12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back Overcoming the Behavior Patterns That Keep You from Getting Ahead

Never Feeling Good Enough In a world overpopulated with outsize egos, Paul seemed to be an anomaly. He had an ego that was too small for his considerable abilities and his position. A big international bank in New York hired him away from a smaller bank in Texas for a high-profile job taking charge of a group of loan officers who, after some heady early successes, had involved the bank in several dangerous arrangements in Latin America. When the Mexican peso collapsed, the bank had taken a financial bath, suffering tens of millions of dollars in losses. Paul's assignment was to rein in the lending group, to ensure that the necessary "due diligence" had been done on major loans before any further commitments were made. Paul, who was in his early forties at the time, clearly had both the intellect and the experience to handle the job. Although he had never been a manager, he had considerable know-how as a banker, and Latin America was his specialty. Moreover, Paul had succeeded at everything he had ever done. He had been a top student in both college and graduate business school, and he was promoted quickly through the bank he joined in Dallas after getting his MBA at the University of Texas. But in his new position Paul was suddenly a misfit--or so it appeared, and so he felt. He was self-conscious and awkward, unable to speak with authority, and unable to comand the respect that he needed to excel. He felt like a little fish tossed into a very big pond, a small-town kid from fly-over country way out of place among East Coast elites. Sure, he had been at the top of his class in school, but in schools without prestigious names. Now he had to take charge of a herd of headstrong and arrogant deal makers with degrees from Harvard, Colombia, and Wharton. The coterie of loan officers who had been operating on their own before Paul arrived understandably were not delighted to welcome an outsider charged with keeping them under control. Still, if Paul had presented himself as a confident manager, he might have been able to defuse their resentment quickly enough to establish himself as their skillful leader. But he never demonstrated the confidence and as a result never took command in the fullest sense. He had a look of intensity and concern that sometimes seemed to approach panic. He worked long hours, much too long--and work that he should have been delegating, he took upon himself. His superior, who had hired him, was afraid that Paul was going to burn out. In the eyes of the lenders Paul supervised, he was respected as a hard worker and a technical specialist, but not really admired and certainly not looked up to as a commander. Troops want a leader who exudes self-assurance. In a battle at sea, sailors want to look up at the bridge and see "the old man" calmly overseeing the battle--not struggling nervously into his life jacket! But everything about Paul said worry. He had no stature in the lending group; people avoided him. But at his new job, instead of strolling through offices in comfortable command Paul scurried down the halls with an intense, inner-directed gaze on his face that signaled to everyone that he was in trouble. When he stopped to talk to people he was all business, almost curt. There was never any small talk. Paul was telling people, without knowing or intending to, that he couldn't get away from them fast enough. It was as though if he lingered too long, people would see through him and would recognize that he didn't belong, would know that he was in over his head--and the fact was, he did feel over his head. Instead of looking upward and contemplating whether he might be CEO someday, or at least head of all of International, he was frightened that he had already risen too high. He wondered whether he didn't really belong a peg or two below where he was. Those in the department followed his instruWaldroop, James is the author of '12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back Overcoming the Behavior Patterns That Keep You from Getting Ahead' with ISBN 9780385498500 and ISBN 0385498500.