselves. That includes their personality traits and professional profile. In the early stages, raising awareness may be enough.
However, you´ll soon conclude that you need subtle behavior adjustments and practical hands-on guidance at your high achiever speed and ambition ratio.
As a high achiever myself and executive coach to many high achievers in management positions, I'm sharing three pivotal eye-openers that will mark a turning point in your life and career
Our most giant trap is our “soloist” attitude.
We high achievers are slow in coming to terms with the fact we can perform better when having external support. We distrust that others can understand, empower and support us without clipping our wings or lowering our ambition and standards.
Skill training and mentorship won't do the trick for us.
We're exceptional, and we deserve outstanding support. Formal training or advice only sometimes applies to us. Soon we're disappointed, feeling we're wasting money and time. Even worse, painfully concluding no one can get us or help us. That's not true.
We´re not that many, but certainly, you´re not alone.
Executive coaching will be a great support to connect the dots between your potential, performance, and work-life balance. These are some examples where executive coaching can be of use for you as a high achiever:
- Improve time and energy management: You probably have a lot on your plate. Develop strategies for prioritizing tasks, delegating responsibilities, and setting boundaries to manage your workload more efficiently.
- Develop leadership skills: If you have the drive and the experience but need more people skills, you can work on your communication, delegation, and conflict resolutions to better manage people and projects.
- Enhance emotional intelligence: High achievers usually struggle with managing their emotions and understanding the feelings of others. Executive coaching can help you develop emotional intelligence skills such as empathy and self-awareness to build long-lasting relationships and a strong network
- Achieve work-life balance: Executive coaching helps you set priorities and achieve goals in a way you can lower your stress and prevent burnout.
If the above triggers your ambition and energy, please get in touch. I want to get to know and support you in your career path. I mean it when I say the world needs "go-getters" like us.
You can book a breakthrough call here.
To your success,
Simona
I'm the founder of BOC Institute, one of the renowned consulting and executive search agencies for international companies operating in Slovenia and South-East Europe.
I coach CEOs and top managers 1:1 worldwide. I'm here to save you time, energy, and money through your objectives, decision-making, and leadership development. I understand we can change the world one coaching session at a time!
Do you feel like having a call? You can reach out here and let me guide you from there.
Simona Špilak www.simonaspilak.com
