Celebrating Milestones Doesn’t Kill Your Ambition. I Realized This Too Late To Enjoy Many Of Them.
One of My Liabilities as a Leader Was Not Acknowledging the Wins Along The Way
“I don’t want praise, I want to know what I could have done better.” For years this was my default response to even the smallest of positive feedback. Forget the PROS, I just want the CONS.
There were a variety of reasons for this posture: a strong conviction in the value of lessons learned, a desire to learn from those I respected. But if you really pushed on it, there were layers of fear and insecurity on the other side of the self-confidence cookie. The things which didn’t doom me this time might catch me next go round, so let’s get on top of them. And an intense concern about complacency, as if any satisfaction in my work (or my life?) would cause me to stop seeking excellence, remove the chip on my shoulder, dull the edge, or whatever your metaphor of choice.
I’d heard the sayings, in print, from colleagues. In this world raised nails get pounded down. Compliments are arrows from the mediocre, meant to reduce your ambition. And with a 20something/30something’s amount of testosterone, I didn’t want to be pounded down. Didn’t want to be mediocre.
