Turning Your Child Into a Type-A
Steven Berglas has a great piece in Harvard Business Review this month about handling type A personalities. While type As are difficult to work with, they are productive and overachieve. Berglas has his opinion on what might cause this:
In my observation of many A players, I have concluded that childhood really matters. Often these high performers come from demanding backgrounds where unconditional approval was withheld. Getting As, for example, did not meet with admiration from parents. The achievement was typically followed up with the message, “You can do better,” which is never rewarding and often damaging. From your star’s perspective, feedback of this sort obligated him to work endlessly to reach an unattainable goal. The psychologist Anna Freud (Sigmund Freud’s daughter) and others who studied children raised in this manner discovered that these individuals end up with extraordinarily punishing superegos. At first, the pressure comes from outside authority figures; later, A players impose it on themselves and on others. Winston Churchill, who adored his often abusive father, is a case in point. As an adult, Churchill ended each day with a merciless ritual: “I try myself by court martial to see if I have done anything effective during the day.”
Not quite my parents, but close.