Dealing with Success

Some top executives feel the most vulnerable and burned out when they should be feeling great about themselves. Tom O'Neill, CEO of Parsons Brinckerhoff, noted that many people who enjoy great professional success experience a strange feeling of guilt—as if they did not really deserve to get to the level that they have achieved. "You think that you are going to get found out, that you are not as good as people think you are, and that you are not supposed to be here. That is a personality trait with a lot of us."

In fact, success has a backlash, and that backlash, unless recognized and dealt with, can cause top people to fall. Television executive producer Chris Lloyd told me that he experienced a very rough period after his sitcom "Frasier" won its fifth Emmy in a row. "I always thought, wow, wouldn't it be great to win an Emmy? And then I thought, well my dad won two Emmys, so wouldn't it be great to win two? And then I wanted to exceed my dad, so I wanted three. Suddenly we'd won three years in a row and I started thinking, well, you know the record for any series is four in a row. And suddenly you've won four and then, if we do it again next year, we'll set the all-time record. Which we did! And then, I showed up for work at the beginning of the sixth season, and I started thinking, I don't know what my next goal is here. And it became really tough." He felt that all he could do was go down, and that feeling created self-doubt. It was at that time that he decided to switch tracks and start developing new sitcoms. "Once you are at the top, all you can do is fall off. So it is better to climb a different mountain," Lloyd concluded.

While it might be comforting to know that even the most successful among us experience doubt, keep in mind that this doubt cannot last long if you want your career to remain invincible. Those who feel guilty about achieving success shrug those feelings off before they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who feel that they have reached the pinnacle of success in one job quickly switch tracks to pursue new opportunities. You must do the same.