Learning About Yourself To Tell Your Story: Saboteurs

By Brenda L. Peterson, The Layoff Lady

Learning About Yourself

Whether you’re considering making a career change, are currently in the midst of a job transition, or want to be more effective in your role, increasing your self-knowledge is a great place to start. 

A Good Starting Point: Values and Strengths

In other articles here on The Layoff Lady, I’ve outlined ideas for exploring your values and discovering your strengths. Knowing more about what you truly value and what you are good at will help you think about the why, what, and how of the type of work you are driven to do. Reflecting on your findings will also help you have better conversations about your skillset and what motivates you personally and professionally.

A Solid Next Step: Discovering Your Saboteurs 

 It’s incredible how our strengths and values also show up when we are in challenging situations—often in good ways, but sometimes in more destructive ways. Learning about how you can get in your own way is a valuable strategy for making better decisions when you’re mid-crisis.

Enter Shirzad Chamine. He is a professor, professional coach, and the author of the best-selling book Positive Intelligence. He introduces strategies for how to be mindful of what we know (IQ) our overall emotional intelligence (EQ), and how to leverage our positive intelligence (abbreviated as  PQ). The end result is learning to be more effective and increase our overall.

Nine Ways We Self Sabotage (According to Positive Intelligence)

Here arer the nine saboteurs outlind in Positive Intelligence listed in alphabetical order along with my brief description of each:

1. Avoider: Nope. Not dealing with it. Hey—look over there!
2. Controller: I’m scared and taking charge! I’m impatience and I will run over everyone else to fix this.
3. Hyper-achiever: I will work day and night with no breaks to finish all the things by myself.
4. Hyper-rational: I’m going to logic my way out of this no matter whose stupid feelings get hurt.
5. Hyper-vigilant: I’m fighting any and all possible catastrophes non-stop. Sleep is for the weak.
6. Pleaser: I’ll make these people like me even if I make myself sick doing it.
7. Restless: That other thing looks cool. And that one. And that one. So many shiny things!
8. Stickler: I’m going to get this all exactly right to the letter if it takes me all night and day.
9. Victim: Fix my problems because I can’t (or won’t). I’ll be over her brooding and suffering.

Yikes. We're certanly not our best selves when we show up this way. Let's look at how you can identify your saboteurs and use that information to improve how you show up.

About The Assessment To Find Your Top Saboteurs 

Set aside time to take the 9 Ways We Self Sabatoge Assessment from Positive Intelligence. The assessment takes 5-10 minutes to complete. In addition, I suggest giving yourself 30-45 minutes to review your results and reflect. 

This assessment consists of 45 questions. Each question includes of a statement, and you'll rate your agreement with that statement on a 5-point scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The directions encourage you to answer each question relatively quickly and go with your initial response. 

The final 7 questions are about demographics and finding out where they will send your assessment results. 

Your Assessment Results

The results you receive include a ranking of your top sabateurs and your score for each. In addition, you will receive the following information about each of your saboteurs:
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• Basic Description
• Characteristics
• Thoughts
• Feelings
• Justification Lies
• Impact On Self and Others
• Original Survival Function

Reviewing Your Results

I find these types of assessments fascinating. As someone who is committed to ongoing professional development, I appreciate getting insights that might be hard for someone else to share. These insights are valuable, and also help me understand why I do what I’m doing as well as helping me to recognize those non-helpful patterns so I can adjust my approach going forward.

Not at all surprising to me, my top three saboteurs are as follows:

1. Controller, 8.1
2. Hyper-Achiever, 7.5
3. Restless, 5.6

My Initial Reflections On My Results

Here were my initial thoughts as I saw my top three identified saboteurs: 
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• Controller: In other assessments, Bold and Driver have been my identified characteristics. I'm someone who tends to keep things to the point, hold people accountable, and help move projects forward. Consequently, under stress, that tendency to lead a project may become overly tight-fisted control. Not good.

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• Hyper-Achiever: Achiever is on my top CliftonStrengths, so it makes sense that I may have a tendency to overfocus on that strenght and work to personally achieve my way out of a situation. 

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• Restless: I'm always excited about learning new things, and my brain is always going a million miles an hour. On the flip side, this means I sometimes take on too many new things or even interrupt myself mid-flow to work on something else because of an idea I can not clearly articulate yet. ​

My Additional Reflections On My Results

Under Controller, here are a few statements resonated with me from the details included  within my report:
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• Characteristic: “Comes alive when doing the impossible and beating the odds.” Most definitely. I am SO the person who digs being able to solve the unsolvable problem. Never tell me the odds!

 

• Thought: “If I work hard enough I can and should control the situation so it goes my way.” Whereas some people need to be motivated to do more to solve a problem, I needed to learn when to stop and either let someone else jump in or realize it might not be readily fixable. I appreciated the reminder.

 

• Feeling: “Angry and intimidating when others don’t follow.” In my area of expertise, I get pushy and controlling when we’re up against the wire and something needs to get resolved. Earlier career, I never realized that my determination and confidence in getting something done was perceived as intimidating. However, after learning that a bunch of my daughter’s friends were scared to death of me when they were little, I realized I need to be mindful of how my determination comes off to others.  

Reflecting on Your Results

• Which results resonated most with you? Why?
• Which results were surprising to you?
• Reflect on times you reacted in a way aligned with your results. How might you do that differently now?
• What are ways that you can recognize a possible sabotuer and adjust to improve the impact of your reactions?

Learn More

• Positive Intelligence book by Shirzad Chamine 
• Positive Intelligence: 9 Ways We Self Sabotage Assessment 
• The Layoff Lady: Learning  About Yourself To Tell Your Story – Values 
• The Layoff Lady: Learning  About Yourself To Tell Your Story - Strengths 
• Han Solo Never Tell Me The Odds Video Clip
• The Layoff Lady: I Just Got Laid Off--Now What? ​