I have been muddying up the difference between what you can now do and what you could do now, say with the right training; between the size of your capability bucket and how much is in it. One is current capability while the latter is your current capacity. Glenn Mehltretter of PeopleFit reminded me in a comment he left on …
Knowing Who You Are Can Get You Out of Underachievement
Some of you may not believe that knowing who you are and what size work you could do (given the opportunity and some mentoring) will have any affect on the rut you now find your career in. Here’s a short statement from Alan, whom I’ve been talking with for the past few years.
Is Under-Pricing Your Art Causing You To Be An Underachieving Artist?
Let’s take a look at art. Because part of the artist’s dilemma is how to price a particular piece. And this is related to our questions about underachievers. I’ve been coaching Paula, a Chicago-based artist who is a high potential. (If you’re know the numbers, she coded as 4L at 32.) She’s an amazing individual, someone who had Pres. George …
When Being An Underachiever Is Really Just Being Stuck
Do you feel like you’re underachieving because you are just stuck where you are and can’t get out? Byron (not his real name) feels like this. He was doing well for a long time. A graduate of one of the top HR schools in the U.S. He had been the compensation manager for a shoe company with operations in several …
Are You An Adult Underachiever or Is That Someone Else's Label?
We’re taking a detour on our answer to last week’s question on Adult Underachievers to address something that has popped up in emailed responses. It’s a great question because it gets to the real heart of the matter. It may address a problem that was never raised when we talked about Maye Rain’s belief that she was an underachiever, even …
Thoughts on underemployed high-moders (Adult Underachievers)
Some random thoughts I’ve had over the past couple of years, collected. Randomly. About what I call underemployed or underutilized high-mode individuals. Others call them “ex- gifted child” or “adult underachiever” or “irritating screw ups”. If you don’t know what “mode” means, here’s a quick explanation. Elliott Jaques and Wilfred Brown discovered that people’s ability to handle complexity was tied …
Are You Really An Adult Underachiever?
Too many good people think they are “adult underachievers” but aren’t. What they really are is folks who have chosen a different lifepath than the one that is accepted as the best way to live in our society. (I’m in America, but probably still true in Australia and the UK. It’s less true in Europe. If you’re somewhere else, you’ll …
Growth Trajectories of Underachievers (or “Hidden High Potentials”)
Hidden High Potentials (2HiPo’s) and other “underachievers” can learn a great deal from work done on extremely high IQ children. Although Elliott Jaques & Katherine Cason describe these things in a more systematical way in Human Capability, these Gifted Children researchers provide a much needed human face. Stephanie S. Tolan, an “advocate for extremely bright children”, talks about the growth …
Spiral Dynamics profile
As part of the GO Society Conference in Toronto, we attendees were asked to complete a survey by Online PeopleScan. I have no idea what the results mean, but thought that some of you might find it interesting to see. It’s a PDF because I wasn’t thinking. IT professional and all. Culture Scan results
Le Guin, high moders and systems thinking
I don’t think that Elliott Jaques was right about high moders’ distribution in society. They certainly seem much more prevalent than his published numbers. If I know a handful of mode 7s and 8s, then they can’t be all that rare: I don’t get around that much. I think the issue comes in where they work. High moders are prevalent in IT because the field is so poorly managed. High capacity people can continue to work as technical experts, even though they don’t get paid well. It’s odd how many times I’ve seen a Str4 or 5 person working for a Str2 manager.