Over the years of consulting and coaching, I have worked with high performers across many industries who came to me for help navigating their workplace woes. Despite being conscientious, emotionally intelligent, self-aware, and highly competent people, each of them eventually became targets in their workplaces, even after years of a strong reputation and regard in their respective industry. The basis of their workplace issue was having to work with or under someone who we came to conclude was on the extreme of the narcissism behaviour spectrum: covert or overt. Their work started to suffer because their competence and integrity were perceived as a threat, rather than an asset, by their narcissistic coworker, manager, or leader, who started to retaliate and make their work life miserable.
The mistake these high performers made came from limited awareness, not poor performance. They violated invisible authority lines and collided with boundaries that govern advancement within hierarchical systems. The reaction that followed, such as exclusion, micromanagement, reputational damage, or scapegoating, reflected the unspoken norms that exist to protect fragile egos and entrenched power structures.
Through years of analysing my own experiences in academic and health sectors, and observing the same dynamics across many other industries, I have come to see that the official position description rarely aligns with the expectations that actually determine success. When people take the written description at face value and assume that doing what is formally expected is sufficient to succeed, particularly in workplaces that rely on political skill, they discover that competence and conscientiousness can become their greatest liabilities.
In reality, there are four layers that shape every role:
the stated position description
the real position description
the hidden curriculum
the formative curriculum