Are you known as a high performer? Are you given projects because your employer knows you’ll rise to the challenge? Perhaps being able to do things well is something you have always been known for? Maybe you excelled at sports at school, or were always picked for the school play? Maybe you always aced maths tests? Perhaps you wrote brilliant stories, or were picked as head girl or boy, the sixer in Brownies, the one to get distinctions in your music exams. Perhaps you were acknowledged for all that brilliant stuff at the time, and quite rightly so.

The thing I notice in myself, and indeed in my work with clients, is when we’re celebrated as being high performing at one thing earlier on in our lives or careers, we start to expect ourselves to always be high performing.

Except it can expand to the point where we think we should always be brilliant at everything. At work, at the gym, in our friendship groups.

I was always good at music. Known for it. Celebrated for it (to a point, this was the 1980s, effusiveness wasn’t a thing.) I did however have status at schools as ‘the musical one’. It left me with a drive to perform to a high standard, not just at music, but at everything.

When we develop these kinds of drivers, it’s brilliant for our employer who has someone they can reliably hand prickly projects to and know that our motivation or our worry about failure, or a heady combo of both, is such that we will not let it fail.

It is less fabulous for us because after half a lifetime of rising to challenges and pulling out all the stops so we don’t fail too often (everyone fails sometimes!) we can feel exhausted.

And the high performing trap, as I’ve come to think of it, means that because everyone expects us to have our sh*t together, that is the version of ourselves that we subconsciously feel is safe to show others.

This can show up as trying to handle difficult things on our own, without help.

This can show up as struggling to manage our energy as we give it to anyone who wants it, for fear of being seen as ‘not performing.’

You know when I often find the cracks appear for me, and this may resonate with you too, is when I’m faced with a parenting challenge that reminds me that I will be learning how to support my child every day until forever. Parenting, especially parenting a non-straightforward child, is a surefire way to feel like the opposite of a high performer.

And that is INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE to the high performer.

And, because we’re so used to showing the world how we can handle anything, (because what might happen if we show vulnerability?) we can feel incredibly isolated.

So if you identify at all as being a high performer, and you notice that this means you struggle to share the really hard stuff for fear of judgement, here’s one thing that might support you:

Find the safe spaces where it’s ok for you to be not high performing.

This space might be with a particular friend, or colleague. It might be with a sibling (or absolutely NOT with a sibling.)

And if you are managing a high performer right now, I’m NOT suggesting that you therapise them by asking about their childhood and how many football trophies they won and what that means for how they approach work. But it is always worth remembering that how a team member shows up, will be as a result of all their experiences to date, at school, in other jobs, with other bosses, and we don’t need to know the details, but we can be curious about what will support them right now in their role.

This might sound like simply ‘How are you feeling about this project really?’ or ‘If I could do one thing to support you in this, what would it be?’

And opportunities to demonstrate your own vulnerabilities can go a long way to building trust. Sharing your own learnings around the times things went wrong certainly sends a message that, on your watch, it’s ok to fail.

As a leadership coach I often feel like I’m supposed to have all the answers – heck sometimes folk say that to me directly. I have some answers but not all of them, and certainly I don’t know all YOUR answers because they are for you to find. But I am quite good at helping other people find their answers. Especially when they don’t have other safe spaces to feel safe to share, I can be that space too.

If you’d like to explore what that looks like in 1-1 coaching you can book in a chat with me here.

In the meantime check out My Emotional Work Life – the podcast that helps you make sense of it all.