I N T R O D U C T I O N: WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS?
“I’m a perfectionist,” replied Gary, the job interviewee. He looked confident and safe in his response.
Troubling answer.
This was my first thought when Gary answered the age-old interview question, “What is your greatest weakness?”
It’s as if he had confessed a crime. The poor interviewee didn’t know that perfectionism is a loaded answer in my line of work.
How could he? People think perfectionism is, at worst, a quirk. Many consider it admirable, which is probably why this interview response has become so predictable and tired. The response is strategic: by claiming perfectionism as a weakness, Gary flips the question to avoid an answer that reflects a true liability and instead offers a response that highlights another potential strength. The spin is not subtle.
It’s clear that perfectionism is double-edged. Otherwise, this classic interview response wouldn’t have developed in the first place. Perfectionism is mysterious, but the full landscape is underappreciated, misunderstood, and minimized.
Perfectionism is not the same as pursuing perfection or pursuing excellence, as we will discover later in this book. Pursuing perfection isn’t necessarily a problem, but for some individuals, this pursuit can become rigid and get out of control, causing major complications. This is perfectionism.
For some individuals, perfectionistic tendencies are minimal or yield positive outcomes, such as better grades, promotions at work, or compliments on your outfit. For others, perfectionistic tendencies can be so disabling that they obstruct basic activities, such as getting dressed, cooking, working, and socializing. Most presentations of perfectionism are associated with effects that fall somewhere between these two extremes.
This book focuses mainly on employees with elevated but nonextreme levels of perfectionism that disrupt the workplace and teams as a result. These negative effects, if left unchecked, can create a culture of perfectionism that will spread insidiously and destroy businesses.
By managing the negative effects, you provide an opportunity to leverage the many strengths that coincide with perfectionism. Indeed, perfectionists often present with a range of positive features that enhance the workplace. For example, they can be especially conscientious, detail-oriented, loyal, and honest.
But what does perfectionism in the workplace resemble?
It could manifest in employees who:
- Exhibit anxiety before, during, and after a job task—particularly novel or complex ones;
- Procrastinate and avoid tasks because of anxiety;
- Miss deadlines to fix products and get them just right;
- Submit pristine products, albeit late; -
- Freeze with dread when faced with being responsible for completing a task;
- Become fixated on planning, list-making, and completing tasks in an effective and efficient manner;
- Find it difficult to prioritize tasks because they all seem equally important;
- Become rigid about enforcing rules even when doing so undermines important principles;
- Get stuck on details instead of seeing the big picture;
- Find it problematic to be flexible in their expectations and beliefs about success;
- Become petrified when asked to make even minor decisions;
- Seek reassurance from others excessively;
- Compulsively check performance indicators;
- Show an inability to accept or appreciate well-earned praise and positive feedback, such as being sad despite winning a first-place ribbon;
- Seem unsurprised by negative feedback—as if it were expected—but also act crushed emotionally by it anyway;
- Exhibit oversensitivity to actual and perceived criticism;
- Are preoccupied with doing what they think is right or should be done;
- Moralize and sometimes come across as snooty;
- Seem underemployed or have a confusing work history despite having substantial ambition and skill;
- Push unrealistic and rigid standards on others;
- Show a hesitancy and difficulty with delegating tasks to others.
If these signs seem familiar, this book is for you. If your workplace culture is saddled with perfectionism, there are solutions. So, if you’re looking for ways to loosen the vice that perfectionism has on your workplace and employees, please keep reading.
When unmanaged, perfectionism is bad for business—it slows productivity, directly and indirectly. But what do these negative effects look like? Perfectionism may contribute to:
- Reduced profit;
- Inordinate employee turnover;
- Elevated employee absenteeism;
- Poor workplace reputation;
- Difficulty recruiting new talent;
- Increased unnecessary spending;
- Angry and dissatisfied clients;
- Missed deadlines;
- Slowed productivity;
- Declining creativity;
- Toxic workplace culture and mood;
- Employee and manager resentment.
In short, the potential effects of perfectionism are profoundly disruptive to an organization’s health and employee well-being. These consequences will be revisited throughout the book. They underscore why perfectionism is a loaded answer when an interviewee self-assuredly declares this as their greatest weakness.
The Purpose of Flawed
While self-help tools are available for individuals who suffer from perfectionism, no tools exist for those who lead a workforce and manage in an organizational setting. This book fills that void and offers practical solutions for businesses.
Written for decision makers, business leaders, and HR managers who struggle to deal with employee burnout, procrastination, anxiety, and turnover risk—perhaps even quiet quitting—the book is designed as an approachable guide for understanding, detecting, and alleviating the ways that perfectionism undermines the workplace.
How to Use Flawed
Flawed is divided into two parts. Part I provides a definition and broad overview of perfectionism (chapter 1). This is followed by a summary of perfectionism features (chapter 2). I then provide tips for how you can detect perfectionism at work (chapter 3). Part I concludes with a discussion of why perfectionism is bad for your workplace and the bottom line of the business (chapter 4).
Filled with clear examples, Part II characterizes specific ways that perfectionism hinders the workplace (chapters 5–9). I focus on five predominant problems, which include (1) a dysfunctional emphasis framework; (2) process paralysis; (3) confounding rules and principles; (4) cognitive rigidity; and (5) other-oriented moralism. Each of these is covered in detail in their respective chapters.
Part II offers practical solutions for these specific problems. These comprise a range of practical antiperfectionism strategies and tactics. They are separated into group-level and employee-level strategies. The former represents top-down approaches for leaders that can influence the workplace culture. The latter provides tools for leaders who need to work with employees at the individual level.
As a bonus, a final chapter reverses the dynamic emphasized in the rest of the book. It offers strategies for recognizing and coping with a perfectionistic boss (chapter 10). It’s also applicable for handling perfectionistic individuals who are higher than your boss on the organizational chart (e.g., CEO, Board of Directors).
Flawed contains many resources, all of which you can adopt at your discretion for enhancing your workplace. This includes all figures, blank versions of select figures to tailor to your team circumstances, and recommended non-Flawed resources for perfectionists and their families. All these items can be downloaded for free from my website, which you can visit at www.gregchasson.com/flawedresources.
About Me
I’m a clinical psychologist and board certified cognitive-behavioral therapist who specializes in the nature and treatment of OCD and related conditions, including perfectionism.
I’m an Associate Professor and the Director of Behavioral Interventions for the OCD and Related Disorders Clinic at the University of Chicago. My career has included tens of thousands of hours of conducting research on OCD and related conditions, treating clients with perfectionism and anxiety, and teaching dozens of psychologists in training how to provide such services.
In my work as a psychologist, it sometimes feels like perfectionism is everywhere.3 I’m inundated each week with client stories about the tremendous toll perfectionism exacts on emotional well-being and quality of life. I see the way it hampers work performance and job satisfaction. I witness it in C-suite executives, physicians, professional athletes, politicians, attorneys, engineers, teachers, graphic designers, artists, psychologists—the list is extensive.
I’ve supervised countless staff and students who struggle with perfectionism but, even as an expert, I find it challenging to help somebody with these difficulties. Leaders may find it daunting to deal with this problem in their workforce, especially if they have limited exposure to mental health knowledge and techniques—and that’s if they can even detect perfectionism successfully in the first place. My guess is that many managers don’t recognize how it is playing a role in their team’s daily operations.
This is why I’ve written Flawed. I’m not a Fortune 500 business influencer, but I’ve owned and operated businesses in the mental health sector. I’ve managed and led people for nearly 15 years. My hope is that the book can bridge the gap between my expertise in mental health and the workplace culture in which it’s embedded, 3 Granted, I see a subset of the community who seek me out specifically for help with these conditions, so my perspective is skewed. This is an example of what’s called the availability heuristic, specifically when it comes to the underappreciated challenge of perfectionism.
Perfectionism doesn’t need to wreck your workplace. Organizations can address this overlooked challenge. It’s okay to promote a work environment that not only accepts flaws—and uses flaws to its advantage—but also promotes making mistakes on purpose, among other strategies. Making mistakes on purpose? I know—it sounds absurd. I promise it’ll make sense by the end of this book. By the end, like me, you’ll never react the same way again to the interviewee response, “I’m a perfectionist.” No, Gary—being flawed is not a weakness… but claiming to be a perfectionist might be
