The need to be extraordinary
Can the desire to do extraordinary work actually get in the way of succeeding in a role?
I was coaching a senior leader who had done well throughout his career, but things weren’t going well now. Stakeholders weren’t aligned, execution was getting harder, and the feedback wasn’t great.
I asked him, “What does your CEO expect from you?”
His answer came quickly: Build something that can generate 10X revenue, use new technology to transform the product, make big bets.
I asked if he was sure.
He soon met his CEO and asked the question directly. The answer was quite different: Manage the team better, align stakeholders, bring clarity to execution, put some basic processes in place, and have a few difficult conversations he had been avoiding.
The gap was apparent. The 10X expectations were largely in his head.
Interestingly, he wasn’t ignoring the other work. Team issues, stakeholder disagreements and execution gaps showed up every day, and he dealt with them. But he treated them as distractions to clear before getting back to the “real” work.
Because he didn’t give them enough attention, they kept coming back and consuming more time. Eventually, he was neither doing the basics well nor finding enough time for the extraordinary things he wanted to pursue.
As we dug deeper, his past successes came up. He had been a high achiever for a long time, and creating outsized impact had become part of how he saw himself.
I suspect high achievers are particularly vulnerable to this trap. When you’ve repeatedly been recognized for exceptional things, simply doing a solid job can start feeling insufficient.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to do extraordinary things. The problem begins when that need changes what you consider worthy of attention. Managing the team, fixing a process or aligning stakeholders can start feeling too mundane.
But extraordinary work often sits on top of these seemingly mundane things. Ignore the foundation long enough, and the desire to be extraordinary can ironically become a roadblock to success.
One simple exercise can help.
Sit with your boss and agree on the top priorities they have for you. Discuss and debate them, then ask your boss to stack-rank them.
Go one step further: ask them to distribute 100 points across those priorities. This forces clarity on their relative importance.
Now compare that with where your time and mental energy actually went last month.
The gap might tell you something.
Are you spending your energy on what is expected of you, or on what feels worthy of your ambition?
