Achievement drive: A key Leadership skill for a High Performance
Aug 10, 2023
The Institute for Social and Emotional Intelligence defines Achievement drive as “having personal and professional high standards and striving to improve or meet new higher standards of excellence.”
Fundamentally, this is what sets apart high performance leaders from the average.
People with this skill are result oriented, they have high standards and a high drive to meet their objectives. They keep challenging themselves, take (calculated) risks and they continue to improve themselves and their performance.
On the contrary, people who lack the capacity to set for themselves high personal and professional standards of excellence often do the minimum to get by and do not push themselves. They tend to merely get the work done when goals are set for them but do not demonstrate interest in working independently to an internal standard of excellence. They accept the status quo and never do more than require; if pressed to set goals, they tend to set easy goals they can effortlessly attain or impossible goals they will fail to meet (and will say things such as: “I told you”).
In order to boost your achievement drive, here below please find some suggestions:
- Discover your why (read Find Your Why by Simon Sinek)
- Set goals. And make your goals SMART.
- Get in touch with the “emotional pull” of what you want to achieve.
- Set internal standards of excellence and never settle for mediocrity (avoid the mediocrity in all its forms).
- Ask yourself what you gain by going the extra mile and what you lose if you don’t.
- Keep learning and use information to reduce uncertainty.
- Take calculated risks for achieving your goals.
- Work with a Gantt chart or similar to help yourself to plan work around deadlines and properly allocate resources.
- Keep daily log of your achievements and measure progress.
- Take at least one new step each day.
- Learn ways to do better and how to improve performance (read High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way by Brandon Burchard and The Leader Who Had No Title by Robin Sharma).
- Work with a Social and Emotional Intelligence certified Coach to develop key leadership and social skills.
Discover your strengths and development opportunities to improve your social and emotional intelligence! START HERE!
“Social and Emotional Intelligence (SEI) is the ability to be aware of your own emotions, and those of others, in the moment, and to use that information to manage ourselves and our relationships.” ―The Institute for Social and Emotional Intelligence
