Episode 24: The hyper achiever trap: what got you here is now holding you back

First, when we talk about a saboteur, we are talking about a part of yourself. We are not like this 100% of the time, and we have other parts in us too. And this saboteur comes from strengths being overused. That probably starts to answer the question.

I remember a client, a senior director, telling me: why do I have to change this? This is what has taken me so far in my career.

I always tell my clients: I don't want to change this part of you, this beautiful driven woman who can do so much for this world. What I want is to be strategic about how, and especially when, you use these superpowers, so they take you further and not hold you back. Something my therapist told me years ago has always stayed with me: the one who has a hammer thinks that all problems are nails. The problem is when you only allow yourself to tap into this part of you, to the point that it becomes an overuse.

Hyper-achievers have a constant impulse to achieve goals, with external validation as the main source of personal validation.

If you know my story, I was in Finance and had quite an international, successful career working for big companies such as PwC, Allianz and NN Group. I loved my work and I love improving, so I was always chasing the next big step.

When I stepped into entrepreneurship, about a decade ago, I had a huge identity crisis. Being really honest with myself, I had to realise how much of my value I had placed in the fact that I was an accountant. And how much happiness power I was giving to my career. My ego was crushed when I didn't know how to introduce myself. I was no longer in Finance and not yet a settled entrepreneur.

For the Hyper-Achiever, self-validation, self-acceptance and self-love are all conditional, conditioned on continual performance. That is the high cost of this saboteur. When you give your worth to something that is outside of you, the moment it is not there, you crush. My first year of entrepreneurship, I needed to build back who I was when I was not my career achievements.

This comes from our very early experiences. Even with very loving parents, it is easy for children to get the sense that they are loved in return for achieving, obeying the rules, having good manners, rather than unconditionally. I discovered it very early in life, always bringing home great grades.

When we condition our self-worth to something outside of us, external validation, titles, results, we are outsourcing our power. It is not that we no longer want the results. I love improving and seeing my career achieve recognition and seeing results in my clients. But there is a difference between wanting it and needing it.

Wanting it means you are in the driver's seat. Needing it means the achievement is driving you.

When we manage to want without need, we allow ourselves to play a bigger and longer game, because our worth doesn't depend on the result anymore.

At the executive level, that distinction is everything, because it is felt by others even if they can't put a finger on it. One of my clients, just after we worked on this saboteur in our first two sessions, shared how both her leadership and her team mentioned she was different. The moment she decided, my Hyper-Achiever is asking me to push for the next step, but I want to enjoy where I am, they couldn't explain it, but they could feel it in her presence.

The further we go in our career, the Hyper-Achiever also shapes the way we lead, and the cost becomes much more visible.

First, it comes with exhaustion, stress, and many times burnout. When we are always after the next goal and the next result, there will always be a next thing. And that feeling of never being good enough follows you into the boardroom.

Hyper-achievers are really bad at celebrating, because the focus is always on the next step. Nothing ever feels quite good enough to stop and acknowledge. It is a constant focus on the half-empty glass.

As executives, this shows up in delegation too. Hyper-achievers fear that nobody will put in the same effort, the same standards, the same care. So we hold on. We over-function. We become indispensable, but for the wrong reasons.

Here is the real leadership cost. When we are working harder than anyone else, often without even realising it, we are sending a signal. The signal is: I cannot manage this level. Imagine the next one.

When your worth is tied to hard work and personal output, it is not scalable. Leadership at the executive level is not about what you personally produce. It is about what you create through others.

So the Hyper-Achiever, if left unchecked, keeps you excellent in your current role — and invisible for the next one.

These are the four practices I come back to with my clients, so your strengths take you further instead of holding you back.

If you recognised yourself while reading this, I want you to know: this is not a flaw. This is a strategy you learned, it served you, and now you are ready for the next version of it.

That is what we do in Becoming HER. We do not change who you are. We unlock the next level of who you already are.

Sometimes that looks like a promotion. And sometimes it looks like waking up on a Monday and actually loving where you are. In my experience, both personally and with the women I work with, when you get to that second one, the first one always follows.

If you want to see exactly where your Hyper-Achiever is showing up, take the free Saboteur Assessment from Positive Intelligence, and if you are ready to do this work at a deeper level, Becoming HER was built for exactly this.