Workplace Issues for GTs in IT Organizations

In my previous page, Managing GTs in IT Organizations, I shared some ideas on how I as a (Gifted and Talented Adult) would prefer to be managed. Since there are a number of GTs in IT, I’m sharing the following observations for their benefit as well.

• Overqualification and underemployment are real difficulties for many GT adults in the modern workplace.

Earlier in my career, I found this was an issue with positions in which I was frankly overqualified and underemployed. Our capabilities can put us into situations where we may even find ourselves outperforming everyone around us but being held back by management because we are 'indispensable.' I think the key is to realize that some of these positions are transitional, and to seek to keep ourselves from being 'indispensable' by cross training our coworkers. If we can find some way to let our managers know that we're gifted in an appropriate manner, we can also head off some problems if they begin to expect everyone to be able to pick up things like we can and do the variety of things that we can. But I found that jobs with easily mastered, routine and repetitive responsibilities were not really suitable for me for the long term. Rather, these jobs were stepping stones to other positions with greater responsibilities and challenges.

Generally, most people nowadays seek more out of a job than just a paycheck, and this is even more so for GTs. Unfortunately, many people still have some strange ideas about employment; it does not have to be misery inducing monotony. Rather, a GT is a person who is most satisfied when being productive and making a significant contribution, and this can often be very profitable both for the GT and the organization which employs him or her.

• Vocational choice is a real difficulty also for many GT adults.

When a person can do many things well, there are a number of vocational choices open. Here is one of the places where a GT can make a good choice that goes sour when it seems that there are many good choices. It is also a place where externally imposed choices can cause years of heartache and frustration, where a GT person takes up a profession or job which others say would be good for them but is in fact against their best interests and contradictory to his or her entire set of abilities and temperament.

A GT person most likely will deliver excellent results and can often do so within a work environment which is wrong for them in the long term. But the cost will be in lost productivity and lost potential. The reward will be much greater GTs find work environments in which they can find that they can show their potential and demonstrate their personal productivity.

Chronic mismanagement is a real difficulty also for many GT adults in the modern workplace.

The first way in which a GT can be mismanaged is when the greater potential and productivity of the GT are disdained. A nonGT boss may have the belief that anyone can do what we can as fast as we can and with the same quality as we can -- the 'you're nothing special' jibe.

The other way in which a GT can be mismanaged is to attempt to make others do everything that the GT can. Unfortunately, they will all resent this tremendously. All attempts to clone me on and off the job have failed miserably -- thank goodness. The answer is rather to recognize the GT as an individual with his or her own unique potential, like everyone else in the department and organization.