The Need for Achievement
The need for achievement has three components: drive, control, and power. Your work is important to you, and it is important for you to get things done your way and to have authority over others. What distinguishes leaders who are driven by their need for achievement is their desire to be in charge and a strong, internalized ethic of hard work—from themselves and others. They push themselves and their team. They create an intense, sometimes exhausting environment. As with the components of competitiveness, these components can play out as extreme and overly ambitious, or moderate and appropriately ambitious.
Drive
When you take drive to its extreme, you push yourself to the limit. You are so totally absorbed in your work that it sometimes acts as a near addiction and you do not know what to do with your time when you are not working. In the process, you often push others to produce results without acknowledging organizational and situational factors.
In its moderate form, you are exceptionally hardworking, bursting with the energy to accomplish a long list of tasks, but you have trained yourself to set priorities and moderate your behavior. You ease up when you receive feedback that it is time to slow down. You expect others to work hard but remain aware of the practical limits that affect their performance.
When you take control to its extreme, you prefer to behave unilaterally, believing you know what is best for what needs to be done. You often resist following other people’s agendas, you have a strong belief in your ability to take over and fix things, and you often behave in ways that are seen as abrasive because you do not have time for input from others.
In its moderate form, you are an effective problem solver. You enjoy taking charge when necessary and work hard to stop short of a complete takeover of problem situations. You consciously try to remain receptive to the influence of your direct reports and their need for autonomy.
Power
When power is taken to its extreme, you actively seek, acquire, and maintain power. You work hard at making sure no one bypasses your chain of command, and you attempt to be in charge and be seen as in charge.
In its moderate form, you seek, acquire, and maintain power for its use in achieving business results, sharing it when necessary to obtain goals. You accept and enjoy your responsibility, and you work hard at not giving the impression that you are flaunting it.
Using Exercise 3, examine your own behavior to determine whether your need for achievement may be causing you to be overly ambitious.
Let’s look at an example of how leaders with an excessively strong need for achievement might let the elements of drive, control, and power affect their work.
Ellen is a few months into a new role leading the effort to move her company into a new international market. She is sitting on a series of past successes and enjoys a reputation as a star performer. Her company is in a period of explosive growth and great change. Ellen might be tempted to react in the following ways:
• See her entire role as an ongoing crisis intervention requiring extraordinary time, energy, and focus.
• Believe that, to lead her team, she must be the first one in and the last one out.
• Achieve results, push and keep pushing—both herself and others.
• Take control quickly when a meeting or process bogs down, jettisoning agreed-upon procedures and substituting her own.
• Delegate responsibility without authority, preferring to keep her hold on the information and resources necessary to work the problem herself.
• Push her own agenda relentlessly, not stopping to hear the views of others and sometimes exploiting others in service of her own goals.
Ellen’s not being able to manage her excessively strong need for achievement could result in her not sharing information, fatigue for herself and others on her team, and a trail of bruised egos. She could spread herself too thin and miss deadlines. She might only receive compliance from individuals about the new market when she really needs total acceptance. She could potentially damage family and personal relationships.
Exercise 3: The Need for Achievement
The purpose of these questions is to help you gain an understanding of how driven you are by the need for achievement, how it might manifest itself in overly ambitious behavior, and how that drive might impact others. Use this assessment to develop a picture of how your need for achievement may be harming your professional development.
What are the actual hours you work? How do your hours compare to those of your peers?
When you are pushing toward a goal, do you ever say no to a new project or task? If not, what keeps you from saying no?
In the past few years, what personal activities have you declined because of your workload?
If you asked your close friends and family members whether you do too much, what would be their answer?
Do you have a similar pattern of extraordinary effort in family and community life? What would friends, family, and colleagues in the community say about your effort?
Now review your answers. Is there a pattern of overambitious behavior? If so, how is your need for achievement contributing to the problem?
How the Need for Achievement Affects Your Work for the Organization
It can be particularly difficult to gain self-awareness in this area. When the need for achievement drives behavior, managers may see only the positive effects. The manager may believe, “I am working so hard and sacrificing so much—how can that be overly ambitious?”
Any managerial behavior, even one tied to achievement, can have negative effects if you carry it to an extreme. To judge whether your behavior has moved into negative territory, first recognize that you are in fact being driven by the need for achievement. The second step is to consider its impact on yourself and others. By doing this, you will be able to distinguish for yourself the negative impact it has on your performance and career.
Strategies for Managing Ambition Driven by Achievement
If you believe you are powerfully motivated by the need to be in charge, and you are concerned about being seen as overly ambitious, consider the following strategies for managing that need:
• Accept the challenge of your role, but view it as a task, not a crisis.
• Lead by example, but do what can be done within your limits and trust that others will do the same.
• Learn to decline projects and responsibilities when you are already overloaded with work. To help prioritize your responsibilities, ask yourself the following question: Will taking on this work help or hinder my career, my personal life, my family life, and my involvement with my community? If you are consistently helping your career at the expense of the other three, you will quickly learn the value of taking on certain projects and excluding others.
• Expect results from yourself and others, but also listen and watch for signs that you or others are approaching the limits of performance.
• Work to be patient with processes, allowing them to play out without taking over and assuming all responsibility.
Declining or saying no to a project at work may be easy and acceptable in some cultures, but in others, saying no is considered extremely rude. For instance, in Indonesia, it is considered impolite to disagree with someone or to say no to a request. Indonesians will instead often suck air through their teeth as a means of saying no, rather than stating it directly. In Japan, people often avoid saying no directly. They may instead say they will think about it or even say yes out of politeness, even though they may actually mean no. As with any other aspect of dealing with a new culture, one must be aware of local customs and traditions in order to communicate effectively.
• Delegate responsibility and authority, allowing others the autonomy to create their own successes.
• Take the time to stop and moderate effort based on the shared goals of your entire group and organization.
• Learn to do other things outside of work.
• Plan to celebrate successes, and pause to point toward new goals.
• Seek feedback from friends and family about how much time they think they should be getting from you, and work to plan that time as part of your schedule.