The iceberg model: The hidden key to career Ssuccess

What if one of the biggest barriers to your career success wasn't your skills, but what other people don't see? Sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it? Bear with me.

Let’s start with your behaviour. It’s like the tip of this iceberg. The part of you that's exposed, visible for the world to see.

Imagine you're in a meeting. There’s healthy debate. The energy amongst the other attendees is palpable. But you’re the exception. You sit in silence, arms folded, allowing others to dominate proceedings. You know you have good ideas. Yet you keep them to yourself. As a result, they’ll never be heard, because neither will you.

Or maybe the opposite scenario is in play in this meeting. You’re the one who dominates, talking over everyone else. When others speak, you're distracted, checking your phone rather than listening. There’s zero listening involved from you. And why not? After all, you have the best ideas. Always. Who cares about what the others in the room have to say? What do they know?

Either way, whether you tend to hold back or dominate, your behaviour is observed by your colleagues, bosses and clients and may be fed back to you in your annual performance review. It feels uncomfortable. Things may need to change if you’re to make further progress in your career. So you focus on changing what everyone can see.

You're sent on a training course to improve your performance in meetings. You’ll learn how to become more assertive, and how to improve your listening and communication skills. Sounds hopeful.

Yet, you return to work after the course and little changes. You struggle to put all those ideas you learned into practice. But why?

The challenge is this. Trying to shift only your behaviour can be like pushing the tip of that iceberg. Sometimes, the things beneath the surface can make those new behaviours harder to put into practice:

Your feelings - "I'm fuming that idiot in sales dismissed my idea."
Your beliefs - "I'm useless in comparison to my colleagues."
Your attitudes - "Bosses always know best. I should never challenge authority."
Your identity - "Who am I to be in this room with these smart folk?"
Your values - "I don't want conflict."

To transform unproductive behaviours above the surface, you'll also want to consider what's below the waterline, hidden from view. Sometimes learning a new skill on its own may not be enough to change a long-standing pattern.

This is where coaching comes in. Coaching creates the space to explore what's happening beneath the surface. It can help you understand how your beliefs, emotions and identity influence your behaviour, which may help you understand what needs to change as well as how you might approach it.

You can't change what you don't notice. So perhaps it's time to look beneath the surface. Because when you better understand what's happening underneath, you may find it easier to make changes to the behaviours everyone else sees.