Stop validating your Sally Show-Offs and start supporting your Steady Eddies
I’ve observed a Crazy Busy character popping up in organisations. Sally Show-Off is motivated by promotion, praise, followers, likes, drama. She’s all about ‘look at me’ never ‘look what we’ve done’.
Sally oozes confidence and charisma. Grandstanders like her do brilliantly at interview so they race up the ladder. Those ‘tell me about a time’ questions are a golden ticket to perform. Everyone knows that the person who has the best interview skills doesn’t always have the best on the job skills, but Sally Show-Off knows how to manipulate the process. Steady Eddie doesn’t.
It’s not enough to be good at your job these days, you must be visibly good in order to progress. Sally Show-Off isn’t that good at her job but she’s really good at creating the perception that she is.
She allocates a lot of time to curating her LinkedIn profile and establishing guru-like status. Likes are everything. Most of her ‘network’ are people who need her: her suppliers or her team are instructed to comment. Endless sharing on socials counts a lot now. Leaders are expected to spill the beans on their private lives in order to build an ‘authentic’ personal brand.
Cultures of 24/7 connectedness reward ‘look at me’ grandiose behaviour. Always-on, super visible, last-minute demands, endless emails, unnecessary complexity, relentless meetings, changing goalposts, too many projects at once. Who cares what impact her working style has on the little people who actually do the work? She doesn’t. She’s hard to call out on this because Sally Show-Off turns nasty when she feels vulnerable. This side is rarely shown to the people she needs to impress, but saved for those less powerful. They only matter to her when a 360 review is coming up and anyway people rarely stick their neck out by telling the truth.
What are the consequences?
Damage to the wellbeing of the people surrounding her, who eventually move on.
Close scrutiny of a business that seeks and rewards these characters will show that their flash in the pan performance isn’t sustainable. Sally Show-Off leaves, moving on with panache because she is a star performer with everything the head-hunters lust after.
What about Steady Eddie? He’s picking up the pieces, looking after the customers, doing his job without drama or conflict. If only he scored higher on Leadership, Assertiveness, Influencing, Entrepreneurship or Communication Skills.
How can I help?
Support your Eddies with coaching or my aspiring leadership programmes that align with your values. Book a Crazy Busy or Crazy Busy for Leaders session to wipe out ‘look at me’ behaviours and make it easy to get priority work done, drama-free. Here’s my full 2022 brochure. Sallys can be coached.
My career manual, Mind Flip: Take the Fear out of Your Career will help you to create and articulate honest success.
MIND FLIPPING: to flip your focus away from yourself and instead look outwards – on to the value you add and the problems you, uniquely, can solve for other people.
Chapter 23 of The Crazy Busy Cure is about how toxic bosses bully with unnecessary busyness and how HR must stop this. Chapter 18 describes Control Freak, Super Stars and Mother Hen Managers: all nightmares.