Challenging patterns of under-commitment Modifying underachievement

  Under-commitment to one’s work usually manifests itself as underperforming in a significant aspect of one’s work role and a failure to achieve one’s full potential. Underachieving is associated with two main avoidant coping styles, namely failure avoidance and success avoidance. The failure avoidant individual fears failure relative to their peers in areas of achievement such as career, status, income and educational attainment. They are thus unwilling to compete with others to improve themselves. Failure avoidant individuals can be quite bright intellectually and may make claims that they are wasted in their present job and are capable of better things. Yet they seem unable or unwilling to make the effort to improve themselves, for example by enrolling at college, or doing further training. In contrast, success avoidant individuals display a persistent tendency to avoid behaviours associated with achievement, such as decision making, taking responsibility, using their initiative or going for promotion. They fear that they will not be able to cope with the responsibilities demanded of them if they are successful and may find face-saving ways of not taking on new responsibilities.

When an individual adopts an avoidant coping style, they are trying to prevent their underlying negative beliefs and emotions from being activated by avoiding any situation that may trigger them. It is likely that failure avoidant and success avoidant individuals may have learned to believe as children that they were untalented and lack what it takes to succeed. As a consequence they live in fear that exposure of their incompetence is imminent. Cognitive interventions thus focus on challenging dysfunctional assumptions relating to the underlying beliefs that they are ‘incompetent’, ‘unable to cope’, ‘unable to take responsibility’ or ‘likely to fail’.

Challenging patterns of underachievement involves identifying and challenging the dysfunctional attitudes associated with failure. The underachiever’s relationship to their work needs to be changed from one of procrastination and avoidance to one of confronting challenges in a timely way. The link between work and fear of failure needs to be challenged. The first step is to self-monitor using thoughts diary sheets in order to identify examples of the attitudes associated with avoidant behaviours that need to be challenged. The standard cognitive techniques outlined earlier in this chapter can be employed to identify and challenge their dysfunctional beliefs and assumptions about the underachiever’s relationship with their work. They need to consider alternative ways of thinking such as ‘I am as good as anyone else’, ‘I am capable’, ‘I am competent’, ‘I am able to cope’, ‘I can be successful’ and ‘I can handle responsibility’. These alternative beliefs can then be tested out through behavioural experiments.

The use of behavioural experiments to disconfirm dysfunctional beliefs can be particularly effective where avoidance is a maintaining factor. Underachievers particularly need to confront situations in which they believe there is a risk of failure. For example, the failure avoidant employee is to be encouraged to carry out behavioural experiments in which they come out of their comfort zone and put themselves more in situations where there is a risk of failure. This could, for example, be through enrolling at college, doing further training or going for promotion. Similarly, success avoidant employees could be encouraged to confront situations where they could be successful. This may involve taking on greater responsibilities, practising more autonomous decision making, or going for promotion, in order to confront their fear of success.