The Perfection Trap

“The Perfection Trap’’ is *Marshall Goldsmith & Sally Helgesen's Number 7 challenge holding women back.

Our thoughts:

A participant in one of our early SOAR Leadership Programmes gave us a fantastic insight as she contrasted how her sons and daughters are taught in school and how we instil values in our children:

‘We teach our boys to be tough and our girls to be good’

There is an element of perfectionism that’s socialised into girls and women from our earliest ages. This is changing For example, it’s fantastic to see much more female sport participation – learning resilience, experiencing winning and losing, camaraderie, and teamwork as well as physical fitness.

However, we think the ‘Perfection Trap’ is more about an under developed capacity for perspective taking, for lifting our heads from the hamster wheel of delivering and getting stuff done.

There’s a personality type that loves to be organised - methodical in executing · tenacious · self-critical · perfectionistic · follows through · rule-following. And we often see the ‘Organiser’ combined with a really strong ‘Driver’ preference as well – work hard – push through – deliver no matter what…

And this works so well! Particularly early on in our careers. These qualities help you to establish a reputation for delivering, for professionalism, for being trustworthy.

What’s the problem then?

Well, the challenges often arise when it comes to delivering with and through others – when it’s less about your ‘perfect’ way and more about enabling those around you to grow. The temptation to keep ‘organising’ and ‘driving’ everything through is enormous – and a recipe for burn out and overwhelm – for you and your teams.

Combine this with moving into roles where you’ve got to start thinking longer term, strategically, taking a systems approach, working with complexity, ambiguity, and paradox. Now it’s about influencing, listening, leading, inspiring, relationships, vision!

We think the challenge is not ‘Too Much’ Organising and Driving but rather ‘To Little’ Collaborating and Visionary – and you can learn these and become the balanced leader you’d love to be.

The trick is to become aware of the need to think and act differently as you progress in your career.

Truly, ‘what got you here’ won’t get you there’!

PS – If you’d like to explore your Focus Energy Balance Indicator (FEBI) profile – the 4 energies are Organiser, Driver, Collaborator & Visionary – contact Betty@mojoforleaders.com. We will write a separate Blog on FEBI soon.

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*Marshall Goldsmith & Sally Helgesen's book, 'How Women Rise: Breaking the 12 Habits Holding You Back' is worth reading over and over.

We're sharing a series of reflections on their 12 Habits based on our own experience; hope we spark some ideas for you!