12 Behavior Patterns that Keep You from Getting Ahead

In their book, Maximum Success: Changing the 12 Behavior Patterns that Keep You from Getting Ahead, authors James Waldroop and Timothy Butler, Directors of MBA Career Development at The Harvard Business School, identify the 12 habits, or Achilles’ heels, that can hold you back from getting ahead on the career front.

1. Never Feeling Good Enough
   Symptom: Feeling that you aren’t good enough to deserve a promotion; unconsciously sabotaging yourself once you get it
2. Seeing the World in Black and White
   Symptom: Resents that the world demands negotiation and the selling of ideas. If something is “right,” that should be enough.
3. Doing too Much, Pushing Too Hard
   Symptom: Pushes hard and does too much. Causes others to burn out and is destructive within an organization, leaving behind a trail of “dead bodies,” or coworkers who couldn’t keep up with the pace.
4. Avoiding Conflict at Any Cost
   Symptom: Always avoids conflict. Not a peacemaker, but someone who fears change and prevents innovation.
5. Running Roughshod Over the Opposition
   Symptom: Runs roughshod over colleagues and clients or willfully defying authority to get attention.
6. Rebel Looking for a Cause
   Symptom: Always looking for a cause that doesn’t exist.
7. Always Swinging For the Fence
   Symptom: Swings for the fence and has unrealistic ambitions. Always disappointed at failures, but would have more successes if she could settle for a few singles.
8. When Fear is in the Driver’s Seat
   Symptom: Focuses on the downside and is defensive and risk-averse; obsesses over all the things that can go wrong.
9. Emotionally Tone Deaf
   Symptom: Sometimes clueless when it comes to thinking about how others feel and knowing how your behaviors impact others.
10. When No Job is Good Enough
    Symptom: Thinks that no job is ever good enough and that life is full of near misses.
11. Lacking a Sense of Boundaries
    Symptom: Always talking out of turn. Lets things slip.
12. Losing the Path
    Symptom: Work is without meaning. Lost passion about a job, but stays on without energy

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