Achievement Aversion

The old line about being able to get a lot of things done if you don't mind who gets the credit is true. What surprised me early in my career, however, is just how many people are consumed with acknowledgments of achievement.

A predecessor in a position once told me that good performance on my part would imply poor performance on his own; an absurd notion that assumes future achievement is not possible if a job has been done right. Bosses who believe that no one deserves an "Exceeds Standards" performance evaluation because "no one is perfect" routinely subvert the accuracy of appraisal systems while committing acts of injustice. It takes a warped view to see the world as a zero-sum game in which someone else's gain is our loss. There is also something twisted in a refusal to recognize great performance; a view that lumps extraordinary performers in with the merely good ones.

I don't know what is at the heart of these aversions. I suspect it is either envy or an excessive emphasis on equality.