Leadership Pit Stop:
Business Leadership Coaching on the Go

The Perfectionist Leader

As a perfectionist, you probably attribute the success in your career to striving for higher standards. Whatever the level of performance you have been able to achieve for yourself, you follow up your accomplishment by raising the bar to the next level. Thoroughness, quality, and correctness are your guiding principles. But what can be a strength in an individual contributor can easily become a liability when you’re a manager of people. Here are potential consequences if you’re not moderating your perfectionist tendencies:

• You end up de-motivating your employees because "nothing seems to be good enough."
• Your employees don’t grow and develop their skills because you don’t delegate tasks or projects to them because you think, "nobody can do it as well as I can."
• You waste limited time, energy, and funds striving for a standard your company or customer isn’t willing to pay for.
• You slow down the process because everything needs to checked and re-checked and done a particular way (which is usually your way).
• You put your personal health and well being at risk because of the stress you put yourself under.
• You experience frustration because rarely is there the desired amount of time and resources to achieve your desired standard.

Remember, it’s a question of balance, not “either/or.” Ask yourself the following to ensure your high standards don’t blindly dictate how you manage your people and projects.

1. Given this particular project, what is the right balance between quality and speed?
2. How realistic and necessary are these high standards for this specific project?
3. Will the extra effort required to reach a higher standard have a tangible pay-off?
4. Have I explicitly communicated my high standards to my direct reports and allowed for an appropriate degree of negotiation?

Remember these three words to live by – “let…it… go.”