Several years ago, my sister gave me a copy of Impossible to Please by Alan Cavaiola and Neil Lavender. She said it was for my wife, and the book was about how to deal with the controlling perfectionists in our lives.
She also said I might benefit from an impartial description of — get this — me.
Ouch.
Okay, so I only had two standards: perfect and unacceptable. I acknowledged that there was more than one way to accomplish a task… my way and the wrong way. That didn’t make me a bad person, did it?
It’s not like I imposed my unreasonably high standards on my family or people at work. After all, I’ve always said, “Don’t let perfection get in the way of good enough.” And I talked plenty about building a culture where failures are learning experiences and not short-cuts to the unemployment line and of embracing our own failures as steppingstones on the road to self-improvement. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Other people’s failures, of course.
So what’s the problem with having unreasonably high standards?
The problem is that is makes us damned hard to work for. And guess what, as leaders it’s not about us; it’s about them. We never get the best from people when we bully them — yes, perfectionists bully, even if that’s not their intent.
Perfectionists notice only what’s wrong and not what’s right. But if our feedback style doesn’t include some encouragement about the good while we’re delivering the bad and the ugly, we stop seeing the good at all. And we stop getting the best out of our team.
As an example, it used to be a gold-star day when someone got a report past me without needing some re-work. Did that motivate them to try their best? Only initially, but when they learned their best would never been good enough, they started sending me crap knowing I’d put the effort into polishing the turd. Hardly the practice of a high-performing team.
Perfectionists are inflexible, resistant to change, and stubborn about having it done our way. Nothing wrong with that, since our way is the best, right?
I can assure you that when we aren’t willing to let others do a task less perfectly than we would do it ourselves, we end up pretty much doing everything ourselves anyway. Then we complain about being overworked, underappreciated, and short on the time and energy we need to be spending as leaders.
As my mother would say, “You kinda brought that on yourself, didn’t you?”
With a tip of the hat to Maya Angelou, “…people will never forget how you made them feel.” Perfectionist bosses make others feel like they can’t do anything right. Hardly the legacy I wanted to leave as a leader, but what was I to do? ‘Good enough’ is the last thing I wanted to be remembered as.
Oh, that’s right… it wasn’t about me; it was about them.
The good news: it’s simple to change. The bad news: it’s not that easy to make the change stick.
First, like any good twelve-step program, admit you’re a perfectionist and it’s a problem. And probably a controlling perfectionist at that. Admit that you’re holding others to a standard that you yourself can’t meet, and in the process you’re holding the organization hostage by not letting others be acceptably successful.
The second step simply requires you to reframe success. Is perfection success? Probably. What about excellent? How about fully compliant and on time? What if your email gets the message delivered effectively but is missing a comma? Can you see where I’m going with that?
That’s it. That’s all it took for me. No more mining for Unobtanium.
(Okay, like anyone in recovery, I’m a work in progress.)
Make sure people know what success looks like, and when they get there, let them know it! Set clear and reasonable (achievable) expectations for them — and yourself — and celebrate when they’re met.
That doesn’t mean settling for good enough; by all means, shoot for the stars, make continuous improvements and set audacious goals. Just make sure you’ve effectively communicated what success looks like and be happy when you get there.
What about you? Are you impossible to please?
It’s up to you, leaders.
