The Truth About Perfectionism
Many potential employers, prospective clients or board members in a community organization, like to ask this typical question when interviewing candidates to work with: “what is one of your weaknesses?”
Look at any interviewing how-to book and you’ll find a plethora of suggestions on how to answer this somewhat uncomfortable but inevitable inquiry. And we know why people ask this: not just to actually hear where you might be deficient in order to protect against making a bad choice to work with you, but also to gauge how you answer such a direct question.
People ask this question to learn whether you are humble enough to own your shortcomings, open to growing and improving, but also confident enough to handle criticism. The conventional wisdom on answering this question usually goes as follows: pick a weakness that is substantial enough that it doesn’t look like you think you are perfect, but make sure it is an attribute that could actually be seen as a strength from the inquirer’s perspective.
One of the most common answers I hear from people to this question, is “I think one of my weaknesses is that I’m probably a perfectionist.” Perfectionism is one of those traits that gets thrown around like it’s actually something very attractive (notice the root word “perfect”) but gets to also be seen as a weakness because it denotes a separation from the norm. When further explained as to how it is indeed a deficiency and not a strength in its uniqueness relative to others, people often elaborate: “you know, I can be impatient with people who aren’t as driven as me to get it right,” or “I might actually work too hard on something to make sure it’s perfect.”
What a perfect response! In offering the idea of being a perfectionist, you get to deflect the obvious desire on the inquirer’s part to put you on the spot about a potential weakness, yet you’ve turned the tables on him by accepting the possible weakness that others could perceive about this trait. At the samy time, you have still affirmed that such a trait is still preferable to anyone than the opposite. After all, would you really want to hire an “imperfectionist?”
So you’ve managed to dodge this bullet by noting your perfectionism. But isn’t this explanation a bit disingenuous if in fact you are a perfectionist? Isn’t the fact that you are, more of a weakness than you’re leading on and people are really prepared to see?
It’s a bit like apologizing for something you did wrong, not by admitting your wrongdoing but by saying, “I’m sorry if people were offended by my obviously perfect tendencies….” In focusing on the perception others have of such a trait and reminding them that in fact they may be the ones with the weakness if they are not a perfectionist, you are missing the bigger point of how perfectionism can be a major weakness for you. And not just in “interview speak,” but in real life.
The truth is, that in today’s 24-7, information superhighway and workaholic, dog-eat-dog, keep-up-with-the-Joneses, acquire everything you can culture, perfectionism is one of the most crippling characteristics a person could have.
When someone says they are a perfectionist, expecting a pat on the back, they need to actually realize they are insulting themselves. A perfectionist might seem to some as one who represents the best of the best, the elite, the picture of success – because the person takes great care to create perfect outcomes in all they do, from career to family.
But in truth, a perfectionist is someone who is at odds with the way the world actually works. Because the world – and all that’s in it – are not perfect.
As a result, the perfectionist who believes his perfectionism is the reason for his achievements in life, is actually in denial and doesn’t know it.
It’s when a crisis happens, either due to committing an action with unreasonable expectations of perfection, or by avoiding an action (also due to unreasonable expectations of perfection) that most perfectionists finally realize the brutal truth:
The way they are working just isn’t working for them.
Perfectionism is rooted in many factors, from one’s childhood experiences and family to career episodes, as well as the general values one has developed around their life. Some people struggle with outward perfectionism, where they are seldom satisfied with how others are approaching something important to them.
These perfectionists often are seen as disciplined and detail-oriented but also difficult to deal with. A mother who is an outward perfectionist may never be happy with how her children are behaving in school and her criticism of them can become overbearing to the children but also stressful and burdensome to her as she is never sufficiently satisfied.
Other people struggle with inward perfectionism, and find it hard to be satisfied with their own performance on life’s activities. If you are of this type, you may struggle with accepting who you are and how you conduct yourself in certain situations because you are never happy with how well you did, or how effectively you accomplished a certain goal that is important to you.
Such inward perfectionism, while at times contributing to massive success because of an internal drive to constantly do better and succeed, ironically leads to significant inertia and procrastination, essentially counteracting the success.
This is because the lack of acceptance that things may or may not turn out as you wish, keeps you either working on overdrive on some things or avoiding the pain of failure by choosing inaction or delay on other things.
When observing an inward perfectionist, what people see can run the gamut from a highly successful achiever to a lethargic, directionless drone. But what those observers don’t know is that the inward perfectionist’s mind is running at mach speed, while his body is wavering in its alignment.
As a result, most perfectionists, even when they are not performing at top levels in their work or not representing a certain level of success in their personal life, are far from lazy. They are just inconsistent in their approach to the world around them, largely because they have a need to have it figured out first.
So when I come across someone who is stressed out at work due to burnout, or someone who is depressed because she is bored and out of activities that excite her, I’m not surprised when both of them suffer from the same thing: perfectionism.
One is constantly moving and the other isn’t, yet in their minds they both are doing the same thing: ruminating on what could be, not what is.
This is why the best step forward for most perfectionists is not to change or to reverse their approach. Telling a workaholic to stop working is no different than telling an alcoholic to just stop drinking. Similarly telling someone to get out of bed when they are depressed is a good idea, but chances are the depressed perfectionist has also already thought of a million reasons why she should, yet also managed to avoid acting on her own advice.
Remember as I wrote above, these seemingly different performers are both ruminating on what “could be, not what is.” Perfectionism is quite simply a problem with acceptance.
To cure perfectionism, or at least minimize the side effects of it, don’t change anything. But accept everything.
To cure perfectionism, you must ultimately be okay with imperfection. You must be okay with perfectionism being both a weakness and a strength, and in some ways, neither. Because with self-acceptance, which is they cure, you realize it doesn’t matter which it is. What matters is that it is a part of who you are, and it is what it is.
So before you can become a more “balanced” individual, working less hours to spend time with their family, or less of a procrastinator by actually doing more of the things you avoid, you first need to accept yourself and the world around you.
You must be aware of the sensations and thoughts that your body and mind create to justify your workaholism or your avoidant procrastination. You first need to notice what is going on, when it is. Otherwise you begin to assume that not only will the world not change, but that you won’t be able to either.
And remember, this is where stress and depression, anxiety and gloom come from – a belief that there is nothing to look forward to, because what you contribute to your life and the world around you doesn’t matter. Such a belief makes you feel that you can’t keep up with what life and the world holds in store for you. Or it makes you feel that you can keep up, but you’re not happy with what you see.
Yet by simply noticing the sensations and thoughts you develop in regard to this conundrum, you will realize that you are not what you think or what you feel.
By noticing, you are observing. And by observing without judging, you can accept. Gloom and doom is not you, it’s just a fleeting feeling or thought.
Instead of saying, I’m going to fail in my job because I can’t seem to get this project done, you are able to say to yourself, “I’m noticing I am avoiding doing this project. That’s interesting. What is that about?”
As an observer of your thoughts, you are able to then provide the compassion and motivation that you would to a friend who might tell you the same thing.
Would you call your friend a failure? Probably not. So observe your mind the way you would a friend. By not judging and simply noticing how you feel when you avoid work or when you go into overdrive out of fear of failing, you can take a step back and make an executive, not an emotional, decision about what to do about it.
Chances are you still will drop back into old habits. You will begin to judge what you’re observing, believing in the negative thoughts and feelings that you experience during times of ambiguity or difficulty.
But there is a greater likelihood that this small change in your perfectionist approach by increasing awareness of your true feelings and thoughts and restraining judgment on them until they subside, will lead to greater resilience and less reliance on perfectionism to get through. You are now equipped with a better way to find some internal balance than to keep “doing more” or “doing less” to feel better.
At the end of the day, you can’t control the stream of challenges that will come your way in career and in life. So trying to do so, will simply create more distress.
What you need to control is your mind, and the best way to do that, is to first be a judgment-free observer of all the stuff that goes in and out of it. The less you judge, the less control your thoughts have over you and the more control you have over how you perceive the world around you. And this will empower you to achieve the optimal amount in your life, with maximum fulfillment and minimal distress.
Please add to the discussion here by providing your comments. What have your experiences with perfectionism been like? How have you chosen to approach it?
How To Lead People When They Are Way Older Than You
You may have heard of the Impostor Syndrome, which makes successful people unable to internalize their own accomplishments and value. Some feel phony and undeserving of the status they have, as well as fearful of failing at meeting the expectations they believe others have of them.
Such feelings of inadequacy often happen to young leaders who have been promoted into positions that require them to manage teams of much older people. In today’s multigenerational workforce, it is not uncommon for baby boomers to report directly to a millennial (Gen-Y) boss.
There may be discomfort (and often resentment) among the older employees around this work relationship. But the newly promoted manager often is uncomfortable leading in this new position, despite having the full confidence of the company in his ability to lead. He may often feel a need to explain away his age or defend his experience level when naturally working to hold team members accountable to management objectives.
I recently coached a leader who was promoted to oversee a team of 8 sales representatives, each with over 25 years of experience with the company. “Wow, my daughter’s older than you!” along with a look of shock, was an all-too-common reaction to her when she first introduced herself to the team.
In truth, she wasn’t a power-hungry professional, just someone who was very good at her individual contributor job for several years. Her advancement was the result of the company’s interest in promoting and retaining younger leaders for long-term competitive strength. And she hadn’t stepped on anyone’s toes to get there: the older people she managed didn’t hide their disinterest in stepping up to the management plate themselves anyway.
Many of these older team members were rightfully at the point in their careers where they were looking to make up some of their lost retirement income so they could move on in the next 3-5 years. But their short-term outlook didn’t keep them from dropping daily hints that they were somehow wronged by having to report to someone so much younger and without as much tenure as they did. They also seemed to neglect the fact that this young leader was probably the only who would likely still be at the company after 5 years or so, simply because of their age and her relative youth.
Getting these team members to push themselves to exceed new and changing company goals, as well as be willing to get coaching from someone 30 years their junior, was an incredibly daunting proposition for this young manager. But she decided to do a few critical things to enhance her chances of succeeding at this role and manage her own fears along the way.
If you’ve found yourself in a similar position, here are 3 suggestions to stay true to your leadership goals without letting your self-confidence or effectiveness in driving team results suffer.
1. Work through resistance one person at a time. It can initially feel like the whole team is against you, but that is usually just your inner critic talking to you. In fact, it’s more likely each person has a different set of issues they are dealing with on their own, with a different perspective on how to resolve them.
Try to look at each relationship you have with each direct report as a special, unique one, that does not have to look exactly the same as each other. Sure you should have standards in terms of how you manage them and avoid showing favorability or enabling cliques to emerge. But you also must understand what are each person’s signature strengths, preferences, goals and values, in order to best motivate them beyond the given task.
You also must be prepared to adjust your goals as needed to negotiate the best arrangement that will achieve the necessary areas of success for the team while meeting the interests of the other person. Too much of a fixed, autocratic approach will make motivating them a burden you will unnecessarily have to carry.
At the same time, pandering to what they want, will minimize your credibility as well as make you vulnerable to insubordination. Be ready to adjust, invite ideas to co-create the right goals and processes, put a firm stake in the ground based on agreed points, and then monitor progress while influencing around the common value you both place on success in that area.
2. Stop defending yourself. While it may be true that your direct reports have children older than you, or way more experience at their job than you do at yours, you can control how you react to that fact. And you can either decide that you’ll take it at face value and even joke about it, or that you’ll let it become a bigger issue than it needs to.
When people say things to you to challenge your age, experience or abilities, they could be doing it out of sheer resentment, but could also be doing it out of insecurity, or even just to test your leadership strength. Whatever the reason, you defending yourself constantly will only keep you at a disadvantage when it comes to rallying them around a common vision and strategy.
Remember that those who promoted you are the ones that have to do the defending, not you. There’s a reason why you’re in the position you are in, and perhaps a similar reason why your direct reports aren’t. But instead of seeing it as “you versus them”, consider your role to be one that really has nothing to do with age or experience, and all to do with the ability to control outcomes through ambiguity.
Remember, they may be more experienced, but they still are individual contributors (or second-level managers to you, if they do have direct reports). Their success factors for their role are different than they are for yours. A leader at your level doesn’t have to be better at your direct reports’ job than they are, in order to command respect. You don’t have to have decades of experience or be a technical expert, in order to know what direction to take the team.
Instead, your job is to find a way to ensure team-driven results in a setting where information may be imperfect, skills may vary among the team, and stakeholders like customers and operational partners may waver in their commitment. As a leader, if you can do those things by asking the right questions, challenging your own limitations and absorbing what you learn to make better decisions, then you are doing what you were promoted to do. And when you are doing your best at that, your age doesn’t matter.
How do you make sure you convey that your age doesn’t matter when it clearly does to your direct reports? Simply educate your team on what your job really is, and what it isn’t. They may not even know the difference since they see you as formerly someone at their level with their same responsibilities, just someone younger.
Remind them that you’re not there to compete with them, to outperform them, or catch up with how much life they’ve lived. You’re there to help them get more of what they individually want, while driving outcomes for the group as a whole that benefit the common vision of the company you all belong to. Your common citizenship in the company is all you need to prove your worth. Then it comes down to how well you lead, not how much you know or what you’ve done in the past.
3. When you don’t agree, focus on aligning intentions, not opinions. Often older team members have more to complain about when they hit a patch of dissatisfaction. It’s just human nature to feel more prone to complaining about work when reaching the twilight of one’s career, than while at the dawn.
As a leader, you do want to encourage the sharing of feedback, about the company (so you are armed with their input) and about you (so you can adjust your approach to lead them). But you also want to set boundaries on what you can and cannot feasibly change. Some team members may prey on your lack of confidence and directness to saddle you with a lot of their work under the guise of “checking with you” before doing anything.
Some may also hinge their motivation on whether you are responding to their complaints, many of which may have nothing to do with you and all to do with a fatigue toward the company culture. So you must convey a balanced approach that invites input and encourages honest feedback, but also lets them know that you will be providing them suggestions on adjusting their feedback to accommodate certain realities that are impossible to change in the moment.
As long as you align your intentions (you wanting to support them and them wanting to see change in the interest of both of you, not just them), you can afford to have differences in perspective. But you must not shy away from ensuring their intentions are solidly in line with a combined benefit, not just theirs, since they clearly expect you to be supportive of them. And you can do this by asking them questions like, “how do you think we can achieve an outcome that fits what you want to change, despite these limitations that I’m unfortunately facing?”
When it comes to getting feedback on you personally, apply a similar approach in embracing the input, but assessing what is valid given actual situations and what is shaped by perceptions, which can be modified by both of you, not just you.
Many young managers are hungry for feedback to validate their approach but when they get negative reports, they take it personally, missing the possibility that the low scores are based less on ability and more on the rater’s perception. Of course, that perception may be based on some reality, but it could also be based on the rater’s personal tendencies and values.
Remember that the feedback is not the end of the game, it is just the beginning. It is the data with which you actually begin working together in a smarter fashion.
It is the information you needed to get, not to validate your work, but better inform yourself on what others need from you, and better decide what you can and cannot give in return. From that point on, with the information on the table, the intentions among you and them have to be the same: that of wanting to create a beneficial relationship to drive results on a shared vision. Then the perspectives, opinions and values can all be different. With transparency about intentions, you can actually get a great deal done even if you don’t see things from the same lens. As long as you remain upfront about your goals and ensure that they are aboveboard with you about theirs, you have nothing to worry about. The rest is an exciting journey for you in leadership growth, so enjoy it and keep learning.
What advice do you have for leaders experiencing these scenarios at work?
Make. Be. Act.
MakeBalance has helped professionals in many walks of life find solutions for problems in their careers and in their search for personal excellence while enjoying themselves along the way. The name is intended to emphasize the need to create balance in your life rather than wait for it or be dissatisfied when it appears to be missing.
Whatever career you have chosen, be it in business, medicine, law, science, entrepreneurship, politics or any other discipline, you may find that the macroeconomic and financial affairs around the world have an indelible impact on the choices you make, the plans you create and the expectations you hold for yourself for happiness and lifelong fulfillment. Just look at how the recent recession has impacted everyone from Wall Street to Main Street.
There is a connection between the movements of the world and the economies that make it up, with the decisions you make around where to live, how to raise your family, whether to take a job or leave your current one, and what luxuries you can afford versus what you must save to avoid future challenges. And as a result, most people are constantly swinging the pendulum in their life from one extreme to another. One year you’re working the crazy hours because the salary is attractive even if you hate your job, just looking for the solace of the next vacation you have planned. The next year, you’re looking for another job that might make you feel more sane, yet unsure how you’ll fund your desired lifestyle with a necessary pay cut. You splurge on the next fancy thing that will show people how much you have worked to deserve the finer things, yet within a month of owning that, you’re looking at how you can get your hands on a bonus or one more client so you can upgrade that to the model your friends have so you don’t feel behind. And this can apply to any job as well as any material good, be it a house, a car or the school you send your kids to. Eventually, most people simply expect to live an imbalanced life (or at least are on a constant journey to change it). But in fact, the key to balance in life comes down to making a choice to have it. Either you commit to living in balance through your intention to live above the ego, above the fray and the distractions of life, or you don’t.
There is nothing wrong with living a life full of ups and downs, even if they are self-inflicted (by taking great risks, enjoying the perks of it, enduring the pain of the inevitable lack that comes with it and then starting over again). Most of us do, and to be honest, there is a thrill to it all. But there is also another path, one that enables greater net joy without as much downside, by minimizing exposure to personal, professional, financial and lifestyle risks as well as finding unbeknownst pleasure in that which you may have found uninteresting or rewarding when living on the roller coaster of imbalance. MakeBalance opens up the window to these ideas simply to give you more to work with on the neverending journey to fulfillment.
Along the way, there are three words that truly capture the spirit of MakeBalance, and they are: Make, Be and Act. These words are seldom used together and are simple and short. Yet they speak volumes in their brevity. Continue Reading →
Can You Handle The Truth?
As a business professional, how proactive are you at asking for honest feedback on your leadership performance?
Do you welcome it or resist it? When you get it without asking for it, do you immediately think about the things you would like to reciprocate their opinions with? Most of us could do better in the area of seeking and absorbing feedback. But to be fair, some just lack validity or even value depending on who it comes from. Nonetheless, even those remarks or judgments can still be valuable on the journey toward self-improvement.
Feedback, in order to be truly valuable, must be delivered with an intention toward going concerns, not just rehashing the past. If someone is just telling you all the things you did and placing a judgment on it, without equal care about the use of the data and opinion on future action, then they are either complimenting you or complaining, but not really collaborating with you toward greater effectiveness.
This doesn’t mean that you should ignore the message. It’s just important to filter it for maximum value. At the end of the day, this is the conversation people are having in their minds or with each other about you. It doesn’t mean it’s true, but it is what it is, nothing more, nothing less. And you’re better off for getting access to it.
Your ability to receive feedback in a constructive, engaged way will help you keep ahead of the pack because you will always be aware of how people perceive you and where you can improve. Regardless of whether people are right or wrong, you are better equipped to align their perceptions with what you want them to see.
Knowing that feedback is, at its best data-driven, but at its worst a mere perception, you need not try to please everyone. Continue Reading →
MBAs and Maslow’s Hammer
At a recent dinner with a fellow MBA holder, I came to find out how many K-12 schools are looking to hire MBAs as principals nowadays, often putting them before career educators and school administrators as top candidates. It seems public schools as well as notable charter programs are looking to run their programs the way businesses do, and they believe that hiring an MBA at the top is a great solution to cure the education crisis. With jobs hard to find today, countless MBAs are also applying for these positions, often with no experience working in a school, having no past exposure to teaching kids, let alone managing other teachers.
Then I came across this well-distributed clip of Matt Damon at a Save Our Schools event. He was questioned by an interviewer with the libertarian site reason.tv, about incentives for tenured teachers to work harder. The interviewer implied that actors like him work hard because of their job insecurity, so how can having job security as public school teachers possibly keep them motivated to do their job well?
Mr. Damon’s response blamed the “MBA style [of] thinking,” pointing out that a teacher teaches because that’s what they want to do, not because of any form of job security; otherwise, why else would they “take a shitty salary and really long hours and do that job unless [they] really love to do it?”
He was then challenged by the cameraman filming the interview with the retort, “[But] “aren’t ten percent bad?….Ten percent of any profession maybe should think of something else [to do].” Mr. Damon cleverly responded by offering that if that’s true, then perhaps the cameraman is part of the 10% in his profession that are bad too, so what do you do?
This clip struck a chord with me. Continue Reading →
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