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Here's the next in our series of weekly managerial TIPS (Techniques, Insights, and Practical Solutions)
to help you better engage your team in the activities that lead to higher performance.
CORE Bites Issue #63
One of the fundamental—perhaps better stated as pivotal—roles you have as a supervisor, leader, and/or mentor is to encourage the people you directly influence to perform to the best of their abilities. And this can bring many positives; better quality, increased production and profitability, and higher morale and engagement, to name a few.
But when does striving for excellence become an unhealthy obsession with perfection?
The psychology of perfectionism is rather complex. Generally, the aspirational goals of a perfectionist are good—the pursuit of excellence, the desire to do the best job, the drive to be successful. However, perfectionism is strongly correlated with numerous deleterious professional (work) and personal (family) outcomes, including higher levels of burnout, stress, workaholism, and anxiety.
In addition—and contrary to the goals and outcomes perfectionists typically have and desire—is the fact that perfectionism can stifle creativity; perfectionists are often unable to, or lack flexibility in, decision making (analysis paralysis); perfectionism can hold someone back from delegating responsibility; perfectionists can also be obsessed with checking/rechecking/redoing work due to a fear of failure and making mistakes. And this is only a partial list!
Perfectionism is driven by two distinct but related sub-domains, excellence-seeking perfectionism and failure-avoiding perfectionism, and either can manifest into unrealistic expectations and obsessive behaviors. Because the VABES (Values | Assumptions | Beliefs | Expectations) that inform an individual's perfectionistic perspective are fairly rooted, I'm not going to suggest that you try to 'change' a person with these proclivities. Instead, my suggestion is to leverage the positive elements while simultaneously (and proactively) using the following HVAs to reduce any undesirable consequences.
Up to this point I've been referring to perfectionism only at the employee level. But what about us? Yes, I'm referring to YOU and I ... what about OUR tendencies toward perfectionism? Shouldn't those be considered as well? The HVAs listed below are designed to work with any 'perfectionists' on your team ... as well as for the 'perfectionist' in you (and me):
I'd love to hear how these HVAs work for you!
Neil Dempster, PhD, MBA
RESULTant™ and Behavioral Engineer
"To accomplish the perfect perfection, a little imperfection helps."
— Dejan Stojanovic —