Episode 255 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: In this episode, we’re going to cover the Perfectionist Leadership trap and how to find out if you’re on your way to stepping into it, if you’re already in it, and how to get out of it, and ensuring that’s not a thing that’s going to hold you back in your leadership career. Here are the two questions this podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role?

0:00:23 Ramona Shaw: And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted? Although the competition and the expectations get bigger, this show, The Manager Track podcast will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection, and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead so everyone wins and grows.

0:00:52 Ramona Shaw: In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate, and act as a confident and competent leader. You know you can be welcome to this episode of The Manager Track podcast. Today we’re going to talk about a leadership trap, one of  several that many high achievers fall into. And this is the hidden cost of perfectionism. So if you ever found yourself over researching, delaying decisions, procrastinating on work, or reworking something long past the point of diminishing returns, then this episode is for you.

0:01:30 Ramona Shaw: What I often hear from clients who deal with perfectionism who would say, that’s just something I grew up with. It could be the way I was raised, but it’s also maybe just innately you where you want to make things as good as they are. It gets wrapped into this idea of having high expectations, which most definitely is a strength. Now, having high expectations makes us feel competent and thorough and high achieving and is likely also something that helped us achieve the success that we’ve gathered so far and what got us really into this current position.

0:02:10 Ramona Shaw: And so most definitely the question is, why would I let that go and now change my behavior if that’s exactly the thing that got me promoted? The difference between just having high expectations and perfectionism is the cost associated with it. So when it comes to leadership, this perfectionism can really become a major ability. It can slow down decisions, it can prevent effective delegation, it can even turn into micromanaging.

0:02:41 Ramona Shaw: And it can ultimately keep us stuck in the weeds instead of leading at a strategic level. On a more personal level, it can lead to high stress, even burnout, or just overall dissatisfaction with either ourselves and our work product or the work product of our team are those we collaborate with. So in this episode we’re going to break down why perfectionism is so common in leadership. The surprising ways it holds you back. We’ll dive a little bit more into that how to break free from the perfectionist mindset without sacrificing quality.

0:03:16 Ramona Shaw: So yes, I do like your high standards and don’t think you should lower them. So if you’re ready to work smarter instead of harder, then let’s dive in together. Let’s start with some questions here. Have you ever spent way too much time perfecting something that actually didn’t need to be perfect? It would have been fine a few hours ago, or at 80% of what you did. And be really honest here, not would it have been fine with you? No, I know that it wouldn’t have been fine with you, but would it have been fine with whoever was the recipient of your work?

0:03:54 Ramona Shaw: Maybe it was a presentation where you tweaked every single slide but they had no idea. Or a report where you rewrote the introduction five times, or the conclusion only to realize no one actually read the report, or they all just skim through it. Or a hiring decision where you kept delaying it because you weren’t 100% sure about the candidate and you kept thinking, maybe there’s a better one, there’s someone more perfect.

0:04:20 Ramona Shaw: Or you wrote an email and you rewrote it and rewrote it again. Then finally you sent it. But after sending it, you went back and you read it again and you wished you had done a few more tweaks. You could tell ah, it wasn’t perfect yet and that already hit send. If those scenarios sound familiar, then those would be tendencies indicating that you might be a perfectionist. Now, high performing professionals are actually often wired to believe that perfect is the goal. It’s this idea of the high standard and again the thing to aim for. That’s what makes us better.

0:04:59 Ramona Shaw: That’s what creates success. But in leadership, which is different from being the executor in itself, the real game changer is no longer trying to perfect things, it’s now progress. In fact, there’s almost a bit of a paradox there. Because the higher up you go in leadership, the less perfect your work will likely be. Oftentimes people at a high caliber, they now have support systems in place, including staff, interns, executive assistants, people who proofread, people who write their emails, a lot of things that allow them to still present high quality output, strong communication, good presentation, all those things that give you the image of perfect work without them actually having done the work.

0:05:52 Ramona Shaw: The support system around them did that. Early on, I was still at university, I worked for a professor. And what he would do is he would record himself on one of those really old school recorders and then his assistant would write the emails or write the document that he needed to write. And that assistant was focused on execution and what they considered perfect. So it was no longer for him to focus on making this email perfect? No, he had a support system in place to do that.

0:06:25 Ramona Shaw: And this, by the way, was just one example of many where he had great people being really strong experts doing things around him so that he could deliver at a higher level with high standards without falling into the traps of perfectionism that would have sucked hours out of his stay that were now no longer spent on the actual value add that this professor was bringing to work. Instead it would have spent on perfecting a slide.

0:06:55 Ramona Shaw: The professor’s value wasn’t to have a perfect slide. Now he had a team that made sure the slide was perfect, but the professor’s time was spent either researching, mentoring, teaching, or being on a panel representing the university and so forth. And this is very similar to how I want to introduce this concept of the leadership trap of perfectionism here and talk about it, because it’s not that we’re saying high standards aren’t good, or your, your desire to have a perfect outcome isn’t what got you successes in the past.

0:07:34 Ramona Shaw: The question is when, at what point are you going to hit that inflection point at which that approach is going to keep you stuck and not help you elevate to reach the next level. And at that next level, you start to operate more like the professor who now has a team around them, who has grown and learned to deliver output that in the professor’s mind or to the recipient was good enough or what they consider to be a great work product.

0:08:08 Ramona Shaw: Because at the end of the day, your job is no longer about producing perfect work. Really it’s about driving action, making decisions, leading others, creating results through others, inspiring creativity and innovation, strategic planning and thinking. So it’s at a whole different level. So to give you another example, a few years ago I worked with a VP of product, let’s call him David. He was leading the launch of a new software feature.

0:08:36 Ramona Shaw: The feature was fully functional and customers had already beta tested it and the engineering team was ready to fully deploy it across all their customers. But David wasn’t convinced it was perfect yet. He was really worried that something would go wrong. And he insisted in doing more testing. He, he wanted additional feedback. He wanted to be a hundred percent sure it wouldn’t create any issues. And if he did, he at least wanted to be a hundred percent sure that he checked all the boxes possible, that he did everything he could to make this a success.

0:09:17 Ramona Shaw: So the team kept tweaking, kept testing, they kept optimizing it, they kept waiting. All the while a competitor product launched a very similar feature. And some customers, and probably also prospective customers started comparing the two products. They liked this new feature in the competing product and they either signed up with them or they actually switched. Now the opportunity to introduce this new feature with a Bing was gone.

0:09:48 Ramona Shaw: And when they finally launched, everything went fine. Now would we know if it would have been fine if he launched a month earlier or not? We don’t know for sure. But in that additional testing phase, no big bugs, no big issues were revealed. It was really David procrastinating on that discomfort of letting something out into the world and then knowing that this could quickly backfire and then he would have to take the blame.

0:10:16 Ramona Shaw: And that was something he was very uncomfortable with. And so he tried to make it as perfect as possible until he had no more room to delay. And that is just one example of how we would see the cause of perfectionism play out to the individual in this case, David, it feels like being very thorough, doing the right thing, checking the boxes, being risk aware, being smart and analytical. But often this is just us justifying our fear of making wrong calls, of doing something that would backfire, of feeling then like a failure.

0:10:52 Ramona Shaw: Now this example with the feature is actually a pretty big one, but it can also happen in small situations day in and day out. Am I going to send this email or is this going to make me look back? Am I going to ask that question or someone going to think that’s a dumb question? And so I only want to ask questions that I’ve well prepared that I know for sure are going to be presented or spoken at the right time to the right audience, where I’m only going to ask a question and I know it’s the perfect moment and a great question to ask or my rather holding back than saying something half baked or just risking asking a question that people already know the answer to and looking bad. It’s a lot of small decisions day in and day out that start to accumulate and impact your leadership and ultimately the results that you’re creating and how you’re being perceived by others.

0:11:45 Ramona Shaw: So speaking of that, let’s talk about how perfectionism holds leaders back. Why do we call this a trap? Let’s quickly go back to the fundamentals. The way that perfectionism shows up could be fear of failure to the desire for control. So if you do it yourself, you didn’t know it’ll be done right. So you have a hard time delegating, a hard time taking what someone else has provided without editing it. Even if just rephrasing a sentence or adding a comma, you’re like, if I do it, I just.

0:12:19 Ramona Shaw: If I’m gonna do it, it’s just gonna be a little bit better. Or tying self worth to your work quality and then thinking that if your work isn’t perfect, then that says something about your own worth. And we don’t want to feel not worthy, right? So that’s an uncomfortable feeling. And in order to prevent that, which we all are wired to prevent or escape pain. So what do we do instead? We’re going to make sure our work always looks perfect so that there’s no opportunity for someone to say something that makes me question my own worth.

0:12:55 Ramona Shaw: But here’s the real issue. The perfectionistic leader becomes the bottleneck. If you need everything to be flawless, you can’t actually delegate. Or if you do, it’s still gonna run by your desk and you’re still gonna go tweak it and finalize it. And that’s not good delegation practice. That’s actually something that’s gonna erode your effectiveness and sends the wrong message to the team member who worked on it.

0:13:20 Ramona Shaw: If you always wait for the perfect moment or having sufficient information, decisions take too long. There’s usually too many people involved, too many opinions being considered, trying to make it work for every single person, or just analyzing and thinking that at some point you will know what the exact right decision is versus living with ambiguity and understanding that the higher up you go, the more ambiguous your decisions will be.

0:13:46 Ramona Shaw: It won’t be black and white. If it’s black and white, then likely someone else will be able to make the decision. The higher up you go, the more ambiguous, and that’s part of the game. Also, if you obsess over details, you may miss the bigger picture. You might be so focused on making sure your slides are great and well formatted. There’s no grammatical error, but you’re missing the part where you think, is this really the message I want to convey? Is this really what people, the clients or the employees or the team actually need to know right now?

0:14:18 Ramona Shaw: Those questions you don’t have time for, you don’t have capacity for. So you don’t do that, and instead you focus on Finalizing this light deck and making it as pretty as possible or as flawless as possible. And as I said earlier with the delegation, it doesn’t just affect you. It also can frustrate your team. It can slow down process. It teaches your employees that they can’t make decisions without your approval because if they decided something that you don’t like, then that’s likely going to backfire or you’re going to undo their decision and that’s not going to look good.

0:14:48 Ramona Shaw: In essence, it creates a culture of second guessing and hesitation. People will second guess themselves. People will ask you first. They will hesitate making decisions because they know failure mistakes are not good and not accepted. They see you not accept them and they see you not accept them about them. Now, by all means, again, not saying you should accept sloppy work or you should lower your standards if that’s not in the best interest of the company.

0:15:19 Ramona Shaw: But here’s the big difference between high standards and perfectionism in leadership. You need to embrace the idea of good enough. Will this move the business forward even if it’s not flawless? Would making a decision now be better than waiting for a perfect answer later? Like, is having an incomplete and ambiguous decision made now better than having it done in a week? Am I the only one who actually cares about this level of detail?

0:15:49 Ramona Shaw: And if it is, then don’t sweat the detail. Then it’s just time to move forward. So really critically assess what is good enough. Or when your boss delegates work to you, you could, instead of just taking and running with it and making up an idea in your head of what perfect now looks like and what you’re going to do, take it and say, hey, what does good enough look like here? And what would great look like? That helps me calibrate.

0:16:17 Ramona Shaw: Let them tell you what they’re looking for. They might say, hey, a rough draft is enough as a first round. I don’t expect this to be perfect. I just want to see how you would structure the slide deck or what ideas you have and then we can brainstorm and then we can finalize it after. Oh, okay. Man, so glad I had this conversation because I was about to run off and create this whole thing that then you would look at and say, actually I, I only like half of the slides. So the other half now goes into the trash bin and no one will ever see how perfect they were.

0:16:51 Ramona Shaw: The other question that you can ask is to say, how much time do you expect me to spend on this? And this is all to give you an indication of what’s the quality they’re looking for. Now, your boss may not exactly know how much time something takes. Like, I sometimes delegate work, and I think that’s going to take about an hour. And then I ask, how long did that take you? And someone on my team would say, that was like three hours or four hours.

0:17:19 Ramona Shaw: Man, how did I go so wrong with how long I thought this would be? It’s because I’m not in the details. I’m not actually doing it. And we often tend to think something goes faster than it actually does. We don’t see the dependencies in the back end. But even with that, knowing what your boss expects then also allows you to go and calibrate the work quality. If in that conversation someone says to me, yeah, I think this should take you about two hours, I would say, okay, so based on the work I’ve done so far, when I did this last time, two hours would get me to have a slide deck ready in an outline format.

0:17:58 Ramona Shaw: It won’t look pretty, but at least we’ll have something to discuss to make sure we’re on the same page. What the message is or the storyline is that we want to present to the client. Does that sound good? So you can counter it. But again, you’re checking in. So this would be one suggestion to help you manage your perfectionism. But I want to share a few more strategies that actually work. One would be set a decision deadline.

0:18:23 Ramona Shaw: So when perfectionists are in research mode, they often think, oh, I just need a little bit more time. That’s why I recommend setting a decision deadline or a time limit for your research. So for me, it might be considering replacing my accounting software. I have a thought. I’m like, yeah, not happy with it. I should look in the market of what else I should do now instead of trying to figure out what’s the best possible out there and spending a long time on it.

0:18:51 Ramona Shaw: I might say, okay, what are the things that actually bother me in my current one that I want to make sure the next one has? What do I like about my current one that I want to make sure the next one also has? What are those criteria? And then by when will I make a decision? I might say I’m going to give myself two weeks to get those answers. And then in two weeks, I’m going to have decided which accounting software I’m going to use going forward.

0:19:16 Ramona Shaw: I put that in my calendar and I now planted a seed in my head, okay, this is something we need to think about. Your brain will automatically start to pay attention to things in your environment because it knows that deadline is coming up. I didn’t just put it aside and think yeah, later at some point. No, I put a deadline in my calendar that avoids the procrastination or the endless lingering. I’m also defined what exactly do I need answers for?

0:19:44 Ramona Shaw: To avoid going down a rabbit hole. To figure out a whole bunch of other things that are not as important as those maybe six things that I laid out in the beginning. When it comes to doing research, if you find yourself going down a rabbit hole because you’re like oh this and then that and then oh, but this also includes this other thing and let me go research that I need to have the full picture or I want to make sure there’s nothing that I miss.

0:20:10 Ramona Shaw: Tell yourself what is, from a business point of view, an advocate time to spend on this research or to get this answer. Okay, business mindset. If I was running this business, if I was the CEO, I think two hours is fair. Two hours of my time is fair amount of time. Set a timer, spend two hours on the research and then recommit if you actually need to go deeper. But use the two hours as a check in point.

0:20:36 Ramona Shaw: Is this now sufficient? Can I really justify spending another hour on it? Or is this now me just delaying it and trying to make it perfect versus just having an open ended time slot to do the research until it’s two in the morning. Those are a few suggestions to help you with it. And by the way, if you make a decision and it turns out that you were wrong, just make adjustments and then move on. Think of it like this. Would you rather make 90% of right decisions today or 95% of right decisions three weeks from now?

0:21:11 Ramona Shaw: Most of the time speed beats perfection because with every week or day or sometimes hours, hour that you wait, you have an opportunity cost that you need to take into consideration. Second one Delegate tasks before you’re comfortable doing. So if you wait until you feel 100% sure that someone else got it and does it better or equally good as you would, you’ll never let go. It’s going to take a long time because it’s hard for someone else to learn without actually owning the things while you’re still being involved.

0:21:48 Ramona Shaw: So ask yourself who can do this 80% as well as I can? 80% is good enough. And then if I give clear expectations, will they learn and improve over time? If I give feedback and I let them reiterate on the output, not I take the 80% and then I’m going to finish the remaining 20% so that I’m now at 100%. That’s not going to help them get to the place where they’ll be able to deliver 100% to you. So now can I do 80% and then I can either let that be and just pass it on so it’s good enough, or can I then take the 80%, send it back, and let them bridge the gap between the 80 and 100% so that they learn, and the chances of them delivering 100 next time is way bigger.

0:22:38 Ramona Shaw: The third one is learning to be okay with people being wrong about you. Perfectionism often comes from a deep desire to manage other people’s perceptions. We want to be seen as competent, reliable, and impressive. But here’s the no matter what you do, people will form their own opinions. And they’re not all accurate. They’re not all reflecting the truth or reflecting what you consider to be the truth.

0:23:08 Ramona Shaw: Now, at some point we have to decide, are we leading to be liked or are we leading to be effective and to be good leaders? And when you stop worrying about how people might judge you and instead focus on what the business actually needs, what your people actually need, you start to make bolder, more strategic decisions. Because wanting to be liked is about you, it’s not about them. Wanting it to be perfect is about you, it’s not about them.

0:23:44 Ramona Shaw: Especially if it’s not about the business objectives, not about what people need, then it being perfect is really just about you. That’s not helping your leadership, and it’s part of that decision. What is more important to me? And if you want to elevate as a leader, you have to at some point let that go. Let them be and let them be wrong. There’s always going to be some who don’t like your work product, don’t like your style, don’t like your voice, don’t like your presentations, don’t like your designs. They think you’re wrong, they think you’re incompetent.

0:24:20 Ramona Shaw: Those people are always around us. They’re always there. So the question is, are we listening to them or are we listening to ourselves and what we based on the feedback that we get all around, not just from those people and what we personally think is the right thing to do for the business and for the people that we lead. So in essence, we want to ask ourselves the question, what do I need here? What’s the outcome we want or the outcome I’m going for? What’s an effective way to get there? What’s a good way to get There and then let go of the need to be validated along the way. For people to like you or to like your work, that is just a side product of you doing what’s right and doing what your team needs or what your stakeholders need.

0:25:08 Ramona Shaw: Now, the fourth one that I want to share here of ways to overcome that perfectionist trap is to reframe negative feedback as a tool and not as a threat. One of the hardest parts about leadership is dealing with criticism, because criticism will likely get more direct and tougher as you climb the ranks. And for perfectionists, feedback can feel deeply personal, like an attack on their competence. And again, it goes back to this idea that the work product represents the self worth.

0:25:39 Ramona Shaw: But here’s the shift that changes it all. When you start to see that feedback isn’t about you, it’s about the work that you do. When you over identify with your work and every critique starts to feel like a rejection of you as a leader, that starts to get really difficult. And no wonder we then start to be defensive or want to avoid such situations. But when you separate yourself from the output of your work, feedback really becomes a tool for growth.

0:26:12 Ramona Shaw: And we’re not saying that negative feedback is always going to feel great. In fact, at arcoa, we don’t say feedback is like a gift. We say feedback is like manure. It stinks, but it also helps us grow. And it’s okay to acknowledge that, oh, that this was tough to hear. But you know what? I now know how to do this better. And that is really the point of manure. The manure is not to make it stink. No, the point is to help the plants grow, to make them stronger, to provide the nutrition.

0:26:43 Ramona Shaw: That’s what we pay attention to. So try this next time when you receive constructive criticism. Instead of thinking, they don’t think I’m good enough, think this is an opportunity to improve something that will make my work even stronger. And instead of reacting with defensiveness, ask what’s a useful takeaway here? How can I apply this? The best leaders actively seek feedback. Not because they’re insecure and they want to check if people like them, but because they know growth depends on it. And growth is endless and it doesn’t stop. We did never reach nirvana.

0:27:23 Ramona Shaw: We don’t get there. It’s constant. And even the most successful people will constantly get negative feedback and criticism, probably even more so and in a more blunt and direct way than others. We see this online and in the public all the time. So the only way to be able to operate at that level is of course, on one hand, we do try to find environments where people are respectful and we have good work environments. But the reality is that we are not always in such situations.

0:27:55 Ramona Shaw: We might have actually a workplace, we created it, or we find ourselves in a workplace where we’re very respectful. People really know how to give effective, constructive feedback, but that’s likely the exception. And then yet you could still walk out and go to a grocery store at night and someone gives you some unsolicited feedback about what you just did or how you parked, or who knows what. We’re in those situations. And so learning how to address them and cope with them is a really important skill in order to help you not get wound up, not get drained by this, but to see it as information or as opportunities for growth.

0:28:35 Ramona Shaw: Also, when it comes to failure, a question that I ask myself often in such situations is one what’s the worst thing that could happen? And two Will anyone even remember this in a month from now? It just feels uncomfortable right now and so that puts things back into perspective. So let’s wrap this up and I have a quick challenge for you this week. Catch yourself in the act of perfectionism. Maybe you’re over editing an email, delaying a decision, micromanaging a task, and when you notice it, pause and ask yourself, does this really need to be perfect? Or is good enough good enough? Or can I apply any of the other strategies here that you learned in this episode?

0:29:16 Ramona Shaw: Because the best leaders don’t obsess over perfection. They focus on action, momentum and impact and they leverage resources and tools that help them deliver a good work product. Now you might not have an assistant to help you with that, but then look around. What tools can you use? What can you delegate in order to spend your time on what truly matters? What drives actions, momentum and impact. Now if this episode resonated with you, please share it with a colleague or a friend who who might be dealing with perfectionism.

0:29:51 Ramona Shaw: And if you want more strategies on leadership growth, then listen all the way to the end and check out the show notes. That’s it for today and I’ll see you next week with another episode of The Manager Track podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager.

0:30:14 Ramona Shaw: Check it out@archova.org/Masterclass the second resource is my best selling book the Confident and Competent New Manager. How to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. You can find all those links in the show notes down below.