Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
- Self-sabotage can hold back career growth, with behaviors like Imposter Syndrome and fragility.
- Fear of technology, impatience, and seeking validation can also harm your workplace progress.
- Recognizing and addressing these patterns, like gossiping or being overly defensive, helps improve success.
As of this writing, 30% of employees hate their boss, and 66% of workers feel stuck in their current jobs.
If you’re dissatisfied with your current work situation, don’t blame your plight on someone else. Instead, vow to take a good, hard look in the mirror.
Do you have any self-sabotaging tendencies? I certainly used to.
Here’s a quick story of caution, and seven invaluable tips to help you get out of your own way and catapult your career to new levels.
What Self-Sabotage Can Look Like
Very early in my career, I was a secretary at a very distinguished advertising agency in Manhattan. I had five bosses who were account people. They would leave the office between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. and I would leave four hours later.
I felt chained to my desk and wanted nothing more than to be promoted.
One day, my opportunity came.
I had written a telephone sales script for one of the agency’s clients that made the company a few million dollars. I was offered a promotion to junior copywriter — and turned it down.
My five bosses told me I was crazy.
The Creative Director sat down with me and said, “Come work for me.” I said, “Can you throw me some practice assignments?”
He said, “Vicky, this is advertising. There are no practice assignments.”
On my list of ways one can sabotage oneself, I believe that I suffered from a kind of Imposter Syndrome. Since I had never written any ads, I thought I needed training to do it.
More stories for you
I did eventually become a junior copywriter, but that’s a story for another day.
I wasted about a year because I didn’t know then what I do now: sometimes, you have to train yourself. Sometimes, you have to jump in the pool even if you don’t know how to swim.
In this world of fast-disappearing mentors it’s essential to take responsibility for your own learning. If it helps, try thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur within a larger organization.
How to Identify and Combat Self-sabotage
Here are some other self-sabotaging behaviors. Are you guilty of any? If so, you may not be advancing as fast as you’d like.
Use these tips to overcome each habit.
1. Imposter Syndrome
Maybe you got promoted quickly and the new tasks you’re expected to accomplish have nothing to do with the projects that secured you your current position. Maybe for the first time in your career you have to manage people.
Deep down, you feel like a fraud. At any second, someone will burst into your office and “out” you.
Before your promotion, you thought of yourself as a high achiever. Now you worry you might fail.
Pro Tip 1: Make a list of the reasons your good work got you to where you are. Tack your list on your refrigerator and read it aloud before you go to the office and once again when you get home until you stop feeling like an imposter.
2. Fragility
You are easily overwhelmed. If someone looks at you crossly or sends you a snarky email, you burst into tears. There’s no layer of skin protecting your nerves, so everything gets on them.
You need a trigger warning just to deal with normal human behavior. You’re the hothouse flower of the office.
Pro Tip 2: Set boundaries. Limit your interactions with toxic people. Never work overtime, and in your spare time, learn how to meditate.
3. Fear of New Technology
Every software upgrade muddles your head, and any new platform presented sends you into a panic. Using AI in your work? Unthinkably complicated.
Your technophobia sends you into a constant tailspin but you are too humiliated to admit your ignorance when everyone else appears to roll with any new additions.
Pro Tip 3: Find an online tutorial that will help familiarize you with the digital tool. If this only leaves you baffled, ask for help from someone that you can trust, outside of your work if possible, so that you don’t feel ashamed to ask any question that could betray your ignorance.
4. Pride
You always have to be right and never know when to back down, even when the evidence is mounting against your stance. You have an air of superiority about you that you know turns others off, but the validity of your opinion is a point of pride.
Pro Tip 4: Granted, there may be some issues in which you strongly believe that you are absolutely right about, and you have the first-hand experience to know. But unless it is vital that others concede to your position — say, lives, reputations, or a great deal of money are at stake — tell yourself that they may find you were right in the end. Learn to agree to disagree.
5. Impatience
In conversation, you don’t let others finish expressing their thought before rushing in with your own. If someone takes a bit longer to express themselves than you can tolerate, you look over their head and sigh audibly. People are nervous around you.
Pro Tip 5: Notice when you feel impatient and ask yourself why. Are you on a tight deadline? Do you have little respect for the speaker? Take a breath (inaudibly) and calm yourself. Try to be more present instead of rushing ahead. Impatience reflects badly on you, so work to curb it.
6. Need for Praise
You want validation for your every move, and lapse into self-doubt when you go unnoticed.
Even something as miniscule as the receptionist not commenting on your new hair style sends you into the doldrums.
You realize that your colleagues are alert to your self-pity parties and will often offer encouraging words — which you are happy to accept even knowing they aren’t genuine.
Pro Tip 6: Work to become your own cheerleader. Journal each day to take satisfaction in your triumphs. Compliment yourself for your hard work. Celebrate your accomplishments. What’s more, offer praise to others for their successes. They may consider doing the same.
7. Blabbermouth Impulses
Your job requires discretion, but you don’t have any. When it comes to secrets, you’re a leaky faucet.
You like to be perceived as the person “in the know,” but instead you’re thought of as a gossip and a busybody.
Pro Tip 7: Before you go blabbing, think about how some people could be harmed if a secret gets out. Consider how you would feel if the tables were turned. Or, if you’re tempted to leak a company secret, think through how you could be putting it in a compromising position. Make “do no harm!” your new mantra.
Always remember that it’s easier to change yourself than to change anyone else.
