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  Have you ever been a Dirty Achiever? What makes an achiever dirty? How can we come out clean? In this podcast https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-reams-08bb2/ (Jonathan Reams) answers some of these and other questions. https://meetmypotential.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Slide1-2.jpeg () What is a Dirty Achiever?We all like to achieve things. As infants, we learn to control our body, crawl, walk etc., big achievements in our little worlds! This process of learning is driven by trial and error, experimentation and learning, and is linked to neuroscience, how dopamine makes us want to achieve a goal, and when we succeed, we get a rush of opioids that gives us pleasurable feelings. This is a natural brain chemistry cycle, so its natural to want to achieve.  This desire to achieve can get hijacked. For example, underneath our drive for achieving tasks, there can be another kind of drive, which is more of a need, unconsciously attaching itself to the success of our task accomplishment. It might be that somewhere in our childhood, rewards, love, positive parental inputs to our self-esteem and so on became conditional upon achieving certain things, like good grades, sporting achievements, etc. In our adult work life, this pattern becomes unconscious and automatic. We’re internalizing the need to be in control of the outcomes in order to have self esteem. This need to control outcomes – to win the contract, to get a promotion, to win the race, etc. controls us and distorts are natural drive to achieve. It makes it dirty. We became our achievements, instead of having them.A very practical example of a Dirty AchieverI remember one manager who always needed his team’s success to be about him. It is need for personal recognition to be seen as the one who made it happen. It was based on a deeper need, where he believed that he was not ok as a person if it was not his idea, his inspiration to the team, his ability to motivate the team that drove the achievement. He described his inner world as having a bunch of flies buzzing around in his head so that he actually could not see what was going on outside of him and around him. Each fly was a feeling or thought that came in and distracted his attention. There were flies like: I good enough?Will I come out looking good to the boss?Who else might get recognition for this idea? If I don’t win, I’ll be a loser.This left little time for seeing the needs of his team members clearly. It also created an underlying anxiety that just made him push harder, and be more and more driven to achieve. What is the impact of having Dirty Managers?It is a big enough problem for ourselves to manage us and all these distractions. What is really hard for these dirty achievers, is to see the impact they have on others. Because they are too occupied with all these flies distracting their attention. What they see is justifications for their opinions about others. For example, with this manager, he was annoyed by his team members because they seemed to ignore his requests for action, didn’t take responsibility for outcomes, they were lying to cover up their incompetence and worst of all for him, didn’t seem to acknowledge his competence. So he interpreted their behaviors and formed the opinion that his team was useless, ignorant, incompetent cowards. And because he held these opinions about his team members, he would document everything they did or didn’t do, take his concerns to his boss or anyone else who would listen to him whine about his team. Now, how do you think his team members interpreted his actions? They saw him as over dramatizing everything, nagging them too much and wasting their time, and that he was arrogant. Now each of these incidents might be very small, not enough in itself to be worth taking action on or even really being annoyed by. But each instance left a little mark, or put a stamp in their stamp collection book about this manager. And over time,...