The Cost of Perfectionism
‘Practice makes perfect’.
It’s a saying you have probably heard countless times growing up given that it’s tossed around constantly at school, in sports, and other recreational activities. It makes us wonder: why were we told from such a young age to strive for perfection? What is the impact of the implicit messaging hidden in this saying? And what if we were told instead ‘practice makes progress’ - emphasising the value of effort over outcome?
This is a reflection that has been creeping up on us for many years, as we see time and again that many of our coaching clients we work with possess a deep desire and drive to achieve perfection at work. With this fact alone, you might wonder, ‘What’s wrong with that?’. On surface, this feels like a healthy behaviour that’s likely to lead to high performance in the workplace. But is that always the case? To answer that question, let’s dive a little deeper into the research around perfectionism.
Understanding Perfectionism
When it comes to perfectionism in the workplace, there are two elements we need to understand:
Healthy striving, where one sets high standards for themselves in a self-directed strive for perfectionism; and
Perfectionistic concerns, which relate to doubts about one’s performance, concern about making a mistake, seeing others as expecting perfection from you, and seeing discrepancies between expected standards and your own performance.
Brené Brown makes the distinction between these two elements through an understanding of what is driving them. In health striving, we’re driven by an internal desire for excellence or feeling of the task being important to our goals and values. This is in comparison to perfectionistic concern, where we are instead driven by a desire to avoid blame, criticism, or ridicule.
“When perfectionism is driving, shame is riding shotgun.”
– Brené Brown
Whilst research outlines that there are helpful aspects sitting alongside healthy striving (such as improved academic achievement and self-esteem), this striving is also associated with self-criticism and depressive symptoms. On the other hand, perfectionistic concerns are generally understood to be unhelpful and are associated with higher levels of stress, procrastination, and negative health. Additionally, a meta-analysis examining the relationships between perfectionism and burnout found a significant impact between high perfectionistic concerns and levels of burnout.
Conceptually, this makes sense. When we feel pressured to achieve a perfect standard and not make mistakes, we are more likely to put strain on ourselves in the hours and ways in which we work, ultimately increasing stress and decreasing opportunities for rest and recovery.
This cycle has significant implications for organisations, teams, and individuals. At an organisational level, workplaces lose both productivity and people when burnout occurs. For teams, expectations of perfectionism can spread like disease, creating an environment of fear and low psychological safety. And finally, it’s at an individual level where we most commonly see the impact through our work at Vicissitude - coaching referrals coming in under the banner of wellbeing or development coaching very often end up revealing struggles with perfectionism as a root cause.
So, what can we do to break this cycle and manage perfectionism in the workplace?
Managing Perfectionism
Perfectionism can emerge as a result of many different factors, including our personality preferences, our values, and the ways we have been taught to operate through our prior experiences. Because of how deep some of these elements of behaviour are rooted, understanding and managing perfectionistic tendencies can be a long journey, and the best way to embark upon it is with the support of a coach. Most of the work that is entailed in re-wiring these behaviours stem from deep reflection and changing the way we look at the world around us.
With that in mind, we offer the following prompts for reflection if you see a little bit of perfectionism in you:
Build an understanding of your own tendencies through reflection, assessment, and observation. When do you slip into these patterns of behaviour? Is it consistent or triggered by certain events? Using a psychometric assessment can be enormously helpful to hold up a mirror to your current ways of operating.
Evaluate the impact of your current behaviour and preferences. When might they be helpful or hindering? What is the cost of your current preferences now and over time? Is your behaviour sustainable?
Consider reframing against the principle of diminishing returns. Will there reach a point in striving toward your current deliverable that your effort would be better redeployed on a different task? What will be the cost in terms of time, effort, and stress of gaining a few extra percentage points toward perfect completion? In that same amount of time, what would you be able to achieve on a different task? Become mindful of the opportunity costs!
Review your impact on others. Although you might consciously only be holding yourself to unrealistically high expectations, these views can be unconsciously spread through your team (especially if you’re in a position of leadership). If you’re sending the message that anything less than perfect is unacceptable, you are also sending the message that mistakes are not okay. This can have a huge impact on team psychological safety and stress levels.
We’d love to your thoughts about perfectionism! Leave a comment: How has perfectionism impacted your experience of the workplace and do you think there is room to recognise the negative side of these tendencies?
Written by Madeleine Crawford and Poppy Orr
