Tech innovators driven to be of uncommon, lasting benefit to others will eventually meet and battle with the phenomena of poor performance. 

This essay is Part One of a series for tech innovators and professionals who’ve been pushed into the corner of a personal work performance challenge. It’s a blunt nudge to unleash talons, show teeth, and sharpen your daggers of promise, while unearthing this obstacle’s hidden terrain. 

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I view poor performance as an inner life issue that can be arrested, broken, dissolved, and transformed. But the correct view must be applied towards conquering and overruling it.

Understand that poor performance at work is rooted in spiritual imbalance – a misfiring of our soul force. 

Not viewing and directly addressing work performance struggles as first a spiritual challenge – hidden in the unspoken, the unseen, the seemingly intangible atmosphere of our inner life – makes your position a target primed for destruction. 

The risk of being demoted, fired, or laid off now outshines the path to build tenure and value. In other cases, prematurely walking away – quitting, resigning – from the opportunity to dominate within and rule over your role’s influence at work allows the fight over your career and spiritual territory to kill confidence, inviting the counting of coup against your success. 

Within the word “poor” are multiple, insidious meanings:

• destitute 

• lacking 

• inadequate

• weak

• deficient

Each meaning is a counterpoint to the quality of action that a performance review, or feedback given says is missing in your contribution: high-yield effort and output that will generate wealth/an increase of revenue/more money for those you build with and work for, as a tech innovator. 

But the most important element in the equation formed between company-workplace agendas, the services/products offered, and the money to be earned – money now at-risk of being lost due to poor performance – is you as the tech innovator.

• Your drive to contribute, create, and influence has been questioned. 

• Your ability to increase personal economic well-being has been threatened. 

• The power to elevate your life circumstances through meaningful work and valuable professional relationships has been weakened.

Using the word “poor” to describe critical work performance challenges is harsh. 

But it’s an extremely honest, visceral term. It is not a word meant to soothe. Its purpose is to incite sharp attention, forewarning, and rightful irritation. Everything that matters most is at stake.

The word “poor” also symbolizes what happens energetically, psychically, emotionally to your work reputation, stamina, and focus. Sinking under the weight of a work performance struggle – where the inner mechanics of it are not investigated – invites:

• depletion of your inner life resources, lessening trust in fresh solutions being available

• theft/stealing of your time, thoughts, and physical energy, by focusing on reactive band-aid “fixes”, worry, or apathetically checking out 

• devaluation of your innate worth, through viewing external validators as the true and final authority on what value you “offer”

Most critically: “poor” reflects the inability to generate, attract, build upon, and abundantly share resources. Resourcefulness is cultivated in an atmosphere of inner freedom. Freedom to envision, respond, and redirect the professional outcomes of your workplace world. 

Progressive movement, momentum, and growth can only flourish within the active decision to investigate – look within – and critically assess the assessment itself of poor performance.

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In Part Two, I’ll dive deeper into the atmosphere of our soul, as the kick-off investigation point toward resolving work performance challenges.

Limitless appreciation to Alissa Mears, Suad Fakih-Name, Phil Vanstone, Dhanesh Neela Mana, and Michael Dean.