I once had a client who was proud of being a perfectionist 🌟. At the time, I was a bit flabbergasted 😲 by how much weight they put into this trait as being a good thing. Particularly as they shared how it was impacting their relationships with loved ones 💔 and caused them extreme frustration at work 🏢, particularly working with others.
Perfectionists often suffer from the feelings of discontent 😔. Never being satisfied. Never feeling like they are enough.
Yet how often have we heard that being a perfectionist is the flaw people are all too willing to admit to as if it were a badge of honour 🏅?
The reality is there are a lot of perfectionists who believe that this is how you must be to be successful 📈. To be at the top in your field or peer group. And while there are likely many world-class experts who are perfectionists that might support their thinking, there is an important question they are failing to consider 🤔.
The sadder reality is that this belief is on the rise 📊. Possibly more so than ever before, our society tells us that to be successful, to be the best, you must also be a perfectionist.
But maybe the better question to ask is, are there successful people who are NOT perfectionists? 🤷♂️
The answer is yes ✅.
First, let’s define perfectionism. Perfectionism usually involves two things – excessively high-performance standards 📏 and overly critical self-evaluations 🧐. It can often extend to being overly critical of others and a need to perform those high standards flawlessly. Overall, perfectionism in its truest form can be debilitating to you personally and have huge consequences for the relationships in your personal and professional life.
Second, let’s quickly examine a few well-known individuals who have been referred to as perfectionists and in some cases had their perfectionism identified as a key reason for their success. And also let’s consider how it hindered their wellbeing.
Steve Jobs – A well-known perfectionist who also has many well-known relationship failures in both love and work is the late Steve Jobs 🍏. While few can argue that Steve Jobs left a meaningful legacy in the tech industry, there are many mixed stories on the experience of working with and for him. He was very well known for his perfectionist nature and often caused fear in his team if they did not meet his level of standards. The intense stress of these excessively high standards often led to burnout 🔥. In the movie “Steve Jobs”, which was based on the authorized biography of Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson, you can easily observe both the greatness of Jobs as a visionary and the negative impacts of his approach.
The question is still, could he have had the same impact and not been so critical? Did the fear he created in others limit their ability to fully collaborate with him in a meaningful way?
Leonardo Da Vinci was also known to be a perfectionist along with being one of the most brilliant artists in history 🎨. Yet, he is only attributed with completing 20 paintings despite having thousands of drawings from his notebooks of unfinished work. In a quick question to ChatGPT of the top 5 artists in history – two of the five completed relatively small numbers of work (Da Vinci and Michelangelo). The other three each created significantly more – Picasso (13,500), Vincent Van Gogh (2100) and Rembrandt (600).
Another figure a little more relevant to our time is the globally famous artist Beyoncé 🎤. There are many stories and accounts of the demanding nature of working with her yet they are also coupled with respect for her professionalism and talent. The work environment she creates is known to be challenging but rewarding, reflective of the high standards she sets for herself and others.
The key here, which is also an important part of the book by social psychologist Thomas Curran, ‘The Perfection Trap’, is having high standards without the overly critical self-evaluation of others.
How do you do this? I think it is as simple as a few first principles that have been spoken many times before.
Over Rotate on Being Kind – to Yourself and Others 😊
Honour the Relationships First ❤️
Have a Growth Mindset – What can I/we Learn from our Progress? 🌱
More and more we are given evidence of the social nature of humans. And that connection is a fundamental human need. Read that again. Notice how it didn’t say that there is a fundamental human need to be a world-class expert or the most successful tech industry innovator. That’s because humans are imperfect. No matter how hard we strive, we will always be flawed.
The challenge for many perfectionists is that somewhere in their cognitive development, let’s say as a child or a young adult, they felt the fear of not being connected. Of potentially being rejected. And in that moment of fear, there was another voice in their head that said, “You need to be perfect in order to be accepted or loved” 😨. Now we can give this little person a break. They did not have the clear thinking skills that we fully formed adults do. Most adults if asked do they need to be perfect to be loved are going to say no when they are answering from their logical rational brains. But some of them, when answering with their emotional, fear-based brain will still have this tiny little voice, which can get quite loud, that screams, “I need to be perfect” 😱.
The perfectionist trait can be learned through family environmental factors such as those described above but also through societal factors such as the excessive demands from social media to be seen as perfect 📱. And, like all trait characteristics, there is a chance you could have been born with a predisposition to perfectionism. If you are unlucky with both the genetic trait and live in an environment where perfectionism is valued – then it’s going to really suck 😔.
Whether you inherited and/or come across perfectionism as a learned behaviour, there are three core elements of perfectionism as defined by psychologists Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett:
1. Self-Oriented Perfectionists or the irrational desire to be perfect 🙇♂️.
2. Socially prescribed perfectionism or the sense of the environment is excessively demanding 🌍.
3. Other-Oriented Perfectionism or the imposition of unrealistic standards on other people 🤦♂️.
The first key challenge to overcome perfectionism is to not glorify it as a trait. Stop wearing it as a badge of honour. The flaw that you choose to flaunt. Like the client I noted at the start, if you really think this is a good thing and is protecting you in some way, then you will never be able to shake this.
Can you reframe to something different and let go of the language of perfectionism? Say High Standards? 🏆
High Standards are great. Many fields demand high standards and should continue to aspire to them. Fields such as medicine where human lives are at stake 🏥. But even in those fields, there are likely elements where the high standards don’t matter so much. For example, how white my doctor’s coat is doesn’t really matter so much as how well they know the anatomy of my body and the condition they are treating me for. I don’t care if the books in their office are lined up in perfect order or their hair has been meticulously brushed. What I care about is do they make me feel safe enough to share whats going on, and be completely truthful about what I’m doing or not doing which could be causing my health concerns; do I trust them because of their knowledge and experience to help assess the problem and their growth mindset to be continually learning new things that might tell them that they were wrong about an outdated procedure.
As a leader, you want your team to feel safe to bring you concerns well before they become issues. If everyone feels like they are walking on eggshells around you, because of how overly critical you are, then they not only will be afraid to tell you when they think you might be wrong, they will also be afraid to share when they have possibly made a mistake which could end up costing you both time and money later down the road. Not to mention your reputation with your clients. These types of perfectionists also tend to be overly controlling of their environment – wanting to micro-manage everyone and everything. This leaves little room for creativity and innovation which most research will tell us that is critical for being world-class at anything 💡.
I have lots of empathy for perfectionists despite having little relatable experience with that personality trait. However, one common feature of many perfectionists is comparing yourself to others, which I unfortunately have loads of experiences with 😞. And it is certainly one of the most dangerous things one can do. This type of perfectionist also tends to be an avoider. If I can’t be as good as this other person, who I see as being more perfect than me, then why even bother? Thomas Curran went as far as suggesting that many of the behaviours that are commonly complained about for certain younger generations of today are more tied to an over-perfectionist trait. We see someone not even trying and think how lazy they are. But the true story is a person filled with such high anxiety and pressure to overperform will most often not even bother to try.
Michael Gervais, high-performance coach, noted a common question he asks his clients – are you living your life to be successful 🏆 or to avoid failure? 🚫 Most people will answer that they are living to be successful – yet when put in a situation where failure is an option – by not being perfect 🚫 – they often will choose the option that is tied to avoiding failure even though the other choice has a greater chance of leading to success. 🌟
Regardless of what type of perfectionist you are, there is a way to overcome this mindset without losing the trait of high standards. 🎯 It requires increased self-awareness 🧠 and willingness to be uncomfortable with your thoughts. 🤔 And while you can be successful going it alone – often the most courageous – dare I say perfect – thing you can do is ask for help. 🙌”.
Resources Used
ChatGPT 4.0
Michael Gervais Finding Mastery Podcast – How To Break Free from Perfectionism | Thomas Curran
TedTalk Thomas Curran – Our Dangerous Obsession with Perfectionism is Getting Worse
Perfectionism Measurement Tool from Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett. Using this link you can download the The Perfectionistic Self-Presentation Scale which is a measure of the interpersonal expression of perfectionistic behaviour.
Positive Intelligence – Find out if being a perfectionist (aka stickler) is one of your top Saboteurs