5 Distinct Challenges Gifted People Face At Work Despite Their High Intelligence
They can easily get taken advantage of by their employer.
Voronaman | Shutterstock.com Less than 5% of the world’s population can be considered gifted, per the International Gifted Consortium. Many would assume that those lucky enough to be in this category have it easy at work. They are gifted, after all. But that isn’t always the case.
According to Katarina Esko, a speaker on high intelligence and the power of authenticiy, because of their intelligence level, gifted people often deal with a few specific work challenges.
Here are 5 challenges gifted people face at work despite their high intelligence:
1. ‘Their true workload often goes unnoticed because they are so efficient’
"Highly intelligent individuals are often so efficient in the workplace that no one actually knows how much work they get done because the workload seems to be hidden from others," Esko explained.
“The reason why this is so problematic for the highly intelligent individuals," she continued, "is that they’re obviously not getting compensated enough for the amount of work that they actually do."
Esko noted that often, no one notices until the gifted person takes some time off and a colleague tries to fill in for them. Then, the organization will quickly realize that they do far more than the average workload.
2. ‘They tend to give credit to the team rather than taking it for themselves, which can keep their skills under-appreciated’
Esko explained that many gifted individuals are bullied when they’re in school. In fact, research from Purdue University revealed that two-thirds of gifted students experience bullying by the eighth grade.
“This can have some consequences also in the work-life for the highly intelligent individual," she said. "When they are doing innovations, and doing a lot of work and accomplishing things, they may not take the credit for themselves ... but rather just highlight the importance of teamwork even though maybe the team didn't do that much."
It’s often easier (and less awkward) to just give the team the credit, even when they did the majority of the work themselves.
However, this can have ramifications for one’s career as “nobody actually understands how skilled that person is and how well they are doing their job,” Esko added.
3. ‘Their desire to avoid workplace politics or drama, in favor of efficiency can make them appear anti-social’
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According to Esko, highly intelligent people often just want to get their work done. They don’t want to get caught up in any extraneous issues around the office.
“They wanna be efficient,” she said. “They want to keep working and going towards those goals and the vision of the company, and then not take part in any kind of office politics or drama, which then makes them appear as antisocial.”
Writing for Psychology Today, psychiatrist Grant Hilary Brenner pointed out that gifted kids are often “stigmatized” and “labeled” as anti-social. Being anti-social is not a trait that comes with high intelligence. Rather, people perceive an individual that way because of their focus on the task at hand.
4. ‘Their high productivity often results in being assigned more work, which can lead to burnout’
Being gifted can create a vicious cycle.
“Their boss might be seeing the contributions that the individual is making to the company and how well they are working and getting their job done, and they start to take advantage of that individual,” Esko said.
Unfortunately, that situation can very quickly lead to burnout. Being given more and more work to do is one way to reach your breaking point fairly quickly.
5. ‘They may not have sufficient freedom to be creative and fully utilize their intellect.’
“Highly intelligent individuals tend to create a lot of things, and they tend to solve problems and optimize things very naturally,” Esko said.
“But if they are not allowed to do that, if it’s not in the scope of their work, they might feel like caged in their … workplace.”
Even the very gifted may be placed into a very specific box in their job. This prevents them from being all they can be and accomplishing the great things they are capable of. Instead, they’re just completing the necessary work.
Esko added that it’s "crucial for their mental health" to have the freedom to work on projects they enjoy.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.