How to Survive Being Labeled a Star

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Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green. Carol Carmichael Thomas had always been something of a star. He was on the fast track at his private equity firm and he closed big billion dollar deals. That is, until he quit. Thomas had been at his desk one night working on a big ipo. It was the kind of assignment you get when you're being groomed to become a partner. As the sun rose, he realized he couldn't remember doing any of the work. The last six hours were just gone. He went to see a doctor. He tried dialing back, but he couldn't. And finally he told his bosses he was quitting. They never saw it coming, and he hadn't either. But Thomas felt he had no choice. The only way out was to get off the fast track. Thomas is not alone. This feeling of being trapped by your own talent is a phenomenon newly studied by Jennifer Pataglieri and her co author Gianpiero Pataglieri, both professors at insead. Thomas's story kicks off the article that they wrote called the Talent Curse, and it's in the May, June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review. Jennifer, thanks for Talking with the IdeaCast today.

Thanks for having me, Sarah.

So how many Thomases are out there?

More than you think. Actually. There's a couple of reasons, first of all, why we don't see them very often. One is, and I've had this feedback overwhelmingly since the article has been published is lots of people have contacted me and said, oh, I thought I was the only one. You know, my experiences of being very alone with these feelings because when people are placed on the fast track, recognized as high potentials, it's seen as a recognition, something special, an opportunity. And they feel they should be grateful. So when they feel they're not, they feel trapped by the expectations. The natural feeling is, well, there's something wrong with me, so I'm not going to talk about it and I'm not going to share it. But through Jean Pierre and I's research, we find that this is actually a lot more common than you think. And it's really spreading across organizations, across industries. And it's not just something to do with maybe young people, but you also see it at people at higher stages of their careers.

So is this as sort of simple as burnout or is there something more sort of complicated and nuanced going on here?

Yeah, it's a little bit more nuanced. And I think one way people can think of it is burnout, but it's a little bit different. So maybe if I can talk through the mechanism behind it, that might help. So essentially we find that what happens is the dynamic begins when people. People are recognized as high potential or talented. So very often people like Thomas have been working for a number of years, have done well. They're people who have a talent for something and have been using it and have really been enjoying what they've been doing. And then one day, and of course, it happens in different ways in different organizations. They are recognized for their high potential. Maybe they're put on a special program, given special projects, put on some kind of fast track. And that is when the problems start to occur. And what we see is that what goes from having a talent and using it really translates to people saying, you are talented. And it becomes a piece of my sense of self, and then it becomes an expectation that I need to live up to. Wow. I've been put on this program and suddenly I have to perform, I have to deliver. And so it turns into a set of expectations, and it's really that translation that people get trapped in.

Yeah, there was a line in the article that really stuck with me. Every opportunity becomes an oblig and every challenge becomes a test.

Absolutely. And really the crux is that the talent comes to define the people. I mean, obviously, who knows if this has happened historically, but I do think this is a more recent development. And you can see it in a change, actually, in the language we talk about talent and talented people. If you think about the root of the word talent, you know, it's an old measurement of money or measurement of weight in the Roman times. And talent was always something we had. So if you think 20, 30 years ago, we'd say someone has a talent for something, a talent for people management, a talent for music, a talent for something. And we've really turned that talent as an idea of possessing something, owning a talent to talent, being who you are. We now call people talented. And I think that translation is very tricky because suddenly it's not something I have that I can use at some point, and maybe not use and choose when I use it, but suddenly it's something I am, and then it's something I have to live up. It comes to define me, and it's who I am and it's who people see me to be. And that's where the problems really Start.

I hadn't thought about that kind of linguistic connection before. We say, here comes the talent. It's not even that they're talented. It's like they're the talent.

And of course, with that in organizations comes a set of expectations. So what often happens is you're put on one of these talent, high talented, whatever they're called, programs. And then there's a set of competencies you have to live up to and values you have to live up to. And this is the way you behave if you're one of these people. And it really diminishes the person to an image of what we expect a talented person to be like in our organization. Which is very strange if you think. Because what has enabled people to get to that position is that they're unique in some way. Right. They have some kind of special gift. They can do things in a way other people can't. And suddenly we're asking them to behave in a very uniform way, behave all the same. So there's a real discrepancy there that people get caught in.

So it sounds like one of the big challenges for people like Thomas is that they end up feeling this intense, intense pressure to conform.

Absolutely. And I think it's a double thing. I have to perform and I have to conform. And I think these together means, you know, I have to be the perfect manager, whatever that happens to mean in my. In my situation. And so what people tend to do then is they suppress or they shut down, maybe the idiosyncrasies, the quirks about them that made them stick out in the first place.

Yeah. You have an interesting distinction that you draw between bringing your whole self to work and bringing your best self to work. Tell me a little bit about that.

This is a very recent development in organizations that we're really seeing in the last five to seven years is that there's been a wave of sort of authenticity and bringing your authentic self to work. And that's really translated to bring your best self to work. So oftentimes when organizations say be authentic at work, they don't really mean be authentic at work. They mean is bring those authentic pieces of you that we like, that we value. So I'm great with you when you're having a creative day, but when you're having a grumpy day, I don't want that in the office. And of course, what this does is reduces us to just those shiny pieces of ourselves. But if we think about what we know about talent and about high achievers and successful people, Those talents often stem from a darker place. You know, we know that creative people are often quite angsty inside. We know that people who are very good at managing the emotions of others can get quite overwhelmed by those. And what this invitation to bring your best self does is divorce those two pieces of ourselves. So it's like, I would like your creativity, but I really don't want your angst. Or I would like your great people management skills, but please be very level all the time. I don't want you to get overwhelmed by emotions. And this is very dangerous because it's essentially an impossible thing to do. It's divorcing these two sides of ourselves, which are really two sides of the same coin.

There are lots of people out there who will totally resonate with all of that. At the same time, there might be some other people who are thinking, well, I would love to be in my company's high program, so this is a problem I would love to have.

Absolutely. And there's a way in which I resonate with that. And in some ways, I agree with it. Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has a price to it. Going through this talent quiz is a rite of passage. Very many people go through it. And it is something that you need to struggle through. And I think it's something important to struggle through. I think it's something that is best not avoided. You could call it a good problem to have, but it is still a problem that we need to take seriously and address. And I think particularly for organizations who are losing people because they don't understand this, this is a very important problem. They need to think about how might we get around this?

And is the problem just that some people are quitting, or is it that the people who stay end up being these kind of conformist followers instead of the talented leaders they were supposed to be?

It's both. I think organizations are losing people. The bigger challenge almost is that people become these clones. And the biggest way we see this is the number of times I've heard from people when I'm ex, when I'm vp, when I'm CEO, then I'll do this or then I'll say that, and then I'll speak up. And this is incredibly dangerous for organizations when people start to get in that stance that I'm not going to really be me, I'm not going to show my true colors or think, say what I really think, or really push forward the change I believe in until I'm at a certain position. This is when things start to really go badly in organizations. And of course that day never comes because then people become vice president and they still feeling a little bit challenged. So it's like, okay, but when I'm senior vice president, I will do that, or when I'm a director, I'll do that. So it's this never ending kind of hamster wheel that people get on so.

Far, just based on what we've talked about, some people may already be saying, oh, this is a thing that I think I suffer from, or maybe this is something that, you know, my work spouse suffers from or actual spouse suffers from. What are some other things people should be looking for if they are trying to diagnose themselves?

The first step is really this translation of viewing talent from something you own. I'm good at this. I really enjoy doing this. This is where my passion lies, to something that I have to produce. So rather than feeling, you know, I love those difficult meetings where I have to analyze something to feeling that, my goodness, people are expecting me to do it in this meeting and pull it off. So this is often what we see as the thin end of the wedge, if you like, that people feel I have to deliver, I have to perform. We might want to call it performance anxiety. I don't think it's that because often these people know they're good at these things. This isn't a feeling of being like a fake, I'm not good at this. But a feeling that it's an impetus I have to do it. And what can happen in that situation to many of us is we stop reaching out to others. So we start to feel everyone's looking at me to deliver on this, so I have to do it alone. And especially, I mean, we can feel this for ourselves, but this is where we can start to observe our co workers, our peers, our friends and people we manage doing this when they start to withdraw and become this island. And that really feels like the start of the talent curse taking hold.

Who is most at risk for this?

First of all, people who have been somehow publicly recognized. Now, this takes different forms in different organizations. Sometimes it's a very official program. I was talking to one woman recently who'd actually just come back from maternity leave and as a present for her return, her organization had put her onto a very special task force and made it clear that this was her kind of leapfrog into the next level of management. So it could be something like that that's a little less formal. Any time that people are first put onto one of these is a time when this can kick in if it's not carefully managed. So that's more of a period. And again, that might happen at different stages of our career. We sometimes tag that with young, aspiring managers, maybe in their 30s, early 40s. It can also happen at the other end of the career ladder. So I was talking to a woman recently who's a very senior woman and well recognized in her field. She's in her late 50s and she started to win lots of accolades for contributions to her field and, you know, talking on these panels and the most powerful women lists and all this sort of thing we recognize. And she's found it incredibly threatening. And even at her age, she can feel the talent curse kicking in, that people aren't seeing her as her rounded self anymore. They're seeing her as this image of this successful person who's made it, and this is what we all want to be like. And she's actually someone who's decided to take a early retirement to pull herself out of that. Now, on the one hand, we can look at that and think, well, you know, good for her, she's made a strong decision, but what a loss for her organisation and her sort of professional community that that's happened. And the other population we see it a little bit stronger in is people who are in minorities at work, whether that's women, ethnic minorities, lgbt. And that's because oftentimes they can be seen as the standard bearer for their group. So it's not just that you're talented, it's that you're a talented Asian woman and there aren't many of those in the organization. And then it can sort of double down on this feeling that, my goodness, I'm not only expected to perform for this because I'm being labeled talented, but I'm also expected to perform because I'm the only or one of the very few young Asian managers. And so if I don't do well, I'm going to let my group down.

Mm. So if you're feeling trapped by your talent, how can you break out of the trap?

Depends a little bit what stage you're at. I think in these early stages where you're starting to feel trapped, it's easier to deal with. There's a few things we can do. One is really trying to think about the talent as something you own, as opposed to an identity. And the way we can do this is really not to lock ourselves away on an island, but to reach out to others and sort of keep those connections. The second piece around this is to have this right relationship between our talent and where it comes from. And so it's about recognizing I need those two pieces of myself to function. If I'm very creative, I need the space to be a bit angsty, Otherwise I'm not going to create at my best. And to realize that it's impossible to split those two off. And so to try and find a right relationship between those two and bring those into work.

What about later on in your career?

People really get to this stage where they postpone meaningful work. When I become vice president, I will do X. You know, I'm doing what I'm doing now for a time in the future. And I think one of the best ways of flicking out of that is to say, well, what if this is it? You know, what if I don't progress? What if this is the role I'm going to be in for the next 10, 15 years? Now, of course, we all hope that's not true, but what if it is? How would I act if that were the case? And I think that's a very helpful, almost mental exercise to go through to really kind of break this trap of the provisional life of feeling I'm doing this to serve something in the future. But what we also find, to be honest, is that once people are at that stage of really desperately trying to prove themselves and postponing meaningful work, it's quite hard for them to unlock it within their current. Not necessarily within their current organization, but within their current context. So we see that people who can unlock it are people who move now, that might be moving within an organization, it might be moving between organizations, but that feels like a common pattern, because then we unlock ourselves from those relationships with people who see us as the talent or the one who's going to deliver us, and we can get somewhat of a fresh start.

I really like the sort of specificity and concreteness of being able to say to yourself, what if this is it? Are there kind of specific things like that that you can say to yourself.

To kind of one question, where do your talents come from? Like, what is the source of your talent? And I think it's such an important question. And it's an important question for two reasons. One is if we can answer it, we can unlock this piece of us, ourselves that we really need in order for our talents to shine. And secondly, it takes us away from thinking, I am a talented person, to thinking, okay, I have a talent, and it comes from somewhere in myself. And I can see that proper connection. And I think doing that Introspection is really critical for those two reasons and can be very helpful. And equally, if you're managing people who are have certain talents, having that conversation with them and trying to work it out together is incredibly helpful. For people who are struggling this and even for people who aren't struggling with the talent curse yet, you might think that this person's doing fine, but maybe they might fall into it in a few years time. So working that out is very helpful.

So is there someone that you have had that conversation with them and watch them transition from thinking I have to be this superhero to being like, I'm a normal person with a superpower and I can use it or not? I mean, have you ever seen that transition happen in a specific person?

I mean, yeah, And I have to say it's a transition I've been through myself and felt, you know, that I've been recognized for things and then an enormous pressure to perform and an enormous pressure to be this talented person. And I think it's over a course of a number of years actually talking with mentors and people I'm close to, to around, you know, am I really that talented? Or where does that talent come from? And really figuring out if you like the dark side or the source of that talent, the well of that talent has really enabled me to disconnect from it in some way. And my experience, my personal experience, has been the more I can disconnect from it, the easier it is to use. Which sounds very counterintuitive, but the more I see it as a possession in my handbag, in you like, as opposed to a coat I'm wearing, the easier it is to use.

That's interesting. So wait, where does it come from?

So I am quite an obsessive person. I tidy things, I clean things, I organize things. And what that means is, in my mind, I go over things time and time and time again. And as an academic, it's very important that my work has depth to it. And it's been really tightly thought through. And I know that this ability comes from the obsessiveness I have in myself. And sometimes it's very easy for me to think of that obsessiveness as a bad thing. Right. And an unhelpful thing and something that catches me. But I see that without that I would not be able to produce the work I do.

That seems like it is something you can decide to do on your own. Whereas with things like bringing more of your whole self to work and not just your best self, there might be some organizations that really aggressively push back on you.

I agree. I absolutely agree. I also think we're often more afraid of bringing our whole self to work than the consequences would actually be. So we always fear that there will be pushback for revealing a piece of ourselves that maybe isn't so shiny. And very often our fear is exaggerated. So I do agree there are certain organizations where there'll be a lot of pushback, but probably less than we imagine.

Yeah. So I have a friend who actually worked in a large multinational consulting firm, and she said that they did a retreat where they talked about the importance of confidence. And then she said after this retreat, for months, you'd go into the women's room and see that people were in the stalls doing power poses with their hands above their heads. And she was like, it's just a place where you can't. This was her feeling anyway. It's a place where you really can't show weakness ever. And I think that there are a lot of organizations that would. That would maybe fall into that category.

I think there are a lot of organizations that fall into that category and I think there are organizations that will start losing out on the war for talent. I also think it's interesting that you call it weakness instead of thinking, I need to do this to be my best or I need to do this to create the most brilliant and innovative product. The talent wouldn't be there without the need to do these things.

If you're a manager or a mentor and you want to avoid putting people in this trap or curse, how can you sort of praise them and let them know that they're doing a great job and you think that they do have a lot of potential without sort of shutting them into this corner.

I think, first of all, language is very important. Praising them for the things they do and the talents they have, rather than identifying them as a talented person and making it who they are is very, very important. And then I think the other thing is to tolerate more plurality at work. Not just diversity in terms of, you know, what people look like, but diversity of thought and diversity of behaviors is very important. Obviously, every organisation has its limits and some have much stricter limits than other organizations. But tolerating a little bit of quirkiness goes a long way as a manager. And I think the third thing is really looking out for when people start postponing meaningful life for those kind of interventions where people say, well, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that until I get to X level, or I'm really holding off doing that until I reach this position, that should be a real red flag for any mentor or manager.

Are there other sort of very concrete red flags like that that people should.

Be watching out for this preoccupation with image? So what can often happen is when people are labeled as talented, they identify with that label and they come to see themselves. Right. Oh, I have to live up to this image of the talented person. And that can be another thing to look out for. A sort of almost over feedback seeking, you know, am I doing well? Was that the right thing to do? A sort of of, you know, bordering on the obsession with am I acting in the way I should be acting? And that's very different from am I performing in the way I'm supposed to be performing. It's more around behavior and image as opposed to results.

If you switch jobs, will the talent curse follow you or will you be.

Able to escape is likely to follow you unless you can work through it. Honestly, not from day one. We can see this with people we've tracked with the research, like take Thomas. He's in this situation. The only way out is to resign. So he resigns, he comes to do an mba, he joins a new organization, and after six months, he can feel the same dynamic building up. Now, that doesn't mean you can't change it. But simply changing context is not enough. You have to change the way you relate to your talent. And that's something only you can do. Now, obviously you can do it with the help of others, but it's not something that your context is going to do for you. Because unfortunately, organizations at the moment are obsessed with labeling people. They are obsessed with getting people to bring their best selves to work. And so we have to work within that context and think about, okay, if my context, even if I change my organization, I'm probably still going to be in a context which has a certain degree of those demands. So I need to work on my relationship to talent. And once I can get that straight, then I'll be able to tolerate one of these environments much better.

So what is the key to being able to separate your identity from your talent?

It's really key to work out what is the source of my talent and where does it come from. Because that uncouples it from being you to being something you own. And it also gets you into this right relationship between the source of the talent and the talent and this recognition that unless I can have both value, both, bring both to work, I'll never be as successful as I can be. And I will never feel good about being having this talent and using it at work.

Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for talking with us today.

It's a pleasure.

That's Jennifer Picuglieri of insead. The article she wrote with Giampier Piglieri is called the Talent Curse. It's in the May June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review. You can find it at hbr. Org. Thanks for listening to the HBR Ideacast. I'm Sarah Green, comical.