Nigel was a top manager at a company that had begun a major campaign to flatten the corporate hierarchy and give employees the authority to make critical decisions.
Nigel had all the right rhetoric about "sharing power" and delegating authority - he just couldn't do it when any hint of a crisis arose.
When things were going well, Nigel was actually fairly good about handing down responsibility to his staff, who were extremely competent. But at the least whiff of an emergency, he grabbed the reigns, rebuffing anyone else's advice or efforts. This not only undermined the company's initiative to push power down the line, but it damaged the self confidence of Nigel's staff. And his incessant talk about the virtues of sharing power while actually taking it back corroded his credibility.
"Unfortunately, Nigel couldn't see the contradiction, even when a subordinate had the nerve to point it out to him says Robert E Kaplan, formerly of the Center for Creative Learning. The first step in improving one's performance is to identify a need for improvement, but, as in Nigel's case, such self - knowledge can be extremely difficult to come by."
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Being blind to our problem areas can put our career at risk. In a comparison of executives who derailed and those who did well, both groups had weaknesses; the critical difference was that those who did not succeed failed to learn from their mistakes and shortcomings. The unsuccessful executives were far less open to acknowledging their own faults, often rebuffing people who tried to point them out. This resistance meant they could do nothing to change them.
Among several hundred managers from twelve different organisations, accuracy in self assessment was a hallmark of superior performance, something poorer performers lacked. It's not that star performers have no limits on their abilities, but that they are aware of their limits - and so they know where they need to improve, or they know with someone else who has a strength they lack.