Gifted in the Workplace

Research has shown that high-IQ individuals are likely to perform well at a wide variety of cognitive skills, such as planning, memory, and attention. Assuming high IQ and the advanced cognitive skills that correlate with it are advantageous in most workplaces, it follows that the gifted employee is a sought after and valued employee. Yet there is little agreement about the exact relationship between IQ and career success. Given the wide range of factors that all contribute to professional achievement and job satisfaction, gifted employees will likely enjoy many of the same advantages and suffer many of the same frustrations in the workplace that they do in the rest of life. This entry describes for workplace issues for the gifted.

Indeed, with all of the effort expended on nourishing the gifted child's schooling, it is somewhat surprising how little has been expended on the challenges of life after school. Although the workplace presents the gifted adult with many of the opportunities and obstacles that school presented the gifted child, past performance is not necessarily a good indicator of future potential. The credentials and honors that the high-achieving gifted student acquired through his or her education are no guarantee of workplace success or happiness, but nor is the academically underperforming gifted student doomed to underperform in the workplace. Only some of the skills that helped the high-achiever through school will be transferable to the workplace, and the adult workplace may offer the under-achiever the freedom and stimulation lacking in school.

In addition to their formidable talents, keen intelligence, and high potential, gifted individuals transitioning to the workplace bring with them the assumptions and behaviors that they developed as gifted children in school. Like gifted children, gifted adults will tend to bore easily and rarely take kindly to repetitive, mindless tasks. Like gifted children, they are naturally inquisitive and habitual tinkerers. And like gifted children, they will likely want to know the why's and wherefore's of a task and will resist things that don't make sense. But unlike gifted children, gifted workers can offer their organization what gifted students never could offer their schools: Gifted workers can invent the breakthrough product, outsmart the competition, see the best solution to the most challenge problems, and change the organization and their world.

Many of the world's most successful organizations owe their success to the brilliance of their employees, and human relations departments call for the best and the brightest. Yet the relationship between the gifted individual and his or her organization poses unique challenges as well. Facing these challenges offers opportunities not just for the organization to get the most out of its employees but also for the gifted individual to grow and develop in new ways.

Workplace culture can have a great effect on the success or failure of the gifted employee, and the essentials of a good fit are not always obvious. Just because gifted individuals may be nonconformist in their attitudes and different in their ways of thinking does not mean that they will thrive in a free, anti-authoritarian environment. Even the most gifted minds need structure and guidance, as [Page 386]long as it is not too heavy handed or micromanaging. Gifted employees will likely thrive with good mentoring and coaching to help shepherd their talents. Being gifted is not the same as being self-organizing or being able to make the right decisions with their organization's best interests in mind. Nor is being gifted necessarily a substitute for wisdom, experience, or all the skills necessary to get the job done.

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