When Your Need For Perfection Takes You Down!

Are you a perfectionist? Most people look at perfection as the height of performance. In sports, we talk about the perfect pass or the perfect shot. In sales, we talk about presenting the perfect proposal and delivering the perfect solution to the customer. What could be better than perfect?

In our career as executive advisors, we have had the opportunity to coach many leaders who take pride in striving for perfection as one of their top leadership strengths. Wikipedia defines perfectionism as: a personality trait characterized by a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting high performance standards, accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations. To produce near perfect work, some of the following characteristics can be used to describe leaders who have a need for perfection:

1. Procrastinate – perfectionists tend to think a long time before they commit their thoughts, put them in writing and hit send
2. Have a high need to know everything about the topic, both pros and cons, about what they are working on
3. Tend to produce less and have significantly more stress in their lives as they strive for perfection
4. Set high goals (sometimes out of reach) and strive hard to achieve them
5. Have a critical eye that allows them to spot and call out the mistakes in both their work and the work of others
6. Focus more on avoiding failure or making a mistake than on creating success
7. Are hypercritical and beat themselves up, create feelings of low self-esteem, and worry and lose sleep when they have a decision to make or are fearful about not meeting a goal
8. Don’t tend to appreciate constructive feedback about how perfectionism is undermining their success as a leader

So what is the difference between a high achiever and a perfectionist? High achievers have a built in implicit need to get stuff done. Listed below are the characteristics of high achievers and the significant differences between them and perfectionists:

Focus on success, not perfection. High achievers see success as accomplishing the goal and crossing it off their list. Perfectionists are so preoccupied about avoiding failure they lose focus on achieving the goal. If an author focused on perfection, they would never write a book. If a baseball player focused on perfection, they would never swing a bat. High achievers know what they do will never be perfect; they know that whatever they do can always be improved. But, high achievers deeply believe they can course correct once they have produced the result or accomplished the goal. They have confidence to do what Seth Godin recommends, “Hit send and ship it.” You will always have a bigger impact in the market and can correct any imperfections quicker than waiting for perfection to hit send.

Recognize that perfection can hurt success. High achievers recognize that perfectionism is a strength, but when taken to an extreme, will become a characteristic that hurts, not helps success.

Understand the laws of failure and success. High achievers know results almost always lead to success. Perfectionists are so focused on not failing that they allow their high need for perfection to undermine their ability to produce a result and create success.

Live by the 80-20 rule. High achievers know that 80 percent of their success is going to be based on focusing on the right 20 percent of goals or tasks. Perfectionists can get caught up making a goal or task perfect that has very little impact on their results or success. High achievers are quick to spend little time or let go of the things that do not matter.

Take action. High achievers make a decision and take action. Once the decision is made or action is taken, they will get immediate feedback about whether they are on the right course or if the decision needs to be modified.

Ask for help. Perfectionists tend to believe that they should know the answer. High achievers don’t feel they need to know everything. High achievers are comfortable telling people either they don’t know what to do or they need help.

Get over it or quickly get on with it. Perfectionists tend to beat themselves up about mistakes they have made or decisions that have not gone well. High achievers also make mistakes…sometimes lots of things they try do not work out. High achievers are fond of looking at something they did wrong and saying, “I don’t see that as a failure, but only as the opportunity to learn that I will not do it that way a second time.” Sparky Anderson, the late cantankerous manager of the Cincinnati Reds once responded to a reporter who questioned his judgement of removing a successful pitcher late in the game by telling the reporter, “I’ve got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There’s no future in it. Next question.”

Understand that both creators and critics play a role in life. Today, I read a review on Amazon regarding a book I wrote and published through Random House, Crown books. The book has sold over 100,000 copies. This reviewer hated the book. If I listened to their feedback, I would never have written the book nor would I ever write another book. But, I know there are two types of people in our world. There are creators and there are critics. High achievers tend to be creators and perfectionists tend to be critics.

Perfectionism can be a strength. When you have a high need to get things right, along with a strong reputation in your organization for achieving massive results, you have the best of all worlds.