How to Survive Being Labeled a Star

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2017

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

Jennifer Petriglieri, professor at INSEAD, discusses how talented employees can avoid being crushed by lofty expectations -- whether their own, or others'. She has researched how people seen as "high potential" often start to feel trapped and ultimately burn out. Petriglieri discusses practical ways employees can handle this, and come to see this difficult phase as a career rite of passage. She’s the co-author of “The Talent Curse” in the May-June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Closer Podcast brings you the inside story of deals changing the world, told by the people who know how it all went down.
0:09.0	Understand the human motivations behind groundbreaking business decisions with host Amy Keene.
0:14.6	Listen to The Closer, Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. Thomas had
0:35.7	always been something of a star. He was on the fast track at his private equity
0:40.2	firm and he closed big billion dollar deals. That is until he quit. Thomas
0:46.7	had been at his desk one night working on a big IPO. It was the kind of
0:50.8	assignment you get when you're being groomed to become a partner.
0:54.3	As the sun rose, he realized he couldn't remember doing any of the work.
0:58.1	The last six hours were just gone.
1:01.4	He went to see a doctor. He tried dialing back, but he couldn't. And finally he told
1:06.8	his bosses he was quitting. They never saw it coming. And he hadn't either. But Thomas felt he had no choice. The only way out was to get off the fast track.
1:17.0	Thomas is not alone. This feeling of being trapped by your own talent is a phenomenon newly studied by Jennifer
1:24.9	particularly and her co-author, Jean-Pierre-partiglieri, both professors at Inciad.
1:30.1	Thomas's story kicks off the article that they wrote called The Talent Curse,
1:34.3	and it's in the May-June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.
1:38.2	Jennifer, thanks for talking with the Ideacast today.
1:41.2	Thanks for having me, Sarah.
1:43.4	So how many Thomases are out there?
1:46.4	More than you think, actually.
1:48.0	There's a couple of reasons, first of all, where we don't see them very often.
1:51.8	One is, and I've had this feedback overwhelmingly since the
1:54.8	article has been published is lots of people have contacted me and said, oh I
	...

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